Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (43 page)

‘Listen, Rikki,’ Karellen answered at length. ‘These matters are beyond my control. Believe me, I regret the need for this concealment, but the reasons are – sufficient. However, I will try to get a statement from my superior which may satisfy you and perhaps placate the Freedom League. Now, please, can we return to the agenda and start recording again? We’ve only reached Item 23, and I want to make a better job of settling the middle question than my predecessors for the last few thousand years….’

‘Any luck, Chief?’ asked van Ryberg anxiously.

‘I don’t know,’ Stormgren replied wearily as he threw the files down on his desk and collapsed into the seat. ‘Karellen’s consulting his superior now, whoever or whatever he may be. He won’t make any promises.’

‘Listen,’ said Pieter abruptly. ‘I’ve just thought of something. What reason have we for believing that there
is
anyone beyond Karellen? The Overlords may be a myth – you know how he hates the word.’

Tired though he was, Stormgren sat up with a start.

‘It’s an ingenious theory. But it clashes with what little I do know about Karellen’s background.’

‘And how much is that?’

‘Well, he was a professor of astropolitics on a world he calls Skyrondel, and he put up a terrific fight before they made him take this job. He pretends to hate it, but he’s really enjoying himself.’

Stormgren paused for a moment, and a smile of amusement softened his rugged features.

‘At any rate, he once remarked that running a private zoo is rather good fun.’

‘H’m-m – a somewhat dubious compliment. He’s immortal, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, after a fashion, though there’s something thousands of years ahead of him which he seems to fear: I can’t imagine what it is. And that’s really all I know.’

‘He could easily have made it up. My theory is that his little fleet’s lost in space and looking for a new home. He doesn’t want us to know how few he and his comrades are. Perhaps all those other ships are automatic, and there’s no one in any of them. They’re just an imposing facade.’

‘You,’ said Stormgren with great severity, ‘have been reading science fiction in office hours.’

Van Ryberg grinned.

‘“The Invasion from Space” didn’t turn out quite as expected, did it? My theory would certainly explain why Karellen never shows himself. He doesn’t want us to learn that there are no Overlords.’

Stormgren shook his head in amused disagreement.

‘Your explanation, as usual, is much too ingenious to be true. Though we can only infer its existence, there must be a great civilisation behind the Supervisor – and one that’s known about Man for a very long time. Karellen himself must have been studying us for centuries. Look at his command of English, for example. He taught me how to speak it idiomatically!’

‘I sometimes think he went a little too far,’ laughed van Ryberg. ‘Have you ever discovered anything he
doesn’t
know?’

‘Oh, yes, quite often – but only on trivial points. Yet, taken one at a time, I don’t think his mental gifts are quite outside the range of human achievement. But no man could possibly do all the things he does.’

‘That’s more or less what I’d decided already,’ agreed van Ryberg. ‘We can argue around Karellen forever, but in the end we always come back to the same question – why the devil won’t he show himself? Until he does, I’ll go on theorising and the Freedom League will go on fulminating.’

He cocked a rebellious eye at the ceiling.

‘One dark night, Mr Supervisor, I’m going to take a rocket up to your ship and climb in through the back door with my camera. What a scoop
that
would be!’

If Karellen was listening, he gave no sign of it. But, of course, he never did give any sign.

It was completely dark when Stormgren awoke. How strange that was, he was for a moment too sleepy to realise. Then, as full consciousness dawned, he sat up with a start and felt for the light-switch beside his bed.

In the darkness his hand encountered a bare stone wall, cold to the touch. He froze instantly, mind and body paralysed by the impact of the unexpected. Then, scarcely believing his senses, he kneeled on the bed and began to explore with his finger tips that shockingly unfamiliar wall.

He had been doing this for only a moment when there was a sudden ‘click’ and a section of the darkness slid aside. He caught a glimpse of a man silhouetted against a dimly lit background: then the door closed again and the darkness returned. It happened so swiftly that he saw nothing of the room in which he was lying.

An instant later, he was dazzled by the light of a powerful electric torch. The beam flickered across his face, held him steadily for a moment, then dipped to illuminate the whole bed – which was, he now saw, nothing more than a mattress supported on rough planks.

Out of the darkness a soft voice spoke to him in excellent English but with an accent which at first Stormgren could not identify.

‘Ah, Mr Secretary, I’m glad to see you’re awake. I hope you feel all right.’

The angry questions he was about to ask died upon his lips. He stared back into the darkness, then replied calmly, ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

‘Several days. We were promised that there would be no after-effects. I’m glad to see it’s true.’

Partly to gain time, partly to test his own reactions, Stormgren swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was still wearing his night-clothes, but they were badly crumpled and seemed to have gathered considerable dirt. As he moved he felt a slight dizziness – not enough to be troublesome, but sufficient to convince him that he had indeed been drugged.

The oval of light slipped across the room and for the first time Stormgren had an idea of its dimensions. He realised that he was underground, possibly at a great depth. If he had been unconscious for several days he might be anywhere on Earth.

The torch-light illuminated a pile of clothes draped over a packing case.

‘This should be enough for you,’ said the voice from the darkness. ‘Laundry’s rather a problem here, so we grabbed a couple of your suits and half a dozen shirts.’

‘That,’ said Stormgren without humour, ‘was considerate of you.’

‘We’re sorry about the absence of furniture and electric light. This place is convenient in some ways, but it rather lacks amenities.’

‘Convenient for what?’ asked Stormgren as he climbed into a shirt. The feel of the familiar cloth beneath his fingers was strangely reassuring.

‘Just – convenient,’ said the voice. ‘And by the way, since we’re likely to spend a good deal of time together, you’d better call me Joe.’

‘Despite your nationality,’ retorted Stormgren, ‘I think I could pronounce your real name. It won’t be worse than many Finnish ones.’

There was a slight pause and the light flickered for an instant.

‘Well, I should have expected it,’ said Joe resignedly. ‘You must have plenty of practice at this sort of thing.’

‘It’s a useful hobby for a man in my position. I suppose you were born in Poland, and picked up your English in Britain during the War? I should think you were stationed quite a while in Scotland, from your r’s.’

‘That,’ said the other very firmly, ‘is quite enough. As you seem to have finished dressing – thank you.’

The walls around them, though occasionally faced with concrete, were mostly bare rock. It was clear to Stormgren that he was in some disused mine, and he could think of few more effective prisons. Until now the thought that he had been kidnapped had somehow failed to worry him greatly. He felt that, whatever happened, the immense resources of the Supervisor would soon locate and rescue him. Now he was not so sure – there must be a limit even to Karellen’s powers, and if he was indeed buried in some remote continent all the science of the Overlords might be unable to trace him.

There were three other men round the table in the bare but brightly lit room. They looked up with interest and more than a little awe as Stormgren entered. Joe was by far the most outstanding character – not merely in physical bulk. The others were nondescript individuals, probably Europeans too. He would be able to place them when he heard them talk.

‘Well,’ he said evenly, ‘now perhaps you’ll tell me what this is all about, and what you hope to get out of it.’

Joe cleared his throat.

‘I’d like to make one thing clear,’ he said. ‘This has nothing to do with Wainwright. He’ll be as surprised as anyone else.’

Stormgren had rather expected this. It gave him relatively little satisfaction to confirm the existence of an extremist movement inside the Freedom League.

‘As a matter of interest,’ he said, ‘how did you kidnap me?’

He hardly expected a reply, and was taken aback by the other’s readiness – even eagerness – to answer. Only slowly did he guess the reason.

‘It was all rather like one of those old Fritz Lang films,’ said Joe cheerfully. ‘We weren’t sure if Karellen had a watch on you, so we took somewhat elaborate precautions. You were knocked out by gas in the air-conditioner – that was easy. Then we carried you out into the car and drove off – no trouble at all. All this, I might say, wasn’t done by any of our people. We hired – er – professionals for the job. Karellen may get them – in fact, he’s supposed to – but he’ll be no wiser. When it left your house, the car drove into a long road tunnel not a thousand kilometres from New York. It came out again on schedule at the other end, still carrying a drugged man extraordinarily like the Secretary-General. About the same time a large truck loaded with metal cases emerged in the opposite direction and drove to a certain airfield where one of the cases was loaded aboard a freighter. Meanwhile the car that had done the job continued elaborate evasive action in the general direction of Canada. Perhaps Karellen’s caught it by now: I don’t know.

‘As you’ll see – I do hope you appreciate my frankness – our whole plan depended on one thing. We’re pretty sure that Karellen can see and hear everything that happens on the surface of the Earth – but unless he uses magic, not science, he can’t see underneath it. So he won’t know about that transfer in the tunnel. Naturally we’ve taken a risk, but there were also one or two other stages in your removal which I won’t go into now. We may have to use them again one day, and it would be a pity to give them away.’

Joe had related the whole story with such obvious gusto that Stormgren found it difficult to be appropriately furious. Yet he felt very disturbed. The plan was an ingenious one, and it seemed more than likely that whatever watch Karellen kept on him, he would have been tricked by this ruse.

The Pole was watching Stormgren’s reactions closely. He would have to appear confident, whatever his real feelings.

‘You must be a lot of fools,’ said Stormgren scornfully, ‘if you think you can trick the Overlords like this. In any case, what conceivable good would it do?’

Joe offered him a cigarette, which Stormgren refused, then lit one himself.

‘Our motives,’ he began, ‘should be pretty obvious. We’ve found that argument’s useless, so we have to take other measures. Whatever powers he’s got, Karellen won’t find it easy to deal with us. We’re out to fight for our independence. Don’t misunderstand me. There’ll be nothing violent – at first, anyway. But the Overlords have to use human agents, and we can make it mighty uncomfortable for them.’

Starting with me, I suppose, thought Stormgren.

‘What do you intend to do with me?’ asked Stormgren at length. ‘Am I a hostage, or what?’

‘Don’t worry – we’ll look after you. We expect some visitors in a day or two, and until then we’ll entertain you as well as we can.’

He added some words in his own language, and one of the others produced a brand-new pack of cards.

‘We got these especially for you,’ explained Joe. His voice suddenly became grave. ‘I hope you’ve got plenty of cash,’ he said anxiously. ‘After all, we can hardly accept cheques.’

Quite overcome, Stormgren stared blankly at his captors. Then it suddenly seemed to him that all the cares and worries of office had lifted from his shoulders. Whatever happened, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it – and now these fantastic criminals wanted to play poker with him.

Abruptly, he threw back his head and laughed as he had not done for years.

During the next three days Stormgren analysed his captors with some thoroughness. Joe was the only one of any importance, the others were nonentities – the riffraff one would expect any illegal movement to gather round itself.

Joe was an altogether more complex individual, though sometimes he reminded Stormgren of an overgrown baby. Their interminable poker games were punctuated with violent political arguments, but it became obvious to Stormgren that the big Pole had never thought seriously about the cause for which he was fighting. Emotion and extreme conservatism clouded all his judgements. His country’s long struggle for independence had conditioned him so completely that he still lived in the past. He was a picturesque survival, one of those who had no use for an ordered way of life. When his type had vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.

There was little doubt as far as Stormgren was concerned, that Karellen had failed to locate him. He was not surprised when, five or six days after his capture, Joe told him to expect visitors. For some time the little group had shown increasing nervousness, and the prisoner guessed that the leaders of the movement, having seen that the coast was clear, were at last coming to collect him.