Slave Ship (17 page)

So the thing for me to do was to make the guards kill me right away.

On the principle of minimization of losses, I couldn't even try to grab a gun and shoot Nguyen; that was too risky—not to me, but to Elsie and Nina in case I was successful. What I had to have was a nice, quiet, futile attack on a humble, trigger-happy guard. End of Lieutenant Logan Miller. As minimal a loss as anyone could imagine.

I made my plans; and then I waited.

They came for me—I don't know after how long a time.

It was important that I do nothing premature. I didn't make the mistake of attacking them as soon as they poked their noses in the door—they might just have clobbered me with their fists, and tied me to make sure I didn't try it again. I went along with them. I hardly noticed them; I knew they were there, but I didn't understand a word they said, though I know the Dutch Caodai addressed me in English, I paid no attention to their actions or manner. Down the corridor, into the elevator, out into the great hall. At the entrance to the hall, I decided, I would grab for a gun, point it at the handiest figure in a yellow robe, and wait for the bullets.

It all went according to plan, or almost all. We got to the entrance, and the moment the door opened I made my move. I got the gun—surprisingly with no difficulty; I had thought that would be the hard part. But the guard's grip was incredibly lax. I had it and I leaped through the-door and drew a bead on the female priest, the closest to me, standing morosely by the door. I could feel my shoulder blades drawing close to each other, waiting for the bullets to strike.

Only—no bullets.

Seconds passed. I gaped around. There were the Caodai officers, and there was Nguyen. And there, smoking a cigarette, swinging a gun in his free hand . . .

"Splendidly done, Logan!" applauded Semyon earnestly, throwing away the cigarette. "A brilliant maneuver; I should have known I would not be necessary. Is too bad you cannot capture these Orientals and deliver them to justice, is it not? But you see, I have done so already!"

XVI

IT TOOK a while for it to sink in.

Semyon shrugged modestly. "An heroic feat, you say?"

I-hadn't said anything of the sort. "Oh, perhaps. But the credit should not merely be my own, Logan. Equally brave were the crew. We slipped up this filthy small river, every man at his post, searching out the Oriental target—"

I goggled. "What—"

"The
crew
," he said emphatically, "is brave also. Every
man
of them. No, no, Logan, I understand that you think of me as your rescuer, but without the six
men
in our crew out there in the river,
manning
the guns that will blow the roof off this very yellow brick building, what would my small gun accomplish?"

I caught on. He made it easy. I was surprised that Nguyen and his court didn't catch on, too; he made it so easy. But Semyon hurried on: "And we must not keep them waiting, Logan. If I do not appear outside within—" he consulted his watch "—eleven minutes, that is the end of all of us. Come, old man." He jerked his pistol at Nguyen. "Let us go to surrender."

Nguyen corrected coldly: "I agreed to talk. I do not surrender."

"Oh, let us have it as you wish, old man. But come outside now, if you please. Perhaps my crew's watches are not accurate."

Well, we all went—Semyon and the pope and Nina and Elsie, fresh from their own cells and as astonished as I. And then I was even more astonished; because just there, at the foot of the grass that went down to the little river, rocked the whaleboat, looking tiny and ridiculous in the African sun; and as we came out the muzzles of the deck guns, capable of launching high explosive shells that would blow us all to free ions in the air, swiveled to cover us.

I blinked at them incredulously; who were the gunners? And then I thought I understood. I whispered to Semyon: "Winnington?"

"Tied up," he whispered back. "Hush." Out loud he said: "What is it to be, old man? Do we all die here and now? Or do we discover a solution that permits us all to go on living?"

Nguyen, staring sourly at the little whaleboat, said: "There is none. You cannot go free. But it was clever of you, Lieutenant, to have lied under our drug."

I said helpfully, "Oh, I wasn't—"

"Enough!" cried Semyon. "One thing at a time, if you please." He glared at me. He said to the Caodai: "These are our terms. First, you give us safe conduct out of the belligerent zone. Second, you come with us as a hostage. Third, you attempt no reprisals. Fourth—"

"Three will do," said the Caodai. "No."

Semyon blinked at him. "No?"

"No." Nguyen was again the implacable, ageless figure I had first seen; he contemptuously ignored Semyon's gun, ignored the deck guns of the whaleboat, stepped close to Semyon and stared him in the eye. He said, "You shall not escape. You would not get so far as the mouth of the river."

Semyon said, "We'll blow you to bits."

"Do."

Impasse. Semyon looked at me. "Logan?" he inquired weakly.

I cleared my throat. "Will you give us a safe conduct, at least?"

"No."

"Will you—"

"No. Nothing, my Lieutenant. If the Great Palace wishes my death at this time, I shall die; that is as the Great Palace wishes it."

I stared at him thoughtfully. He stared right back, not giving an inch. It wasn't bluff. Here was the pope of all the Caodais, the supreme ruler of half the earth, the most deadly fighting man the world had ever made. And here were we, a handful of unimportant humans and a couple of dogs and a seal, and he was willing to die rather than even to give us his promise—which he could have broken without a moment's pang—to let us go free. I shook my head silently. He never would have passed Game Theory at M.I.T., I thought sourly; everything was with him; this was a time for him to be maximizing his gains, stretching out to conquer the world, reeling under the Glotch. It was—it was—

I swallowed, and stared harder. Maybe, the thought came from nowhere, maybe he might have passed the course after all. Maybe it was not his technique that was . wrong, but my estimate of the situation.

I contemplated the thought incredulously. Could it be, I asked myself, that things weren't going as well as they seemed for old Nguyen? It was ridiculous. And yet as he stood there he was no voracious conqueror; he was a sober, fierce old man, bedded to rock; hopeless of moving forward, but inflexibly unwilling to retreat.

It didn't make sense.

It was, as I say, an impasse, and we might have been there yet if Semyon had been brought up a Boy Scout. But he wasn't. And I don't know what they teach them at the Suvorov Academy, but I guarantee knot tying is not in the curriculum; because while we were staring at each other there was an interruption.

And the name of the interruption was Winnington.

It was Nina who saw him. "Logan!" she gasped. "We're in trouble!" And we were. The topside hatch of the whaleboat was open, and Wilmington's surly face was staring out.

We were all armed, of course, with guns we'd taken from the resentful Caodais, and perhaps if we'd been quicker we could get Winnington before he got out of the hatch. But he had the jump on us. He was out of the hatch and manning the deck guns from the breech position; and then it was too late. We couldn't shoot. If we had
looked
like we were going to shoot, it would have been the last look on the faces of any of us. He cut out the switches to the remote fire control stations below and stared at us, collecting his thoughts.

A small brown pointed nose poked out of the hatch behind him. Josie. She looked worried, even at that distance; and I knew why. Semyon had left her to run the remotes on the deck guns, as she had so painstakingly learned back in the monitor at Project Mako; but his instructions had not included what to do in the event that the human captive got free. So Josie was perplexed.

But not so perplexed and worried as I, because I knew what Winnington was likely to do. Peace! He'd do whatever came to hand, for that unattainable ideal; he'd have peace if he had to blow up the world to get it.

He bent to the loud-hailer; his amplified bellow nearly bowled us over. "Get out of the way!" he roared.

Semyon shouted furiously: "Turn that thing off! Get away from those guns, Winnington, I command you!"

"Hah!" boomed Winnington; but he did, then, turn the loud-hailer off. "I said get out of the way!" he cried. "I see who you've got there. Either you move, or you go with him!"

And he put his thumbs on the trips.

Semyon choked: "Wait! Wait, Winnington! Let us not be hasty, there is much to lose." But he seemed to have panicked; he was snapping his ringers erratically, babbling words that made little sense. Winnington cried angrily: "No stalling, Timiyazev. I'll give you ten seconds to stand aside. Ten seconds, you hear me?"

"Please," begged Semyon, snapping his fingers frantically; I stared at him incredulously, wondering how far he had been pushed to dissolve so completely in panic. "Please, Winnington, I beg it of you, do not fire!"

And then I wasn't staring at Semyon at all, but at the deck of the whaleboat. Hesitantly, by fits and starts, looking bewilderedly at Semyon, Josie was moving up behind Winnington. It was absolutely impossible, I told myself, but she seemed to be following orders. But—what orders? I glanced at Semyon; he was scarcely looking at the dog, only pleading with the pacifist and snapping his—

Snapping his fingers.

I remembered the cricket, and the "leetle one-word language." And there, if you like, is a measure of comparative intelligence; for it was clear that Josie had remembered it before me. With the canine equivalent of a fatalistic shrug, she closed her eyes, leaned forward—and took a nip out of Winnington.

Reflexes are reflexes. Josie, yowling, was kicked yards away and into the water by Winnington's instinctive foot; but by the time Winnington got his eyes around front again it was a little too late. Semyon had been waiting; his gun was up; he fired; Winnington dropped.

"And now, old man," said Semyon, perfectly calm, "we resume our little talk—correct? I have saved your life. Be more reasonable now."

But Nguyen wasn't. He blazed: "Tricks, Russian! You have tricked me, I see, but it is not important. If I must die, I die gladly, for I have no wish to outlive the Great Palace. If the world cannot be Caodai, let me perish!"

There it was again! Even Semyon blinked.

Nguyen was roaring on: "Name your conditions, I refuse them all. Filth and slime, killers, vermin! You have us, but I spit on you!"

Semyon glanced at me.

It was my turn to argue with Nguyen. But I didn't do it. There was a sudden queer flash, quick and gone.

Elsie put her hand on my arm. "What—what—" It had been like lightning, but there were no clouds; I couldn't understand it.

But Semyon understood it; Semyon understood it very well. He moaned something in Russian, his face gone suddenly sick. He nodded to me and said, conversationally, "The clouds again, you see, Logan. Climbing like trees on the horizon." That was silly, because I had just looked and there weren't any clouds, not one.

No.

There hadn't been any clouds. But now there was one.

"Like Irkutsk once more," said Semyon, and gestured with his gun to the horizon. I looked, incredulous, as the mounting cloud leaped and spread; and then the concussion hit us from the distant nuclear blast.

XVII

WE NESTLED on the bottom, a mile off shore, and waited. Waited for what? Not for some miracle to put fuel in our tanks, for there was no hope of that; not for someone to rescue us, for the U.N. would never come near Madagascar and the Caodais would not rescue but kill. Not even for the world to come to an end. For that had already begun. We just waited.

Semyon was comforting the animals; Elsie and Nina were sitting inspecting each other in silence. We had taken a prisoner, old Nguyen himself, and he was bound where once we had bound the late pacifist, Winnington. Too bad he was dead, I told myself, he would have been delighted with the way things were working out. Because the pacifist dream, the war to bring peace by destroying all warriors, was already well begun.

Nguyen said heavily from his corner, "Incredible." He was staring reflectively at Semyon and the dogs. "They are your animals; you use them as slaves. Some you kill and eat, do you not? The Caodai does not eat flesh, that seems horrible to us. And yet—they love you."

Semyon patted Josie. "We love them!" he said defiantly. Nguyen shrugged.

"It is well known," he said, "that you love everyone and everything. It accounts for the satellite bombings as easily as for your slaughterhouses."

"Shut up, old man!" said Semyon. He crooned to the dogs, while Elsie flared up:

"Put a gag in his mouth. I'm sick of Caodai hypocrisy. The Western atheists do this and the Western atheists do that, and there we are moldering away in their prison camps, while they pretend that the fault's all ours. Gag him! Or I'll shut him up myself."

I looked in some amazement at my warrior bride.

For I remembered Elsie. She was a quiet and biddable girl when we married—not counting her habit of volunteering, of course. I'd never heard her shout at anyone—not at anyone at all, not even me. True, Nguyen was the arch-enemy, and she must have had pitiful fantasies of a chance like this while she was in the concentration camp. But—even so.

Not the least of the problems of the big cold war, I thought, would come when the Elsies and the Mes tried to get back to where we could recognize each other again.

Nina Willette was collecting herself again. She was an intelligence officer, and she too had no doubt had ridiculous dreams of a chance like this. "Now then!" she said briskly to the pope of the Caodai. "Tell me what you were doing here."

He looked at her calmly. "I ask you to tell me," she wheedled. "Please. There is no use to keep a secret, is there?" She offered him a cigarette and smiled, woman-to-man.

"An admirable performance," commented Nguyen. "I do not smoke, but your interrogation is splendid."