"Allen, Roger Macbride - Allies And Aliens 1 - Torch Of Honor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)
"Can you prove your claims? You will work with Guardians to do so?" he demanded.
"Yes. Just give me a place to work! And give me the credit."
"Of course we will." He stared at me thoughtfully. Cooperation is something a tyrant rarely sees. "If you are not lying. I will send some of our technicians. You will describe this transmitter, and the principles involved. If you are attempting to fool them, or trick us, you will be killed very slowly and painfully. If you are telling the truth, and if you can build this device, there will be credit and benefit enough for all. The Guardian is not ungenerous to those who contribute things of value." He made ready to leave. "But there is one more thing. It is possible you arrived here ten months ago. I will waste no time interrogating you now. If the record lies, you will have had a hand in it and will pay the penalty. We shall examine you most carefully now, your present and your past. If we find you are lying, you will die, transmitter or no." And he left, moving quickly for a man his size, escorted by his two goons.
I slumped down on the couch in a pool of sweat. The con game was on.
CHAPTER SIX
"Hey, be careful with that!" The grey-suited private had grabbed up a delicate metering device as if it were a hand grenade. Jefferson Darrow, Ph.D., was moving, with a little help from his friends. I had insisted that, without actual tests, there was no way I could safely compensate for the Coriolis effect on Vapaus. Of course, the spinning of New Finland on its axis created the same effect, but not as strongly. My keepers believed me, and so the test device would be built on the planet's surface. It had been ten weeks of conning the Guardians' technicians without actually giving anything away. They were quite willing to believe the transmitter would work. I was lucky in that the people I was fooling were good engineers, but with even less grounding in theory than I had. They were curious to know how the matter transmitter would work, and weren't much worried over why it should work.
The con had been helped by the fact that the public had been aware for decades about the possibility of a matter transmitter. There had been a lot of loose talk of splitting of the atom in the 1930's, long before it happened. Once people had heard of the idea, they were prepared to believe in it. My ground had been prepared in the same way. With that support, my explanations and proofs could be pretty vague, to say nothing of misleading. While I was out to build a working receiver to a matter transmitter, I certainly didn't want the Guardians to know how it was done. By the time my theories got to trained people on the invader's home planet who could spot the fallacies, it would be too late, if our side was lucky.
It had been a long ten weeks of deception. The computer forgers of Vapaus were true artists, and I sometimes thought they were going to give the banks a real headache if and when this was over. In any event, by the time Colonel Bradhurst began his inquiries, my past was put together with near perfection. Not absolute perfection, for that would have been suspect. But the holes in the information were artfully made and easy to explain. The obscenely fat Colonel Bradhurst was by profession and inclination a viciously suspicious man, and he gave me a few bad afternoons. As a hungry dog will chew on a bone rather than search for fresh meat, so was Bradhurst willing to threaten me over slightly questionable acts. While I was on Vapaus, he never went after big game.
It had been ten weeks of learning, and of growing revulsion. In bits and pieces, from tight-lipped and embittered Finns, from boisterous and sneering soldiers, I learned the story of New Finland's defeat.
It had not been as easy for the victors as they had expected. The plan had been for a small fleet of ships to enter the system, bomb a few minor towns, laser targets in the larger ones, and have the craven civilians capitulate without further resistance. The ships had come. The bombs were dropped on three towns, and the lasers had burned a dozen buildings and plazas in Mannerheim and New Helsinki down to slag.
The surrender demand had been made.
The invaders had expected an unarmed world. But the Finnish memory is long, and the Finns recalled the long, long centuries with always an enemy at the border, and foreign soldiers always near. They had fought the Russians, the Germans, the Swedes, the Danes, and even, in the dim past of the 13th and 14th century and beyond-each other. Their past did not let them trust to light years of vacuum as a sufficient defense.
The Finns waited until the occupation troops had begun to arrive. Few of the first wave survived long enough to land, and few who did land lived long on the planet's surface. But the Guardians were too great in strength; they had kept coming and coming. They took the planet's surface.
However, in space, the Guardian ships found themselves being cut to pieces. The Finns had been far better prepared than their invaders had ever dreamed. Finally, the Guardians resorted to terror tactics: nuclear weapons were exploded in space a few kilometers away from Vapaus, and the satellite, with its high civilian population, was threatened with destruction. The satellite had controlled the orbital battle, and when it was forced to surrender, the planet's last hope was gone. The Guards almost succeeded in preventing word from reaching the League, as well. Once the Guardians arrived, no manned ship escaped the New Finnish system-and only one drone made it out.
But what should have taken two or three days to accomplish had taken 20 days, and even as I fussed over the transmitter, Finn and Guardian continued to trade acts of sabotage and reprisal. "Light casualities" had grown into slaughter on both sides-on the ground, in the air, and in space.
But the Finns had gained time. Vapaus became a mass of hidey-holes, secret tunnels, disguised arms factories. Taps were placed on computers and communication, reports and data banks were erased or falsified. An explosion was faked on The Rock, and a convincing show made the Guardians think it was reduced to a radioactive deathtrap. They steered well clear of it, and the shipyards there went on working, slowly, very quietly, to make the ships needed to fight, someday.
Even in defeat, many Finns had refused to surrender.
The Guardians believed that fully a third of Vapaus's population had died in the riots, carnage, and reprisals that followed the garrison's arrival. But the confusion was used to full advantage by the defenders. More than half the apparent casualties had gone underground, their deaths faked. They were out of sight, working on a hundred projects toward the day when they would fight back.
Not all the deaths were faked. From my windows I could see a black scar on the land halfway up the curve of the inside-out world. Overhearing a conversation at the local store, I learned that the entire family, save one son, of the satellite's administrator-Dr. Tempkin-had been wiped out in a single bomb blast. The corpses of the wife and the children were identifiable, but Tempkin's corpse was nothing but a charred cinder.
I wondered if I would have had the nerve, the courage needed, to come home to a blazing ruin, see my family murdered, and yet find in myself the cunning and gall to take advantage of the situation and vanish. Could I have worked a grisly piece of subterfuge, found a dead man and thrown him into the flames to take my place? Tempkin had seemed such a gentle man. What nightmares did he have?
The invaders had not permitted "Tempkin" and his family to be cremated, and guards stood over the ruins of their home night and day. The stench that came from there was the perfume of barbarism.
It had been ten weeks completely in the dark. There was one day I noted in my head; the day when, if all our plans were to have any hope, Joslyn would have flown one of the auxiliary ships-Stars, probably, because it used the least fuel-and positioned the capture device at the right point and velocity in space. If she had succeeded in receiving the troops' signal and if she could get the capture unit to the Finns, somehow, we still might win through.
The Finns were good at what they did. Maybe cloak-and-dagger was natural to their temperament. I don't know. But they were a bit over-mysterious for my tastes.
Long before I had taken on my part as Darrow (whom I didn't like much) Tempkin's staff had decided on an exact moment for the troops to be deployed, and for a general uprising to occur at the same moment. Not only would the 5,000 League troops arrive, but a planet and satellite's worth of hell would break loose, a vast underground ambush. The Finns would concentrate on crippling the enemy's transport. An army that can't move can't fight. It was vital that I stick to the agreed-upon timetable, which was what chose the moment I announced I was ready for the "experiment."
And so the thumb-fingered privates were loading my equipment, some of it vital, some of it window dressing. Finally everything was packed and I rode a passenger lift to the docking port of my transportation: a Finnish ballistic shuttle rocket painted over in the Guardian colors: black and red.
As I entered it, I saw that the civilian passenger fittings had been pulled out and military-style interchangeable pallet clamps put in. It was a sloppy, hurried job. Sharp projections, poor welds, scratched paint, and stripped bolts were much in evidence. That was the way the Guardians always worked. They were cut-and-cover engineers, shoddy workmen. Everywhere I spotted hints of overextension, a hollowness behind the conqueror's shining facade. Privates wore uniforms made of half a dozen materials, none of them very durable. A patched pair of pants was common on anyone below the rank of sergeant. The Guardians preferred the confiscated weapons of the Finns to their own. Few officers wore anything but a Finnish pistol. The guards on my house had complained that their issue lasers couldn't hold a charge more than a week.
Guardian repairs to war damage were rough and uneven. Rebuilt walls were crumbly, and the work on one bridge over the Central Sea had to be done over twice. But they had won.
So far.
Even as I boarded the shuttle, which bore a strong family resemblance to Stars, Stripes, and Uncle Sam, I didn't have a precise idea where I was going. The problem had been foreseen, and the Finns had assured me that I could expect-or at least hope for-help at any of the bases I might arrive at.
I rode down under extremely strong guard, and any service I was willing to fly with would have grounded that ship's pilot without hesitation. We lived through the landing, but a number of my guards were too busy making a mess of the bulkheads to bother about me.
I came out of the airlock to find a dozen troops pointing laser rifles at my head. There were times it was easy to play the part of a coward like Darrow, and that was one of them. I froze, utterly shocked. They had found me out, and for some reason had waited until I was on New Finland to arrest me.
But then I saw a figure in a lieutenant's uniform striding calmly toward me, a smile on his face. He came up the passenger ramp with his hand outstretched. I numbly stuck out my own and he took it. "Dr. Darrow. Welcome to New Finland. I am Lieutenant Grimes. I am to escort you to Base Demeter." He shook my hand warmly. "Will you come this way?" He led me down the ramp and toward a jeep that had just pulled up. The laser rifles stayed trained on my head.
"Is it safe. to.. . ?" I started to ask, my voice trailing off.
"Oh, the honor guard? Quite safe. They won't fire without commands. Orders, you see. A great many of these Finns tried to escape as they came out of the hatch. It was felt a show of force was needed. But you've nothing to worry about, I'm sure. Come now, this way."
He led me to the jeep and we drove off.
We rode away from the landing pad and out the base gates, headed north. We traveled for about four hours. Finally, we came to the gates of Base Demeter. The gates were hastily opened, and we headed down a wide, unpaved road that ran the length of the central camp. We took the second right down a narrow road that doubled back slightly, then made two more right turns, into a single-lane road that ended in a circular court about 30 meters in diameter.
The court was ringed with massive, hangarlike buildings painted gun-metal grey with camouflage-green roofs. Grimes' driver drove us directly into the largest building through large barnlike doors. Its interior was utterly empty and gave the feeling of never having been used. It was of rough prefab construction, unventilated and unheated: it was meant to keep the rain off, nothing more or less. It was cubical, 30 meters in every dimension. There were no windows.
Grimes turned to me. "Well, Darrow, this is to be yours. We'll set a cot for you in the corner, and meals will be brought to you. There is a latrine across the court, which you will be taken to no more than three times a day. The materials you requested, and the cargo from your landing boat, will start to arrive within the hour. My commander expects a demonstration of your machine within ten local days." There was no cordiality in his voice now. These were orders, to be obeyed, no questions. He turned to leave.
"I was promised two weeks! I'll need at least that much time!" But it was too late, he was gone. The two weeks was a lie, of course. I expected to be ready within a week, and the attack was set for then, but greater speed than promised seemed like a good idea for keeping the brass happy.
The doors clanged shut, cutting out the daylight. I was alone with a duffel bag, two dangerous-looking guards, and a nutty scheme that seemed like to be my obituary.
I slumped back down against the far wall of the building from the guards and sighed. Time to do some waiting.
It was not one but three hours before my equipment arrived. Two corporals with patches identifying themselves as being assigned to 135 Customs and Inspection Corps rode a cart into the building, towing a trailer full of my gear. One of them hopped down and handed me a clipboard.
"Sign all six copies," he said. "This amount of luggage is far in excess of what is normally permitted. Clearance and inspection were quite difficult." He reminded me of the librarian at the orphanage back on Kennedy. The old fossil had been convinced that in a properly run library, no book would ever leave the shelf. I signed the forms willingly enough, and smiled cheerfully at all the regulations he saw fit to remind me of. I tried to be cheerful and cooperative enough to spoil his officious little day.
There were plenty of forms to rustle through, too. Receipts, acknowledgements, statements of declarations, waivers, denials of visible damage, a chit for wear and tear on the shuttle craft and all ground vehicles.
There is something beautiful in the routine lack of imagination a bureaucrat brings to his work. To such a person, beauty is order, as pure as an untouched and fragile flower. Muss the slightest corner of one regulation and the bloom is gone forever.
The beauty was still there for the 135 Customs and Inspection Corps. All the forms were filled out, every single regulation complied with, every buck passed perfectly. In spite of all the difficulties, the "luggage" had been delivered properly, including the capture unit, its power lamp still glowing.
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