The Companions (21 page)

And four of them were going with me to Moss.

While we were on the first leg of our trip to Moss, Gainor Brandt received a visitor in his office at Government Center, a slinking wretch whose appointment had been made through someone important in the legislature. He crouched across from Gainor, weasel snout twitching, skinny weasel claws grasping at air, hairy mouth uttering stupidities.

“The government requires an inspection of all animal-breeding facilities to assure they have been closed, as required by law. We do not understand why there should be the kind of foot-dragging that we at Federal Species Control have encountered.” The weasel sat back, stroking his furry upper lip and peering through his implanted lenses like a stoat grooming itself after one blood meal while keeping both eyes open for another.

Gainor smiled sweetly. “Where's the foot-dragging? As I've said, Citizen Gabbern, you're in the wrong place. I have no authority over the preservation sites, which are privately owned and managed. Here, in your presence not ten minutes ago, I linked the Alred canine preservation center and was told you are quite welcome to see it at your convenience. In pursuance of the new edict, it is quite empty.”

“Empty?” the stoat actually squeaked, half-rising from his chair.

Gainor cocked his head, riffled the papers in front of him, cautioned himself as to manner and tone, managing to say in
a calm, even voice, “The animals and trainers and support staff are gone. The center has reverted to the owner of it, in its entirety. In time it may be refurnished for some other private use, but I have no idea for what.”

The stoat, Gabbern, who was indeed publicly associated with Federal Species Control, but more secretly and pertinently with IGI-HFO, glowered. “Inspection will at least tell us if this story is true!”

Gainor growled ominously, “It will indeed, so why don't you go and inspect it instead of sitting here insulting me? I can link them now and tell them you're on the way!”

“Will they have the locations of the animals which have been, as you say,
disposed of
?” the creature snarled, thrusting himself back in his chair, defensive and offensive at once.

“I doubt it. Can you give me the location of any relative of yours who has been recycled? The animals are gone. Done. Departed. Mr. Gabbern, why are you still here? Why aren't you on your way to the Alreds' place?”

“Because I am advised you have influence with these people!” snapped the stoat.

“You were advised incorrectly. The only people I can influence are those who work for me. The people at the sanctuary do not work for me. You seem unwilling either to take my word for it or to verify it for yourself, and I am at a loss how to help you.”

“You could help me by forcing these damned animal lovers to stop keeping necessary space away from people and crops,” the stoat snarled.

“What crops would you grow in the Alred mansion now the animals aren't there?” inquired the general. “Or do you wish to house people in the Alred mansion?”

“Too damned much room going to waste!”

“You wish to revoke the exempted estates laws? Is that a sensible ambition for someone in your position? Would you care to have that desire made public?”

Gabbern started to say yes, then no, then decided on saying nothing. Too many of those with exempted estates were
contributors to the campaigns of powerful men. In some cases, those contributions outweighed the contributions from planets profiting from the Law of Return. The stoat muttered. “The numbers of humans requesting entrance to the home world continues to mount. We have to find space for them!”

“Do we?” the general asked. “Who says so?”

“Humanity says so,” squeaked the stoat.

“Humanity has said so since time immemorial, but I would argue with the statement,” mused the general. “Instead of saying, ‘We have to make room,' I would say, ‘We have to limit our numbers.' And I would say so because it is manifestly impossible for one planet to support the total number of people arising naturally from a fecund race occupying a hundred worlds on which they have killed off all their natural enemies.” He paused, briefly, considering whether what he had said was honestly true, deciding to leave the Orskimi-Derac threat unmentioned. “Earth cannot support the great numbers of people who are sent here by the Law of Return. So long as we make it possible for the outer worlds to shift their burden onto us, they will continue to do so.”

“We can support more of them once these animals are gone!”

“You have disposed of all the four-legged or winged creatures left on Earth, but you won't be able to house and feed a dozen returnees with the space.”

“You don't know that!”

“I do know that. It's my business to know that. I have testified to that fact before the Earth Congress, suggesting they should change the law.” Which he knew they wouldn't. Even though legislators received enormous bribes from outlying worlds, it was less expensive for them than taking care of their excess populations.

Gainor continued. “Only when this constant immigration stops will people have room and water and enough air to breathe without using rebreathers.” He went purposefully to
ward the door, flinging it wide. “I bid you good-bye, Citizen Gabbern. Go inspect the sanctuary for yourself. I am sure you will find it quite, quite empty.”

Which he himself had seen it to be, early that morning. He almost wept, as he told me later, thinking about it. Empty. Labs empty. Trainers' apartments empty. Dog runs empty. Even Jarl Alred's pet poodle had been taken far, far away.

 

At Alred's, the stoat was escorted around the 259th floor by a capable young assistant who showed him the kennels, the research center, the library, and the circle of residential suites around the atrium, now open to the sky, its vast sunscreen folded into a bundle at its center.

“These were the apartments of the trainers,” the assistant said, indicating the doors.

“I'll see inside,” Gabbern insisted.

“Of course. The doors are unlocked. They're all pretty much alike, but go through all of them if you like.” The assistant seated himself on a garden bench and focused his attention on the reflecting pool, with its growth of lily pads. Listening intently, the assistant heard the Species Control officer bang his way from apartment to apartment. All of them were empty, stripped, and clean except one, which showed signs of recent occupancy. Gabbern spent a longer time in there before coming out to ask why the apartment seemed lived in.

“I think an acquaintance of Mr. Alred needed a place to sleep for a few nights,” the assistant said. “The whole place belongs to the Alreds. They may use it as they like, so long as no animals are housed here.” He led the way to the laboratories, which Gabbern damned with a cursory look, and “I can't see why they needed laboratories at all!”

“Nutrition, I think. Learning what food is essential and which is nonessential…”

“You need a DNA sequencer for that?”

“Sequencers are used for species preservation, but the only thing I ever heard about that had to do with removing
deleterious genes. You'd have to ask someone associated with the program for details.”

“Where would I find such a person?”

“You'd have to ask Mrs. Alred.”

“And where is she?”

“Off planet for a time. Visiting family.”

The stoat sulked. “We could house twenty people around this space.”

He received a lofty look and a well-rehearsed answer. “If it weren't an exempted estate, you could, yes. However, the committee that oversees your work is indebted to the Alreds. I don't think they'd want to see that support go to their opponents…”

The stoat, still manifesting annoyance, was shown to the nearest pod lobby. That was, however, not quite the end of that. Though he should have reported promptly to the office of Species Control, he went instead to an office in the upper floor of a large ex-urban storage warehouse near the bay.

“Gabbern to see Evolun Moore,” he announced to one of the many guards.

“Business?”

“He knows. Just tell him I'm here,” the stoat squeaked.

The guard went off down a long hall, past several other guards and watchers, returning after some time to gesture at a chair, where Gabbern was told to wait.

Fuming, he waited. In due course, one of the guards came to fetch him and escort him down the long hallway through several anterooms decked with IGI-HFO banners, and into the windowless office of the great man himself, where Gabbern made his report, as briefly as was possible.

“It's really empty?” Moore asked doubtfully.

“Of persons and animals, yes, Great Leader.” The stoat leaned forward, arms on Moore's desk, dropping his voice, “It is possible, however, that it was temporarily vacated, just for this inspection. They got word we were coming, they shipped everything out temporarily.”

“Who told them we were coming?”

“It could have been assumed, from what's been happening.”

“And you think Brandt knew nothing about it?”

“He…may have known nothing, yes. He was irritated by my questions, but he wasn't…fearful, as he might have been if he was worried about the animals.”

“You planted the device?”

“Great Leader, planting the device was why we scheduled the visit!”

“Is it likely to be found?”

“No. It's in a ventilation duct leading to one of the trainer's apartments, which are at the center of the floor, as we planned. One of the apartments had been used recently, and I could stand on the bed without leaving any sign I'd done so. There'd be no reason to look for it there.”

“Can it be traced?”

“No. It's from an XT source. It came pressure wrapped, I took the wrapper away with me, it's already been burned. And once it goes off, of course, there'll be nothing left to trace.”

“You have the detonator the supplier gave you? The transmitter thingy?”

Gabbern removed the case from his pocket, opened it to show the device inside. “Here it is. Be careful with it. The Alred Tower is over a mile away, so you're probably safe here from flying glass, but I'd stay away from the windows when you use it, just in case. When will you…?”

Moore said in a pontifical voice, “It will be used to announce our new campaign against the exempt estates. It will make our point very clear, and the troops will applaud the action. I will personally choose the time, just after an election, to insulate our legislative support from the consequences.”

Gabbern nodded, but Moore did not notice. He was lost in the intricacies of his plots. He could neither ruin the opportunity with too much haste nor delay unnecessarily. This time no animals would be tortured. The public had not responded well to that tactic. This time, he would wait until a
propitious moment, a time when something dramatic was needed, then he would blow the Alred Tower to hell.

“We were made in the image of God,” he reminded his inner circle of friends and supporters when he informed them about the device. “We and only we. No other race in the universe is made in that image. It is our destiny to inhabit the universe, singly, wholly. We cannot move against the Tharst, the Quondan, the Derac, the Orskimi until we have cleansed our own planet. Then we who were made in God's image will move out into the star-lanes, colonizing as we go, until the entire universe is filled with that image. Such is our destiny!”

It was great stuff, and its familiarity made it no less moving. Every person assembled in the room felt he or she had been personally selected by God to achieve great things. It made veins swell and hearts thunder to hear it, resulting in an immediate cascade of volunteers willing to place other such devices here and there through the urbs and the exempt estates. Moore signed them up for later use, placing his hands upon their heads in approbation. Hatred had always been an easy sell, and the crowding among down-dwellers and even ordinary citizens made them willing to hate those blamed for their lot.

The uniform History of Earth used in school curricula devoted a short chapter to racial bigotry on Earth and to the fact it had been ended by contact with other worlds. In the face of alligator-like Derac, orb-floating Tharstians, tentacled Ocpurats, six-legged, six-armed Orskimi, faceless Quondans, and the predatory Grebel and Xan,
all
humans were obviously In God's Image. All races with nonhumanoid forms had become the enemy, taking the place of the ethnic, religious, or linguistic scapegoats of ancient times.

The textbooks actually noted that Earthers, who could have benefited from a time spent rejoicing in their common humanity, had merely transferred their bigotry outward, as the Quondan had done during that epoch known to interstellar historians as “The Quondan Absurdities.”

 

While Gabbern reported to his adored leader, the young man who had shown him around the sanctuary conducted a thorough search of all areas the stoat had walked through during his visit. Since the stoat had stayed longest in the slightly messy room, as the profilers had suggested he would do, that room was gone over first. An extremely sophisticated and powerful explosive device was removed from the ventilating duct. Further search found various tiny listening devices, but no other dangerous devices, so reported the searcher to Gainor Brandt.

“Good,” said Brandt. “Where is the thing?”

“With our people, in a containment unit, in case Moore gets itchy-fingered.”

“Can they trace its provenance?”

“It's definitely off-planet. They said they'd let us know.”

“Gabbern was followed, of course?”

“Before he went back to Species Control, he went directly to IGI-HFO headquarters.”

“Presumably Moore has the transmitter needed to set this thing off?”

“Gabbern had it when he went in, he didn't have it when he came out, so it's very likely.”