Once we get the money printed up, he thought happily, we can start fixin up this place. Roads to be built, ionocrafts to be repaired. And a government to be set up. In his mind he began to list all his relatives and personal friends; they, of course, would have to have special political positions set up for them and under them he would create an overlapping maze of job-holding bureaucratic functionaries whose tasks would be vague—but who would constitute all the good people personally familiar to him on a man-to-man hand-shaking basis throughout the bale. Have to get a few of the right kind of Neegs in there, too, he reflected. To keep them from getting restless.
He spotted the lean, stooped figure of Doc Burns emerging from the compound, past the guards. “How’s it going, Doc?” Gus said.
“You ought to get these people out of here; these conditions breed disease.”
“How about sending them into battle—they left the ’parts; now let them fight the ’parts.”
Doc Burns said, “These Neegs didn’t leave the ’parts; they left those weapons. And they’re not about to go into battle against those same weapons. It was bad enough for them, being on the giving end; they’re not about to—”
“But,” Gus said, “I gotta clean out those hills once and for all. I haven’t given up: I can’t give up.”
“Use robots.”
“You know, Doc, maybe you got something there.” A robot army, Gus thought, might not be affected by illusions. Anyhow it seemed worth a try. “An all-out offensive against the Neeg-parts,” he said aloud, “using nothing but autonomic and homeostatic weapons.”
Doc Burns said skeptically, “Where will you get such weapons?”
“From the worms,” Gus said. “I’ll get Mekkis to give me the best they’ve got; stuff maybe which we’ve never seen.” He strode off.
“Read no more,” the Oracle pleaded mournfully. “The hour of the Nowhere Girl is upon us!”
Mekkis wove, sent out his tongue to depress a button on his office intercom. “Send in the Huckster,” he ordered his wik secretary.
A moment later the door slid aside; a smiling, well-dressed Terran with bow tie and purple velvet coveralls entered. “I am the Huckster,” he informed Mekkis.
“I know,” Mekkis said, and he thought, You must be a telepath, too; otherwise you never would have learned to scramble. And also, he said to himself, you must be a graduate of Balkani’s school.
“You are, I understand,” the Huckster said, “looking for certain documents, certain obscure papers written by Dr. Rudolph Balkani and circulated privately to students at his seminars. Papers crucial to a comprehension of Balkani’s theories, yet withheld from the general public.”
“Do you have such papers?”
“For a price.”
“Of course,” Mekkis said. “I’m told that it is you who sold my predecessor, Marshal Koli, this vast collection of plastic model planes and other various historical odds and ends now enshrined in these offices. If you can supply me with these documents I will trade you the entire World War One sequence of fighter aircraft for them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” the Huckster said, grinning.
“I realize that you may find my generosity a little overwhelming,” Mekkis said, “but we Ganymedians are a—”
“You don’t understand.” The Huckster had begun to laugh openly. “I wouldn’t take those model planes if you paid me to haul them away. They’re utterly worthless.”
“What! But Marshal Koli said—”
“Marshal Koli was a collector, Mr. Administrator. I’m a businessman. The documents I have to sell should be worth in the neighborhood of one hundred Ganymedian cluds. It is that or nothing.”
“Let me see it,” Mekkis said.
“One page, that’s all.”
Mekkis said, “I could have you arrested and the document taken from you by force.”
“True,” the Huckster said. “But you would never see the other documents I could bring you; this is only one of many such lovely items.”
“Very well. My secretary will make out a check for you to the amount of one hundred cluds. Now let’s see the thing.”
After the Huckster had gone Mekkis studied the document carefully. It appeared authentic; he recognized the writing-style of the erratic Balkani. The key, Mekkis thought; analysis of the experiments in chemotherapy which made possible his Oblivion Therapy. Great god almighty!
I’ll have to see what else that young Terran has for sale, mused the Ganymedian Administrator.
He did not grant an audience to Gus Swenesgard.
When notified of Gus’ presence he did not even bother to scan him. “As I’ve already ordered,” he informed his secretary, “give him what he wants and leave me alone.” Gus, therefore, left with a requisition for first-line autonomic and homeostatic Gany median attack weapons.
Mekkis did not know this, but, had he known, he would not have cared. Because a report had come in—news completely unexpected—
“Percy X and Joan Hiashi,” his wik secretary informed him, “have escaped from Balkani’s establishment in Norway.” A pause and then the secretary said, “Dr. Balkani is dead.”
For a moment Mekkis ceased to think. He sat, mouth open, his tongue frozen. “How did it happen?” he asked at last.
“Suicide, it would appear.”
“No,” Mekkis whispered. “It can’t be suicide.”
“I’m only passing on what information I got from Cultural Control,” the secretary said.
“Is there anything more?”
The secretary said, “It seems almost certain that Percy X has returned to this bale; that has Cultural Control in a panic because it indicates that resistance to Gany rule may be much more widespread and subtle than had been previously believed. Someone managed to slip two simulacra into Balkani’s establishment, one of Percy X and one of Joan Hiashi; Balkani evidently didn’t recognize the switch, even though the simulacra had been built from one of his designs. There is speculation that Balkani was a double agent and that all of the wiks trained by him may be imprinted with lethal post-hypnotic suggestions. Some have already killed themselves—for no apparent reason.”
“Thank you,” Mekkis said in a strangled voice. He tongued off the intercom and sat for a long time in silence. All around him lay the articles, monographs, books and pamphlets of Dr. Balkani, and Mekkis thought, As long as I am alive Balkani is alive, too. What he began I will finish. The work of the man exists entire in my mind.
Harshly, he called for his creeches. They came, scuttling and scampering and flapping, from the next room, pitifully happy to be once more noticed, once more of use to him.
“Electronics engineer,” Mekkis said.
“Yes,” squeaked the little being with the slender, delicate fingers.
“Rig up the thought amplifier that we use to contact the Great Common for short-range purposes,” he commanded. We live always in each other’s minds, he thought. Stuck together in a sticky mass through the Great Common, hardly existing as individuals at all.
But I, he thought, have become an individual; I have separated from the Great Womb and been born—as what? A true Ganymedian? A human? No; something else: a stranger in the universe belonging nowhere, A Balkani, The Great Common turned against me, cast me out to rot away in the most unwanted corner of the system. Now, he thought, I can thank them for it; if I hadn’t hated them I never would have seen the meaning of Dr, BalkanVs theories.