“Supreme Commander Mangle,” Billy said, with his party manners again, “may I present Ensign Kybee Benson.”
“Hello,” the supreme commander said. “You die now.”
“Wait a minute! I had nothing to do with that,” Ensign Benson said, pointing at the spaceship. Some clowns down there had started digging a moat. “I’ll take care of it right now.”
Mangle’s thin lips curled. “You expert us to permit you to return to your Fort?”
Ensign Benson looked at Billy, Who sighed but managed a brave little smile. “I know,” he said. “This is where I volunteer to stay as a hostage.”
“I don’t care who you are,” Hester said. “You can’t start a lot of fires in my engine room.”
“I’m the smithy,” the burly man explained, stacking his firebricks near the reactor, “and the sergeant says this is where I set up.”
“Well, you can tell your ser—”
Ensign Benson entered the engine room. “Hester.”
“Would you tell this—”
“Ssh! Come here!”
So Hester went there, and Ensign Benson said, “Forget him. Start the engines. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Billy will be worried,” Pam said.
“Billy will be all right,” Ensign Benson told her. “We’ll all be all right. You just plot the course. As for you, Captain, surely you know how to drive this thing.”
Pam and Ensign Benson and the captain were together on the command deck with a lot of squalling babies; Colonel Alderpee had decreed this space was the nursery. Councilman Luthguster was off making a courtesy call on Supreme Commander Krraich.
“Well,” said the captain doubtfully, “I have driven it, but that was a long time ago.”
“Just take her up,” Ensign Benson said, “and head southeast. Right, Pam?”
“Mm,” Pam said, lost, in her slide rule.
“Build boats,” Supreme Commander, Mangle said. “Tonight, we cross that moat.”
“Sir,” said an aide, coming into the tent, “the fort is leaving.”
They all went outside. The fort was gone. The moat remained, a ring of muddy water around a crushed altar.
“Sir? Do you still want the boats?”
“Kill that idiot,” Mangle said. “And bring me the hostage Earthling.”
Ensign Benson went to the commander’s tent (a.k.a. dining room) to explain the situation to a suspicious Colonel Alderpee and a glowering Supreme Commander Krraich. “The fort,” the colonel Pointed out, “is moving.”
“Plague,” Ensign Benson said.
They stared at him. They recoiled from each other. “Plague! Where?”
“Back where we came from. The ship’s instruments showed there was a breakout just due. Congratulations, gentlemen,” Ensign Benson continued, “you have at last won your war. Within a week, there won’t he a living Antiben on Gemini.”
Southeast across the surface of the planet ran the Hopeful, guided by Pam’s slide rule and steered erratically by Captain Standforth, who had to keep picking babies out of the controls. Diagonally ran the ship, down from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern, around from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western. Exactly opposite the original encampment, in similar climate and terrain, where they would be easy for Earth’s supply ships to find but where they would never again meet their enemies, the Hopeful set down and unloaded the Bens. “You’ve done a fine thing for Robert Benchley,” Colonel Alderpee said as the Bens and their beasts, their tents and their babies all deshipped.
“It was the least we could do,” Ensign Benson assured him. “After all, you had reached a stalemate in what was clearly a war of total extermination. Something had to be done.”
“Peace, it’s wonderful,” the colonel said, then frowned. “At least, I’ve heard it is.”
Councilman Luthguster made a speech promising wonders in aid and technical assistance to come from Earth. Some archers playfully lofted arrows in his direction, but they were only fooling, and the one flesh wound that resulted was easily patched by Hester with a snippet of stick-on plaster, meant for stemming leaks in boilers.
“I was beginning to rather like all those babies,” Captain Standforth said, a faraway look in his eye. “I wonder how you… Hmmmm.” He went away, to study his taxidermy books.
“Plague,” Ensign Benson said, as Billy was untied from the rack. “You’ll never see a living Ben on Gemini again.”
“And you took them away,” Reverend Hengethorg said, “so they couldn’t infect us.”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve done wonders.”
“I know,” Ensign Benson said.
Billy came over, massaging his chafed wrists. He looked taller. “Gosh, Kybee,” he said.
“Well, ta-ta,” Ensign Benson told the Antibens. “You’ll be hearing from Earth. Our job here is finished now.”
“Sir,” an aide said to Colonel Alderpee, “there’s a dispute among the men.”
The colonel gazed over the new encampment, the tents still being raised, the thud-thud of posts being driven into the virgin ground. “Dispute? Over what?”
“Well, some of the men say those people in the fort were from Earth, and some say they weren’t.”
“Really? Call a meeting. We’re mature adults; we’ll discuss it.”
1984
Hydra
Donald Westlake is one of the best and most popular mystery novelists in the U.S., creator of the Dortmunder gang and such books as HOT ROCK. BANK SHOT and JIMMY THE KID. He writes an occasional short story, and we’re delighted to offer this one.
“I’m afraid that’s the church again,” Carrie Morton said. “Greg, push on.”
“That’s all right, I like it,” Fay White told her, being polite, but Greg Morton had already pushed the bar on the slide projector — chip-clock — and after a brief interval of rectangular white, the wall reblossomed into yet another view of the same small concrete-block church roughly painted in pastels, glistening like a week-old wedding cake in the bright southern sun.
“Oh, dear,” Carrie said. “Too many of the same picture. But I just loved that church.”
“I’d be fascinated by those colors, too,” Fay said, hating herself for her spineless politeness but helpless to change her manner. A dozen years ago in college it had been like this, Carrie blithe and uncaring while Fay smiled and said it was all right; and now here they were again, just the same.
Chip-chip-chip-chip — “The people are so primitive,” Carrie said, as Greg struggled with the machine and they all stared at the white-again wall. “They’re alleged to be Christians, but what went on in that building seemed awfully jungle-jungle to me.”
Then why not photograph that, Fay thought, sipping gamely at her pre-dinner drink. She and Carrie and Greg all held tiny glasses of a heavy, too-sweet South American liqueur the Mortons had brought back, while Fay’s husband, Reed — no spineless politeness for him — sat contentedly with a glass of beer. I wish I were more like Reed, Fay thought. Self-confident and serene. I wish liked my friends more.
Clock. Four smiling children shyly posed in that same harsh sunlight beside a rusted, springless, dark green American car. “So childlike,” Carrie said, comfortably smiling.