The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (24 page)

Having an hour to kill, Graham offered to accompany Varnipaz to the ticket agency where the latter would make a reservation on an airplane for Rio de Janeiro. On the way he asked: “What’s this law course you’re taking?”

“Oh, Prince Ferrian has some advanced ideas about law codes, and I am to make myself familiar with the International Basic Code and its origins—English common law, the Code Napoleon, the Japanese Constitution of 1998, and so on. You know the agreement under which Thoth was admitted to the Interplanetary Council?”

“No,” said Graham.

“Since their legal system was below the minimum standards of the I.K., though they were in other respects a highly civilized people, they had to agree to follow the precedents of the International Basic Code in their courts, with such differences as are made necessary by the fact they are bisexual and so forth. Now, Ferrian thinks that someday we may get a world government on Krishna and apply for admission to the I.K. And when that happens he intends to have the most advanced legal code on Krishna, to give him control of the situation. I shall be amused to see how he fits the very democratic Japanese Constitution into his—I suppose you would say benevolent despotism.”

Graham queried: “What strikes you most about our Earthly law?”

Varnipaz thought. “I suppose the care with which your constitutions safeguard the individual’s rights against the state. Why is that?”

“We had experience with the other kind of state—with unlimited power over the individual—and it didn’t work so well.”

“What happens if an emergency arises that requires one of these states to exceed its powers?”

“Then you amend the constitution. That’s hard to do, though.”

“Why?” asked Varnipaz.

“Because the science of geriatrics has more than doubled our lifespan, so that our average age is much greater than it was a couple of centuries ago.”

“And that makes you conservative?”

“Exactly. What else have you noticed?”

“I notice how carefully the powers of the World Federation are limited. For instance I should think a world government would control migration from one continent to another; but no, that is reserved to the several nations.”

“There’s a reason for that. Several nations—Brazil, the United States, Australia—were afraid of being swamped with immigrants from countries where they’d let their population get out of hand. So the other nations had to agree to get any kind of Federation.”

“And from what I understand, you had to have a Federation to keep you from blowing up your planet.”

“Exactly. Besides, there was a reaction against centralization in government at that time, following the Third World War.”

“I see. But law—
chá!
What are a lot of dusty lawbooks when one’s betrothed is in peril? I wish I had those Churchillians on Krishna!” Varnipaz made thrust-and-parry motions.

Gordon Graham left Varnipaz and walked to the subway entrance. Although the Krishnan had apologized handsomely for starting the fight that afternoon, Graham still did not altogether trust him. Maybe he was a bit too knightly to be true. And was Sklar so smart, or had he let himself be glamorized? While Earthmen loved to boast of their democratic institutions, they were easily beguiled by extra-terrestrial titles.

As the train bore him away, Graham felt as if he had been shut up in one of the Gamanovia Project’s maggots just as the device was about to burrow down into the white-hot substratum of the earth’s crust, with an atomic charge aboard.

IV.

Gordon Graham’s heart beat faster as he walked towards the old house where the Churchillian Society had met the previous evening. Though he hardly expected to find Jeru-Bhetiru still there, he would at least be definitely on her trail.

What on earth was this proposal they kept talking about? What could they possibly want with the Gamanovia Project, which was no secret military undertaking, but an open and above-board endeavor to provide more space for the inhabitants of the overcrowded Earth? He could make no sense of it.

The house, as he remembered, should be in the next block.

In a few minutes he’d know, or at least he’d be in a position to ask questions. Whether they’d answer was another matter. Anybody who deliberately put himself into the power of a group of determined and dangerous men like these, as he was doing, was several kinds of damn fool . . .

He felt a rising resentment against Sklar, the W.F. Constabulary, and all the other law enforcement agencies. Why hadn’t they stopped this mysterious conspiracy before it got that far? What were they good for, letting a bunch of nogoodniks meet openly to hatch some nefarious plot against the welfare of the world and the peace of ordinary citizens like himself? And then instead of dealing with the matter themselves, they roped in an inexperienced amateur like him to do their dirty work for them. They reminded him of these fictional detectives who buzz around busily detecting while the murderer kills off the entire cast of characters, one by one.

Some of his irritation even spread to include Jeru-Bhetiru. If he hadn’t gotten silly over the girl; if he hadn’t let Ivor talk him into getting involved in a situation that was none of his business . . .

But then his annoyance dissolved in a wave of sentimental tenderness. She hadn’t known what she was getting into either, any more than he, so he shouldn’t blame her. She was a stranger on a strange planet, while the villains were men of his own species. He was acting like Adam in
Genesis:
“The woman thou gavest me . . .” He should be ashamed of himself for even thinking such thoughts.

The old yellow clapboard two-story house came into view.

Soon, now, he’d know. And maybe he’d have a chance to rescue her in the best romantic tradition. Or at least he’d get word to Sklar and so be the ultimate instrument of her rescue. That is, if they didn’t shoot him full of holes first. Somehow he couldn’t see Lundquist, if he had determined to kill somebody, doing anything so stupid as to waste time taunting his victim or telling him all his plans, while the victim contrived means to escape. Rather, Lundquist would calmly and sensibly blow the victim’s head off, saving the talk till later.

Now he was walking up the front steps. The house had the dark eyeless look of an empty domicile. A few bats or owls under the eaves would have been in keeping with the general atmosphere.

He rang the bell, hearing the faint jangle from inside. Then he stood, weight on the balls of his feet, leaning a little forward with his head turned to catch the faintest sound, like a heron wading for minnows.

But no sound of approaching footsteps did he hear. After a while he rang again. Still silence.

What am I supposed to do now, he wondered, burgle the joint? Unfortunately the training for the degrees of Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Geophysics did not include instruction in housebreaking.

An automobile purred past on the street behind him; an occasional pedestrian walked by. The darkness deepened. Sounds of city traffic filtered softly into this quiet neighborhood. Kids were yelling somewhere in a nearby block.

A third ring still brought no response. Graham was beginning to have the uneasy feeling that he had mistaken the house—though a look at the number showed that he had not. Or that he had dreamed the last night’s episode. No; the tender spots on his knuckles, face, and elsewhere bore witness to the fights he’d been in.

Hands deep in pockets, he slouched gloomily down the sagging front steps and strolled pensively towards the street. It made you feel even sillier, when you’ve worked up the pitch of courage required to put your head into the lion’s mouth, to learn that the lion has fled.

At the street he looked back towards the house, silhouetted darkly against the evening sky, in which stars had begun to scintillate. What now? Report back to Sklar for more orders, he supposed . . .

“Get in, Graham,” said a low voice behind him in a matter-of-fact tone.

Gordon Graham whirled. Behind him, by the curb, stood an automobile: a long gray Ksenzov. Beside the car stood a man. Graham couldn’t be sure in the dim light, but thought he recognized the small wiry Edwards of the previous night.

“Okay,” he sighed and bent his long form to enter the car.

It was a roomy nine-passenger sedan with a couple of men in the rear seat—no poor man’s automobile. The attachments for helicopter components showed it to be a convertible.

Graham sat between the two men while Edwards occupied one of the jumpseats. Before Graham had a chance to identify the driver, somebody pushed a button and an opaque partition slid up to cut off that part of the car from his vision. A limousine, no less. The windows seemed likewise to be frosted so that he could not see out.

A feeling of acceleration told him that they were under way, though there was no sound. The car, he thought, must have good maintenance because most automobiles, despite all the engineers could do, developed at least a faint turbine whine before they had gone many thousand kilometers. The light from the streetlamps bloomed and faded against the frosted windows. The machine banked inwards a couple of times for turns and decelerated to a stop.

Edwards opened the door and slipped out; Graham caught a glimpse of a parking lot before the door closed again. His two companions sat in pregnant silence on either side of him.

Mechanical sounds from outside suggested that Edwards, and no doubt the driver as well, were attaching a set of rotors and a tailboom. There were sounds of speech, muffled by the windows; Graham caught the words: “Check that nut again . . .”

Then Edwards got back in. The vehicle shuddered slightly and the
swish-swish
of rotors became audible. A slight increase of seat pressure told Graham that they were rising. The lights on the frosted windows died out, leaving the inside of the car in almost complete darkness. Edwards pushed another button that turned on a little red dome light which shed just enough illumination to see a human shape by.

After that there was nothing, except the occasional irregular movement of the car as it met an air current, for at least half an hour . . .

A slight bump told Graham that they had arrived. The rotor swish ceased. Again Edwards got out, and sounds indicated that the rotors and the tailboom were being taken off. Then Edwards got back in, and off they went.

After various turns and twists they stopped again. The door opened into the darkness. Somebody said: “Hurry up, Graham.”

He was hustled out of the car and along a concrete walk to an old house of much the same type as that in the Bronx from which he had set out. There was one marked difference, though: instead of sounds of city traffic, from somewhere nearby came the booming of a surf and the smell of sea air. The house seemed to be one of a rather widely scattered row facing the street on which the Ksenzov stood. Little patches of sand on the concrete crunched under Graham’s feet, while overhead he saw stars but no moon. The lot around the house looked like the unsuccessful result of an attempt to landscape a sand dune area.

The time was a little after twenty-one hundred. That meant they must have brought him to some point on one of the nearby coasts—which coast, he couldn’t yet tell.

The door opened and Graham went in, in the midst of the little group of men. For an instant they clustered in the hall, while somebody switched on a light.

Graham found himself leaning against a small table on which stood a table lamp. The rays of the lamp shone on a brass tray on which lay a small pile of letters. This was an unexpected and unearned break! As the men crowded him past, Graham took a quick look at the topmost letter, the address on which read:

Mr. Joseph Aurelio

1400 South Atlantic Ave.

Bay Head, N.J.

The name “Aurelio” seemed faintly familiar . . .

But Graham was given no time to ponder this question, for they hustled him upstairs and into a bedroom. They pulled down the shade and turned on the lights.

“We gotta frisk you,” said Lundquist.

They ran their hands over him, removing his knife, keys, watch, telephone—in fact all his petty possessions except his handkerchief and comb.

“Now,” said Lundquist, “take it easy and get some sleep. The boss’ll be here in the morning. But no tricks, my friend. We still got your girl, you know. And if you want anything, bang on the door.”

“Okay,” said Graham, and they went away.

When they had closed and locked the door to his room he at once began looking around. The bed was a small affair of steel tubing.

Damn the people who built short beds! His feet would overhang the end, sure as shooting. There was a rickety chair, and a little old bureau bare of contents; that was all. Nothing to pick locks with, even if he had known how to pick locks.

He raised the shade and found that on the inside of the window a grille of stout iron bars ran up and down, about six or seven centimeters apart and bolted to the window frame at top and bottom. A little examination showed that the nuts that held these bars in place were rusted fast to their bolts, and could not be unscrewed without a major operation.

He turned off the light so as to be able to see out. When his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he observed that this one window overlooked the ocean: a calm ocean with mere one-meter combers. To the left a darker mass cut across the beach and extended on up northward, parallel to the shoreline. As it did not look quite like a boardwalk, Graham concluded that it must be the board fence surrounding a nudery.

The thought reminded him of where he had heard the name “Aurelio” before. A billboard on the Jersey Meadows, which he sometimes passed on the train, read:

ROYAL CHEST WIGS

Joseph Aurelio, Inc.

Newark, N.J.

The picture on the board showed three bathers at a resort like this one. Two of them were men to whom nature had not given abundant natural hair on the chest, and the third was an impossibly curvesome girl. Of the two men, one, resplendent in one of Mr. Aurelio’s ROYAL CHEST WIGS, was getting all the attention from the girl, while the other lad, lacking both a natural and an artificial pelt, slunk off in disheartened dismay.