Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (19 page)

“It has been stated authoritatively that the Spakum fleets have been destroyed.”

“Yar, they were still saying so when that bomb fell on Shugruma,” Mowry reminded him.

“True, true—I felt it land. In my own house two windows collapsed and a bottle of
zith
jumped off the table.”

By mid-afternoon thirty people had been fed the tale of the Shugruma and Gooma disasters, plus allegedly first-hand warnings of bacteriological warfare and worse horrors to come. They could no more keep it to themselves than a man can keep a tornado to himself. By early evening a thousand would have the depressing news. At midnight ten thousand would be passing it around. In the morning a hundred thousand—and so on until the whole city was discussing it.

At the arranged time he called Skriva. “What luck?”

“I’ve got the form. Have you got the money?”

“Yar.”

“It’s to be paid before tomorrow. Shall we meet same place as last time?” “No,” said Mowry. “It’s not wise to create a habit. Let’s make it someplace else.”

“Where?”

“There’s a certain bridge where you collected once before. How about the fifth marker past it going south?”

“That’s as good as anywhere. Can you go there at once?”

“I’ve got to pick up my car. It’ll take a little time. You be there at the seven-time hour.”

He reached the marker on time, found Skriva already waiting. Handing over the money, he took the requisition form and examined it carefully. One good look told him that the thing was well-nigh impossible for him to copy. It was an ornate document as lavishly engraved as a banknote of high denomination They could cope with it on Terra but it was beyond his ability to duplicate even with the help of various instruments of forgery lying in the cave.

The form was a used one dated three weeks ago and obviously had been purloined from the jail’s filing system. It called for the release to the Kaitempi of one prisoner named Mabin Gurd but had enough blank spaces for ten names. The date, the prisoner’s name and number had been typed. The authorizing signature was in ink.

“Now we’ve got it,” prompted Skriva, “what are we going to do with it?”

“We can’t imitate it,” Mowry informed him. “The job is too tough and will take too long.”

“You mean it’s no use to us?” He registered angry disappointment.

“I wouldn’t say that."

“Well, what do you say? Am I to give this stinker his twenty thousand or do I cram the form down his gullet?”

“You can pay him." Mowry studied the form again. “I think that if I work on it tonight I can erase the date, name and number. The signature can be left intact.” “That’s risky. It’s easy to spot erasures.”

“Not the way I do them. I know how to gloss the surface afterward. The really difficult task will be that of restoring the broken lines of engraving.” He pondered a moment, went on, “But that may not be necessary. There’s a good chance the new typing will fill in the blanks. It’s hardly likely that they’ll put the form under a microscope.”

“If they were that suspicious they’d grab us first,” Skriva pointed out.

“I need a typewriter. I’ll have to buy one in the morning.”

“I can get you a typewriter for tonight,” offered Skriva.

“You can? How soon?”

“By the eight-time hour.”

“Is it in good condition?”

“Yar, it’s practically new.”

Mowry eyed him and said, “I suppose it’s no business of mine but I can’t help wondering what use a typewriter is to
you. ”

“I can sell it. I sell all sorts of things.”

“Things you just happened to find lying in your hands?”

“That’s right,” agreed Skriva, unabashed.

“Oh well, who am I to quibble? You get it. Meet me here at eight.”

Skriva pushed off. When he’d gone from sight Mowry followed into the city. He had a feed, drove back to the marker. Soon afterward Skriva reappeared, gave him the typewriter.

Mowry said, “I want Gurd’s full name and those of his two companions. Somehow or other you’ll have to discover their prison numbers too. Can you do that?” “I’ve got them already.” Taking a slip of paper from his pocket, Skriva read them out while the other made a note of them.

“Did you also learn at what times the Kaitempi make their calls to collect?” “Yar. Always between the three- and four-time hours. Never earlier, rarely later.”

“Can you find out about noon tomorrow whether Gurd and the others are still in the jail? We’ve got to know that—we’ll get ourselves in a fix if we arrive and demand prisoners who were taken away this afternoon.”

“I can check on it tomorrow,” Skriva assured. Then his face tautened. “Are you planning to get them away
tomorrow?”

“We’ve got to do it sometime or not at all. The longer we leave it the bigger the risk of the Kaitempi beating us to the draw. What’s wrong with tomorrow,
hi?”

“Nothing except that I wasn’t counting on it being so soon.”

“Why?”

“I thought it’d take longer to work things out.”

“There’s little to work out,” declared Mowry. “We’ve swiped a requisition form. We alter it and use it to demand release of three prisoners. Either we get away with it or we don’t. If we do, well and good. If we don’t, we shoot first and run fast.”

“You make it sound too easy,” Skriva objected. “All we’ve got is this form. It isn’t enough—”

“It won’t be enough, I can tell you that now. Chances are ten to one they’ll expect familiar faces and be surprised by strange ones. We’ll have to compensate for that somehow.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll cope. Can you dig up a couple more helpers? All they need to do is sit in the cars, keep their traps shut and look tough. I’ll pay them five thousand apiece just for that.”

“Five thousand each? I could recruit a regiment for that money. Yar, I can find two. But I don’t know how good they’d be in a fight.”

“Doesn’t matter so long as they can look like plug-uglies. By that I don’t mean the Cafe Susun kind of roughneck, see? They’ve got to resemble Kaitempi agents.” He gave the other an imperative nudge. “The same applies to you. When it’s time to start the job I want to see all three of you clean and tidy, with well-pressed suits and neatly knotted neck-scarves. I want to see you looking as if about to attend a wedding. If you let me down in that respect the deal is off so far as I’m concerned. You can count me out and go pull the stunt on your own. I don’t intend to try to kid some hard-faced, gimlet-eyed warden with the aid of three scruffy-looking bums.”

“Maybe you’d like us decked out in fashionable jewelry,” suggested Skriva sarcastically.

“A diamond on the hand is better than a smear of dirt,” Mowry retorted. “I’d rather you overdid the dolling-up than mooched along like hoboes. You’d get away with a splurge because some of these agents are flashy types.” He waited for comment but the other said nothing, so he continued, “What’s more, these two helpers had better be characters you can trust not to talk afterward—else they may take my five thousand and then get another five thousand from the Kaitempi for betraying you.”

Skriva was on firm ground here. He gave an ugly grin and promised, “One thing I can guarantee is that neither of them will say a word.”

This assurance and the way it was made bore a sinister meaning but Mowry let it pass and said, “Lastly, we'll need a couple of dynos. We can’t use our own unless we change the plates. Any ideas on that?”

“Pinching a pair of dynos is as easy as taking a mug of
zith.
The trouble is keeping them for any length of time. The longer we use them the bigger the chance of being picked up by some lousy patrol with nothing better to do.”

“We'll have to cut the use of them to the minimum,” Mowry told him. “Take them as late as you can. We’ll park our own cars on that lot the other side of the Asako Bridge. When we leave the jail we’ll beat it straight there and switch over to them.”

“Yar, that is best,” Skriva agreed.

“All right. I’ll be waiting outside the east gate of the municipal park at the two-time hour tomorrow. You come along with two cars and two helpers and pick me up.”

At that point Skriva became strangely restless and showed suspicion. He fidgeted around, opened his mouth, shut it.

Watching him curiously, Mowry invited, “Well, what’s the matter? You want to call the whole thing off?”

Skriva mustered his thoughts and burst out with, “Look, Gurd means nothing to you. The others mean even less. But you’re paying good money and taking a big risk to get them out of the clink. It doesn’t make sense.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense. This war doesn’t make sense—but we’re in it up to the neck.”

“Curses on the war. That is nothing to do with the matter.”

“It has everything to do with the matter,” Mowry contradicted. “I don’t like it. A lot of people don’t like it. If we kick the government in the rumps often enough and hard enough, they won’t like it either.”

“Oh, so that’s what you’re up to?” Skriva stared at him in frank surprise, thoughts of purely political reasons never having entered his mind. “You’re chivvying the authorities?”

“Any objections?”

“I couldn’t care less,” informed Skriva, and added virtuously, “Politics is a dirty game. Anyone who plays around in it is crazy. All it gets him in the end is a free burial.”

“It’ll be my burial, not yours.”

“Yar, that’s why I don’t care.” Obviously relieved at having got to the bottom of the other’s motives, Skriva finished, “Meet you at the park tomorrow.”

“On time. If you’re late I won’t be there.”

As before, he waited until the other had gone from sight before driving to town. It was a good thing, he thought, that Skriva had a criminal mentality. The fellow just wasn’t interested in politics, ethics, patriotism or anything similar except insofar as it provided opportunity to snatch easy money. It was highly probable that he viewed his recent activities as profitably illegal but not as treacherous. It simply wouldn’t occur to him that there are criminals and there are traitors.

Any one of Skriva’s bunch would surrender his own mother to the Kaitempi, not as a duty to the nation but solely for five thousand guilders. Similarly, they’d hand Mowry over and pocket the cash with a hearty laugh. All that prevented them from selling him body and soul was the fact they’d freely admitted, namely, that one does not flood one’s goldmine.

Providing the cars and helpers could be obtained Skriva would be there on time tomorrow. He felt sure of that.

Exactly at the two-time hour a big, black dyno paused at the east gate, picked up Mowry and whined onward. Another dyno, older and slightly battered, followed a short distance behind.

Sitting four-square at the wheel of the first car, Skriva looked neater and more respectable than he had done for years. He exuded a faint smell of scented lotion and seemed self-conscious about it. With his gaze fixed firmly ahead, he jerked a manicured thumb over his shoulder to indicate a similarly washed and scented character lounging beetle-browed in the back seat.

“Meet Lithar. He’s the sharpest
wert
on Jaimec.”

Mowry twisted his head round and gave a polite nod. Lithar rewarded him with a blank stare. Returning attention to the windshield, Mowry wondered what on earth a
wert
might be. He’d never heard the word before and dared not ask its meaning. It might be more than an item of local jargon, perhaps a slang word added to the Sirian language during the years he had been away. It wouldn’t be wise to admit ignorance of it.

“The fellow in the other car is Brank,” informed Skriva. “He’s a red-hot
wert
too. Lithar’s right-hand man. That so, Lithar?”

The sharpest
wert
on Jaimec responded with a grunt. To give him his due, he fitted the part of an agent of the typically surly type. In that respect Skriva had chosen well.

Threading their way through a series of side streets they reached a main road, found themselves held up by a long, noisy convoy of half-tracked vehicles crammed with troops. Perforce they stopped and waited. The convoy rolled on and on like a never-ending stream. Skriva began to curse under his breath.

“They’re gaping around like newcomers,” observed Mowry, watching the passing soldiery. “Must have just arrived from somewhere.”

“Yar, from Diracta,” Skriva told him. “Six shiploads landed this morning. There’s a story going the rounds that ten set out but only six got here.”

“That so? It doesn’t look so good if they’re rushing additional forces to Jaimec despite heavy losses en route.”

“Nothing looks good except a stack of guilders twice my height,” opined Skriva. He scowled at the rumbling half-tracks. “If they delay us long enough we’ll still be here when a couple of boobs start bawling about their missing cars. The cops will find us just waiting to be grabbed.”

“So what?” said Mowry. “Your conscience is clear, isn’t it?”

Skriva answered that with a look of disgust. At last the procession of military vehicles came to an end. The car jolted forward as he rushed it impatiently into the road and built up speed.

“Take it easy,” Mowry advised. “We don’t want to be nailed for ignoring some petty regulation.”

At a point a short distance from the jail Skriva pulled in to the curb and parked. The other dyno stopped close behind. He turned toward Mowry.

“Before we go any farther let’s have a look at that form.”

Extracting it from a pocket, Mowry gave it to him. He pored over it, seemed satisfied, handed it to Lithar.

“Looks all right to me. What d’you think?”

Lithar eyed it impassively, gave it back. “It’s good enough or it isn’t. You’ll find out pretty soon.”

Sensing something sinister in this remark, Skriva became afflicted with new doubts. He said to Mowry, “The idea is that a couple of us walk in, present this form and wait for them to fetch us the prisoners,
hi?”

“Correct.”

“What if this form isn’t enough and they ask for proof of our identities?”

“I can prove mine.”

“Yar? What sort of proof?”

“Who cares so long as it convinces them?” Mowry evaded. “As for you, fix this inside your jacket and flash it if necessary.” He gave the other Sagramatholou’s badge.