The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (42 page)

He had been doing this for only a moment when there was a sudden ‘click’ and a section of the darkness slid aside. He caught a glimpse of a man silhouetted against a dimly lit background: then the door closed again and the darkness returned. It happened so swiftly that he saw nothing of the room in which he was lying.

An instant later, he was dazzled by the light of a powerful electric torch. The beam flickered across his face, held him steadily for a moment, then dipped to illuminate the whole bed—which was, he now saw, nothing more than a mattress supported on rough planks.

Out of the darkness a soft voice spoke to him in excellent English but with an accent which at first Stormgren could not identify.

‘Ah, Mr Secretary, I’m glad to see you’re awake. I hope you feel all right.’

The angry questions he was about to ask died upon his lips. He stared back into the darkness, then replied calmly, ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

‘Several days. We were promised that there would be no after-effects. I’m glad to see it’s true.’

Partly to gain time, partly to test his own reactions, Stormgren swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was still wearing his night-clothes, but they were badly crumpled and seemed to have gathered considerable dirt. As he moved he felt a slight dizziness—not enough to be troublesome, but sufficient to convince him that he had indeed been drugged.

The oval of light slipped across the room and for the first time Stormgren had an idea of its dimensions. He realised that he was underground, possibly at a great depth. If he had been unconscious for several days he might be anywhere on Earth.

The torch-light illuminated a pile of clothes draped over a packing case.

‘This should be enough for you,’ said the voice from the darkness. ‘Laundry’s rather a problem here, so we grabbed a couple of your suits and half a dozen shirts.’

‘That,’ said Stormgren without humour, ‘was considerate of you.’

‘We’re sorry about the absence of furniture and electric light. This place is convenient in some ways, but it rather lacks amenities.’

‘Convenient for what?’ asked Stormgren as he climbed into a shirt. The feel of the familiar cloth beneath his fingers was strangely reassuring.

‘Just—convenient,’ said the voice. ‘And by the way, since we’re likely to spend a good deal of time together, you’d better call me Joe.’

‘Despite your nationality,’ retorted Stormgren, ‘I think I could pronounce your real name. It won’t be worse than many Finnish ones.’

There was a slight pause and the light flickered for an instant.

‘Well, I should have expected it,’ said Joe resignedly. ‘You must have plenty of practice at this sort of thing.’

‘It’s a useful hobby for a man in my position. I suppose you were born in Poland, and picked up your English in Britain during the War? I should think you were stationed quite a while in Scotland, from your r’s.’

‘That,’ said the other very firmly, ‘is quite enough. As you seem to have finished dressing—thank you.’

The walls around them, though occasionally faced with concrete, were mostly bare rock. It was clear to Stormgren that he was in some disused mine, and he could think of few more effective prisons. Until now the thought that he had been kidnapped had somehow failed to worry him greatly. He felt that, whatever happened, the immense resources of the Supervisor would soon locate and rescue him. Now he was not so sure—there must be a limit even to Karellen’s powers, and if he was indeed buried in some remote continent all the science of the Overlords might be unable to trace him.

There were three other men round the table in the bare but brightly lit room. They looked up with interest and more than a little awe as Stormgren entered. Joe was by far the most outstanding character—not merely in physical bulk. The others were nondescript individuals, probably Europeans too. He would be able to place them when he heard them talk.

‘Well,’ he said evenly, ‘now perhaps you’ll tell me what this is all about, and what you hope to get out of it.’

Joe cleared his throat.

‘I’d like to make one thing clear,’ he said. ‘This has nothing to do with Wainwright. He’ll be as surprised as anyone else.’

Stormgren had rather expected this. It gave him relatively little satisfaction to confirm the existence of an extremist movement inside the Freedom League.

‘As a matter of interest,’ he said, ‘how did you kidnap me?’

He hardly expected a reply, and was taken aback by the other’s readiness—even eagerness—to answer. Only slowly did he guess the reason.

‘It was all rather like one of those old Fritz Lang films,’ said Joe cheerfully. ‘We weren’t sure if Karellen had a watch on you, so we took somewhat elaborate precautions. You were knocked out by gas in the air-conditioner—that was easy. Then we carried you out into the car and drove off—no trouble at all. All this, I might say, wasn’t done by any of our people. We hired—er—professionals for the job. Karellen may get them—in fact, he’s supposed to—but he’ll be no wiser. When it left your house, the car drove into a long road tunnel not a thousand kilometres from New York. It came out again on schedule at the other end, still carrying a drugged man extraordinarily like the Secretary-General. About the same time a large truck loaded with metal cases emerged in the opposite direction and drove to a certain airfield where one of the cases was loaded aboard a freighter. Meanwhile the car that had done the job continued elaborate evasive action in the general direction of Canada. Perhaps Karellen’s caught it by now: I don’t know.

‘As you’ll see—I do hope you appreciate my frankness—our whole plan depended on one thing. We’re pretty sure that Karellen can see and hear everything that happens on the surface of the Earth—but unless he uses magic, not science, he can’t see underneath it. So he won’t know about that transfer in the tunnel. Naturally we’ve taken a risk, but there were also one or two other stages in your removal which I won’t go into now. We may have to use them again one day, and it would be a pity to give them away.’

Joe had related the whole story with such obvious gusto that Stormgren found it difficult to be appropriately furious. Yet he felt very disturbed. The plan was an ingenious one, and it seemed more than likely that whatever watch Karellen kept on him, he would have been tricked by this ruse.

The Pole was watching Stormgren’s reactions closely. He would have to appear confident, whatever his real feelings.

‘You must be a lot of fools,’ said Stormgren scornfully, ‘if you think you can trick the Overlords like this. In any case, what conceivable good would it do?’

Joe offered him a cigarette, which Stormgren refused, then lit one himself.

‘Our motives,’ he began, ‘should be pretty obvious. We’ve found that argument’s useless, so we have to take other measures. Whatever powers he’s got, Karellen won’t find it easy to deal with us. We’re out to fight for our independence. Don’t misunderstand me. There’ll be nothing violent—at first, anyway. But the Overlords have to use human agents, and we can make it mighty uncomfortable for them.’

Starting with me, I suppose, thought Stormgren.

‘What do you intend to do with me?’ asked Stormgren at length. ‘Am I a hostage, or what?’

‘Don’t worry—we’ll look after you. We expect some visitors in a day or two, and until then we’ll entertain you as well as we can.’

He added some words in his own language, and one of the others produced a brand-new pack of cards.

‘We got these especially for you,’ explained Joe. His voice suddenly became grave. ‘I hope you’ve got plenty of cash,’ he said anxiously. ‘After all, we can hardly accept cheques.’

Quite overcome, Stormgren stared blankly at his captors. Then it suddenly seemed to him that all the cares and worries of office had lifted from his shoulders. Whatever happened, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it—and now these fantastic criminals wanted to play poker with him.

Abruptly, he threw back his head and laughed as he had not done for years.

During the next three days Stormgren analysed his captors with some thoroughness. Joe was the only one of any importance, the others were nonentities—the riffraff one would expect any illegal movement to gather round itself.

Joe was an altogether more complex individual, though sometimes he reminded Stormgren of an overgrown baby. Their interminable poker games were punctuated with violent political arguments, but it became obvious to Stormgren that the big Pole had never thought seriously about the cause for which he was fighting. Emotion and extreme conservatism clouded all his judgments. His country’s long struggle for independence had conditioned him so completely that he still lived in the past. He was a picturesque survival, one of those who had no use for an ordered way of life. When his type had vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.

There was little doubt as far as Stormgren was concerned, that Karellen had failed to locate him. He was not surprised when, five or six days after his capture, Joe told him to expect visitors. For some time the little group had shown increasing nervousness, and the prisoner guessed that the leaders of the movement, having seen that the coast was clear, were at last coming to collect him.

They were already waiting, gathered round the rickety table, when Joe waved him politely into the living room. The three thugs had vanished, and even Joe seemed somewhat restrained. Stormgren could see at once that he was now confronted by men of a much higher calibre. There was intellectual force, iron determination, and ruthlessness in these six men. Joe and his like were harmless—here were the real brains behind the organisation.

With a curt nod, Stormgren moved over to the seat and tried to look self-possessed. As he approached, the elderly, thick-set man on the far side of the table leaned forward and stared at him with piercing grey eyes. They made Stormgren so uncomfortable that he spoke first—something he had not intended to do.

‘I suppose you’ve come to discuss terms. What’s my ransom?’

He noticed that in the background someone was taking down his words in a shorthand notebook. It was all very businesslike.

The leader replied in a musical Welsh accent.

‘You could put it that way, Mr Secretary-General. But we’re interested in information, not cash. You know what our motives are. Call us a resistance movement, if you like. We believe that sooner or later Earth will have to fight for its independence. We kidnapped you partly to show Karellen that we mean business and are well organised, but largely because you are the only man who can tell us anything of the Overlords. You’re a reasonable man Mr Stormgren. Give us your co-operation, and you can have your freedom.’

‘Exactly what do you wish to know?’ asked Stormgren cautiously.

‘Do you know who, or what, the Overlords really are?’

Stormgren almost smiled.

‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘I’m quite as anxious as you to discover that.’

‘Then you’ll answer our questions?’

‘I make no promises. But I may.’

There was a slight sigh of relief from Joe and a rustle of anticipation went round the room.

‘We have a general idea,’ continued the other, ‘of the circumstances in which you meet Karellen. Would you go through them carefully, leaving out nothing of importance?’

That was harmless enough, thought Stormgren. He had done it scores of times before, and it would give the appearance of co-operation.

He felt in his pockets and produced a pencil and an old envelope. Sketching rapidly while he conversed, he began:

‘You know, of course, that a small flying machine, with no obvious means of propulsion, calls for me at regular intervals and takes me up to Karellen’s ship. There is only one small room in that machine, and it’s quite bare apart from a couch and table. The layout is something like this.’ As Stormgren talked, it seemed to him that his mind was operating on two levels simultaneously. On the one hand he was trying to defy the men who had captured him, yet on the other he was hoping that they might help him to unravel Karellen’s secret. He did not feel that he was betraying the Supervisor, for there was nothing here that he had not told many times before. Moreover, the thought that these men could harm Karellen in any way was fantastic.

The Welshman conducted most of the interrogation. It was fascinating to watch that agile mind trying one opening after another, testing and rejecting all the theories that Stormgren himself had abandoned long ago. Presently he leaned back with a sigh and the shorthand writer laid down his stylus.

‘We’re getting nowhere, ‘he said resignedly. ‘We want more facts, and that means action—not argument.’ The piercing eyes stared thoughtfully at Stormgren. For a moment he tapped nervously on the table—the first sign of uncertainty that Stormgren had noticed. Then he continued.

‘I’m a little surprised, Mr Secretary, that you’ve never made an effort to learn more about the Overlords.’

‘What do you suggest?’ asked Stormgren coldly. ‘I’ve told you that there’s only one way out of the room in which I’ve had my talks with Karellen—and that leads straight to the airlock.’

‘It might be possible, ‘mused the other, ‘to devise instruments which could teach us something. I’m no scientist, but we can look into the matter. If we give you your freedom, would you be willing to assist with such a plan?’

‘Once and for all,’ said Stormgren angrily, ‘let me make my position perfectly clear. Karellen is working for a united world, and I’ll do nothing to help his enemies. What his ultimate plans may be, I don’t know, but I believe that they are good. You may annoy him, you may even delay the achievement of his aims, but it will make no difference in the end. You may be sincere in believing as you do: I can understand your fear that the traditions and cultures of little countries will be overwhelmed when the World State arrives. But you are wrong: it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. No one can save it now, and no one should try.’

There was no reply: the man opposite neither moved nor spoke. He sat with lips half open, his eyes now lifeless and blind. Around him the others were equally motionless, frozen in strained, unnatural attitudes. With a little gasp of pure horror, Stormgren rose to his feet and backed away toward the door. As he did so the silence was suddenly broken.