The Invaders Plan (8 page)

"But it was issued 4.7 days after I was kidnapped," he said.

I peered at the document again, over his shoulder. Yes, it was hour dated. No great trick. "We had to know we could get the right special agent before we dared undertake the task," I lied smoothly.

"Look," said Heller. "This place is pretty awful. Can't we go somewhere else to discuss this?"

"As soon as you've decided to undertake it," I said.

"Ah. Do I smell blackmail amongst all these other stinks?"

"No, no," I said quickly. "It is just that some . . . ah . . . forces don't want the mission to succeed." That was no lie. "So I am charged with keeping you safe." Pretty brilliant of me, I thought. He wasn't going to be hard to handle. An utter child where espionage was concerned.

"Blito-P3. I just came from there. Surveyed the place."

"Precisely," I said, "and with all your other accomplishments that was why you were the exact and only officer for the job."

"So you kidnapped me." The wry smile showed he thought the whole thing fishy. "Maybe you better tell me about this so-called mission." So I told him, keeping it very simple. He was to go to Earth and infiltrate some technology into their culture and preserve the planet. The way I put it, it sounded quite noble and altruistic. A Fleet officer would never know about Invasion Timetables so I omitted that.

"And you considered the best way to begin this was to stage a kidnapping?" said Heller.

"We had to test you to see if you could stand up to the demands of being an agent," I reminded him.

"So you got the order before you knew I had passed." (Bleep)! He could think! But so could I at this game. You don't live a decade around undercover work without learning the tricks. You don't and stay alive, that is.

"We would have been put to the extreme trouble of finding another volunteer," I said blandly.

"And the trouble of kidnapping him," added Heller. Then he put up his hand to stop the interchange. "I'll tell you what I will do. I am not part of your Division. If you can obtain the usual orders from the Fleet Personnel Officer, I will undertake your mission." The specter of Lombar moved a bit away from me. I wanted to laugh with relief. But I said, "Oh, I think we can manage that all right." With a sweeping bow and hand flourish, I indicated he could precede me through the door.

I had to sign the prisoner out in the lower guardroom and as we entered, the monster Heller had struck down was sitting with the rest, eating some loathsome stew. I was nervous in this place and when the beast made a sudden movement, I flinched back. And then I saw something astonishing.

The huge guard stood up so swiftly he almost knocked over his food pan. He came to rigid attention and crossed his arms on his chest in the formal military salute!

It was not intended for me. Heller casually lifted his hand in the usual reply and flashed a faint but friendly smile. The beast grinned back!

I had never seen a Spiteos guard salute or smile before. I felt eerie, like one would feel if he saw a wraith actually appear in a woods temple: something you see that you know can't happen – supernatural. I hurriedly zipped my name across the log plate and got out of there with the prisoner.

In the upper levels of Spiteos there are some rooms set aside for Apparatus officers such as I. Very plain and windowless, they nevertheless have a few comforts including baths. I used mine very seldom but it had the necessary personal things.

Technically speaking, I would be removing him from the prison by taking him to my room but I thought Lombar's last orders would provide for it.

Just to make sure
both
the contradictory orders were covered, I parked the prisoner in a niche beside the lift tubes and, out of his hearing, made a call to Camp Endurance. The troops there were actual Apparatus troops. I got hold of an officer and arranged for a platoon and around-the-clock surveillance of my room and surrounding passages. I gave explicit orders they were to appear to be guarding against intrusion upon the prisoner while actually preventing his escape. I used Lombar's name to drive it home and by delaying our progress upward, they had time to post the area.

We entered the barren room. I opened a drawer and offered Heller a chank-pop – anything to take the stench of the prison away. It even leaked into these rooms. But Heller shook his head.

"What I need is a bath," he said.

I waved my hand at the wall tub, opened a closet and got out a flimsy sleeping robe. He shed his shoes and pants and I dumped them, with the sweater, into the disposal unit – they were beyond salvage.

As he started the spray going, I had a sudden thought. "You know," I said, popping a chank-pop under my own nose, "you could have made a run for it when you picked up that blastick. You were armed, I was defenseless. You could have used me as a hostage. . . ." He laughed. He had a very pleasant, easy laugh. After a bit, scrubbing away, he said, "And fight through electric gates, armed guards, mined shafts and blastgun perimeters? And then fight through Camp Endurance and stumble across two hundred miles of the Great Desert? Utter folly. Foolhardy beyond belief. I'm certain the Apparatus would never permit anyone to leave Spite-os alive!" I was shocked. He could not possibly know where he was. We had passed no windows, no signs. He had been unconscious when he arrived. He might have even been on another planet. And no one, but no one outside the Apparatus knew Spiteos, that ancient landmark, was in use!

"My Gods, how could you possibly know?" He laughed again, scrubbing away. "My watch. It runs on twenty-six different time bands as well as Universal Absolute Time." That didn't tell me anything. "And . . . ?" I prompted.

"It gives the time lag between here and Palace City and it gives the direction. There's only one geophysical feature at that distance from Palace City and that's Spiteos." I didn't laugh. I was getting sad. "Any other way?" I asked.

That really amused him. "This rock. Every wall of the place is 'in-place' country rock. Black basalt with a sixteen degree dip and a strike of 214°, Type 13 granularity. Look at it. It's the remains of a volcanic extrusion that built the mountains beyond the Great Desert. Elementary geology for the planet Voltar. Any schoolboy knows that. I knew where I was when I came to. The watch just confirmed it." Well, I was one schoolboy that didn't know it. "Strike" was the compass direction. He must have intuitive compass sense. "Dip" is easy: that's the angle into the ground. But to be able to classify rock by its visual granular structure – and without a complex analyzer-meant he had eyes like a microscope and in the comparative dark of that cell!
And
he must have a memory like a library!

But that wasn't what was making me sad. Here he was, for all he knew, in the hands of enemies just using him, and he was letting
me know
that
he knew
where he was. And he was exposing vital abilities which, had they stayed hidden, might have lulled me into a false sense of security. Now I could take precautions against these things. For a spy, all that is not just dumb, it is
stupid
beyond belief. Using what he had just incautiously revealed, I could lock him up forever and he'd never know where he was!

He'd never make a special agent. Not in a million, million years. I was not going to have trouble making him fail. I was going to have trouble keeping him afloat long enough not to drag
me
down. Spying takes an instinct. Oh my, he didn't have it! This wasn't going to be a failed mission. This was going to be a total catastrophe!

"Make yourself at home," I said. "I'm going to Government City to get your orders."

I am sure you have noticed that the first impression a visitor gets of the Fleet Administration Complex in Government City is that he has just encountered an actual fleet in outer space. When somebody said "buildings," their architects must have thought "ships." It is most annoying: there they are, spotted around ten square miles of otherwise barren land, like ten thousand huge, silver ships. They're even in formation! They say the officers and clerks even wear spaceboots! And not a shrub or tree to be seen anywhere!

When I have to fly there, I always feel like I'm an invader having to be repelled. Marines, marines, marines, gates, gates, gates, all built like atmosphere ports. Passes, passes, passes. It just occurred to me that maybe I don't like the place because they always look at my identification plates, see I'm from the Apparatus and sneer. But after two hours I finally got where I was trying to go.

The Fleet Personnel Officer was sitting in a cubicle for all the world like a storeroom on a battleship. The walls were solid, deck to overhead, with machines and screens, dazzling with their flashing, multicolored lights. You'd think he was fighting a battle – and maybe he was, with four million Fleet officers to shift around.

He was probably a nice enough fellow: a bit old, a bit fat. He looked up as though to greet me cheerfully but he didn't. He frowned a trifle instead. There was just a trace of wondering disapproval in his voice. "You're from the 'drunks'?" Now, nobody had announced me as anything but "An officer from Exterior Division," and I was wearing the noncommittal gray uniform of General Services, not even a pocket patch. I involuntarily looked down at myself. How could he tell? I saw no grease spots, no food stains, no old blood. But I also saw no style, no flair. No pride! Shabby!

I had had it all rehearsed but his remark disconcerted me. "I want transfer orders for Combat Engineer Jettero Heller," I blurted out. No gradual briefing, no persuasion.

The Fleet Personnel Officer frowned heavily. "Jettero Heller?" Then he repeated the name to himself. He had buttons and flashing lights all over the place but here he was depending on memory. "Oh, Jet!" He had it now. "The Royal Academy driving champion a few years ago. And wasn't he later a runner-up for interplanetary bullet ball? Yes. Ah, yes, Jettero Heller. Great athlete." All this was very promising for he seemed to have mellowed. I was just opening my mouth to push my request again when he suddenly frowned.

"You'll have to get clearance from the Admiralty of Combat Engineers. That's Course 99. Just outside that door, you turn . . ."

"Please," I said. I had already been to that Admiralty and they had sent me here. Desperately, I dived into my paper case and snapped out the Grand Council order. "This supersedes all clearances. Please transfer him to the Exterior Division." He looked the order all over though I'm sure he had seen hundreds of them before. He peered at me very suspiciously. Then he slapped his palm down on an array of switches, one after the other; he dithered around with his button console, transferring the Grand Council order number into his information network. Then he sat looking at a screen I couldn't see. He frowned heavily. I half expected some marines to suddenly rush in and arrest me.

With total finality he slapped his board shut. "No, can't possibly do it." Lombar's shadow loomed closer. "What's the matter?" I quavered. "Has the Grand Council order been cancelled?"

"No, no, no," he said impatiently. "The order is in the data bank, all authentic – though I must say, you never can tell when you're dealing with the 'drunks'." He dismissed all that and sat there frowning. Finally he tossed the Grand Council order back at me. "It's just impossible, that's all." Bureaucracy! Actually, I sighed with relief. When one is a member of the Apparatus,
real
trouble is always a close companion. But bureaucracy is trouble everybody has. It's a system evolved so that nobody in it is ever responsible for anything. "Why can't it be done?" Like explaining shoes to a child, he said, "In the first place, a combat engineer is in the Fleet. The Exterior Division – and I still think you're from the 'drunks' – is an entirely different division of the government. When you say you want him transferred, you're saying that he would have to resign from the Fleet, make application for commission in the Exterior Division, come up through their ranks . . . it would take years! I'm sure you don't have years. And you have
not
brought his resignation from the Fleet. So it can't be done." For a moment I wondered if Heller had known all this – that he had known it was this complicated and was using a cunning out. Maybe he was cleverer than I had given him credit for. (Looking back on it now, I wish he had been!) But the best authorities on bureaucracy are the bureaucrats. So I myself got clever. "If you had this problem I've got," I said, "how would
you
handle it?" That was a lot better than going back to the Apparatus and finding some blackmail on this fellow – there always is some and if it doesn't exist, one makes it up and "documents" it. But an order illegally obtained by coercion might, itself, be illegal. It was much more clever to do it straight. Novel, but it might work.

He thought for a while, really being helpful. He brightened. "Ah! I could just give you a standard set of orders for a combat engineer." And (bleep) him, he simply pushed some buttons and a couple seconds later a form came out of a slot. He handed it to me. It said: FLEET ORDER M-93872654-MM-93872655-CE REFERENCE: GRAND COUNCIL ORDER 938362537-451BP3 KNOW ALL JETTERO HELLER GRADE X COMBAT ENGINEER SERIAL E555MXP IS HEREBY AND HEREWITH AS OF THIS DATE ORDERED TO INDEPENDENT DUTY ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE TERMINATING ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE.

ENDORSEMENT: SEE REFERENCE.

ISSUED, AUTHENTICATED AND VERIFIED BY THE FLEET PERSONNEL OFFICER Brightly, he said, "That all right?"

"Kind of sweeping," I said.

"Oh," he said, "combat engineers are always ordered out that way: mostly blasting away behind enemy lines, you know; who can tell how long it will take them. That's why they have to be such reliable people. They almost always, unless they're killed, carry through whatever you set them at. Their corps motto, you know, is 'Whatever the odds, to Hells with them, get the job done.' Remarkable people. Will those orders do? They're a standard combat engineer form, you know." I was shaken, both by the idiot simplicity of the orders and by what he had just said. Had Lombar known any of this? I doubted it. What were we biting off? Could we chew it?