The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (63 page)

“It was on that same day that I pointed out certain incongruities in the episode to Twer. I asked him where the missionary came from in the midst of the near-desolate tract we occupied at the time. I asked further where the gigantic mob had come from with the nearest sizable town a hundred miles away. The prosecution has paid no attention to such problems.

“Or to other points; for instance, the curious point of Jord Parma’s blatant conspicuousness. A missionary on Korell, risking his life in defiance of both Korellian and Foundation law, parades about in a very new and very distinctive priestly costume. There’s something wrong there. At the time, I suggested that the missionary was an unwitting accomplice of the Commdor, who was using him in an attempt to force us into an act of wildly illegal aggression, to justify,
in law
, his subsequent destruction of our ship and of us.

“The prosecution has anticipated this justification of my actions. They have expected me to explain that the safety of my ship, my crew, my mission itself were at stake and could not be sacrificed for one man, when that man would, in any case, have been destroyed, with us or without us. They reply by muttering about the Foundation’s ‘honor’ and the necessity of upholding our ‘dignity’ in order to maintain our ascendancy.

“For some strange reason, however, the prosecution has neglected Jord Parma himself – as an individual. They brought out no details concerning him; neither his birthplace, nor his education, nor any detail of previous history. The explanation of this will also explain the incongruities I have pointed out in the Visual Record you have just seen. The two are connected.

“The prosecution has advanced no details concerning Jord Parma because it
cannot
. That scene you saw by Visual Record seemed phoney because Jord Parma was phoney. There never
was
a Jord Parma.
This whole trial is the biggest farce ever cooked up over an issue that never existed
.”

Once more he had to wait for the babble to die down. He said, slowly:

“I’m going to show you the enlargement of a single still from the Visual Record. It will speak for itself. Lights again, Jael.”

The chamber dimmed, and the empty air filled again with frozen figures in ghostly, waxen illusion. The officers of the
Far Star
struck their stiff, impossible attitudes. A gun pointed from Mallow’s rigid hand. At his left, the Revered Jord Parma, caught in mid-shriek, stretched his claws upward, while the falling sleeves hung halfway.

And from the missionary’s hand there was that little gleam that in the previous showing had flashed and gone. It was a permanent glow now.

“Keep your eye on that light on his hand,” called Mallow from the shadows. “Enlarge that scene, Jael!”

The tableau bloated – quickly. Outer portions fell away as the missionary drew towards the center and became a giant. Then there was only a head and an arm, and then only a hand, which filled everything and remained there in immense, hazy tautness.

The light had become a set of fuzzy, glowing letters: K S P.

“That,” Mallow’s voice boomed out, “is a sample of tattooing, gentlemen. Under ordinary light it is invisible, but under ultraviolet light – with which I flooded the room in taking this Visual Record, it stands out in high relief. I’ll admit it is a naive method of secret identification, but it works on Korell, where UV light is not to be found on street corners. Even in our ship, detection was accidental.

“Perhaps some of you have already guessed what K S P stands for. Jord Parma knew his priestly lingo well and did his job magnificently. Where he had learned it, and how, I cannot say, but K S P stands for ‘Korellian Secret Police.’ ”

Mallow shouted over the tumult, roaring against the noise, “I have collateral proof in the form of documents brought from Korell, which I can present to the council, if required.

“And where is now the prosecution’s case? They have already made and re-made the monstrous suggestion that I should have fought for the missionary in defiance of the law, and sacrificed my mission, my ship, and myself to the ‘honor’ of the Foundation.

“
But to do it for an imposter
?

“Should I have done it then for a Korellian secret agent tricked out in the robes and verbal gymnastics probably borrowed of an Anacreonian exile? Would Jorane Sutt and Publis Manlio have had me fall into a stupid, odious trap—”

His hoarsened voice faded into the featureless background of a shouting mob. He was being lifted onto shoulders, and carried to the mayor’s bench. Out the windows, he could see a torrent of madmen swarming into the square to add to the thousands there already.

Mallow looked about for Ankor Jael, but it was impossible to find any single face in the incoherence of the mass. Slowly he became aware of a rhythmic, repeated shout, that was spreading from a small beginning, and pulsing into insanity:

“Long live Mallow – long live Mallow – long live Mallow—”

Ankor Jael blinked at Mallow out of a haggard face. The last two days had been mad, sleepless ones.

“Mallow, you’ve put on a beautiful show, so don’t spoil it by jumping too high. You can’t seriously consider running for mayor. Mob enthusiasm is a powerful thing, but it’s notoriously fickle.”

“Exactly!” said Mallow, grimly, “so we must coddle it, and the best way to do that is to continue the show.”

“Now what?”

“You’re to have Publis Manlio and Jorane Sutt arrested—”

“What!”

“Just what you hear. Have the mayor arrest them! I don’t care what threats you use. I control the mob – for today, at any rate. He won’t dare face them.”

“But on what charge, man?”

“On the obvious one. They’ve been inciting the priesthood of the outer planets to take sides in the factional quarrels of the Foundation. That’s illegal, by Seldon. Charge them with ‘endangering the state.’ And I don’t care about a conviction any more than they did in my case. Just get them out of circulation until I’m mayor.”

“It’s half a year till election.”

“Not too long!” Mallow was on his feet, and his sudden grip of Jael’s arm was tight. “Listen, I’d seize the government by force if I had to – the way Salvor Hardin did a hundred years ago. There’s still that Seldon crisis coming up, and when it comes I have to be mayor
and
high priest. Both!”

Jael’s brow furrowed. He said, quietly, “What’s it going to be? Korell, after all?”

Mallow nodded. “Of course. They’ll declare war, eventually, though I’m betting it’ll take another pair of years.”

“With atomic ships?”

“What do you think? Those three merchant ships we lost in their space sector weren’t knocked over with compressed-air pistols. Jael, they’re getting ships from the Empire itself. Don’t open your mouth like a fool. I said the Empire! It’s still there, you know. It may be gone here in the Periphery but in the Galactic centre it’s still very much alive. And one false move means that it, itself, may be on our neck. That’s why I must be mayor and high priest. I’m the only man who knows how to fight the crisis.”

Jael swallowed dryly. “How? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

Jael smiled uncertainly. “Really! All of that!”

But Mallow’s answer was incisive. “When I’m boss of this Foundation, I’m going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis.”

Asper Argo, the Well-Beloved, Commdor of the Korellian Republic greeted his wife’s entry by a hangdog lowering of his scanty eyebrows. To her at least, his self-adopted epithet did not apply. Even he knew that.

She said, in a voice as sleek as her hair and as cold as her eyes, “My gracious Lord, I understand, has finally come to a decision upon the fate of the Foundation upstarts.”

“Indeed?” said the Commdor, sourly. “And what more does your versatile understanding embrace?”

“Enough, my very noble husband. You had another of your vacillating consultations with your councillors. Fine advisors.” With infinite scorn, “A herd of palsied purblind idiots hugging their sterile profits close to their sunken chests in the face of my father’s displeasure.”

“And who, my dear,” was the mild response, “is the excellent source from which your understanding understands all this?”

The Commdora laughed shortly. “If I told you, my source would be more corpse than source.”

“Well, you’ll have your own way, as always.” The Commdor shrugged and turned away. “And as for your father’s displeasure: I much fear me it extends to a niggardly refusal to supply more ships.”

“More ships!” She blazed away, hotly, “And haven’t you five? Don’t deny it. I
know
you have five; and a sixth is promised.”

“Promised for the last year.”

“But one – just one – can blast that Foundation into stinking rubble. Just one! One, to sweep their little pygmy boats out of space.”

“I couldn’t attack their planet, even with a dozen.”

“And how long would their planet hold out with their trade ruined, and their cargoes of toys and trash destroyed?”

“Those toys and trash mean money,” he sighed. “A good deal of money.”

“But if you had the Foundation itself, would you not have all it contained? And if you had my father’s respect and gratitude, would you not have more than ever the Foundation could give you? It’s been three years – more – since that barbarian came with his magic sideshow. It’s long enough.”

“My dear!” The Commdor turned and faced her. “I am growing old. I am weary. I lack the resilience to withstand your rattling mouth. You say you know that I have decided. Well, I have. It is over, and there is war between Korell and the Foundation.”

“Well!” The Commdora’s figure expanded and her eyes sparkled. “You learned wisdom at last, though in your dotage. And now when you are master of this hinterland, you may be sufficiently respectable to be of some weight and importance in the Empire. For one thing, we might leave this barbarous world and attend the viceroy’s court. Indeed we might.”

She swept out, with a smile, and a hand on her hip. Her hair gleamed in the light.

The Commdor waited, and then said to the closed door, with malignance and hate, “And when I am master of what you call the hinterland, I may be sufficiently respectable to do without your father’s arrogance and his daughter’s tongue. Completely – with-out!”

The senior lieutenant of the
Dark Nebula
stared in horror at the visiplate.

“Great Galloping Galaxies!” It should have been a howl, but it was a whisper instead, “What’s that?”

It was a ship, but a whale to the
Dark Nebula’s
minnow; and on its side was the Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire. Every alarm on the ship yammered hysterically.

The orders went out, and the
Dark Nebula
prepared to run if it could, and fight if it must – while down in the ultrawave room, a message stormed its way through hyperspace to the Foundation.

Over and over again! Partly a plea for help, but mainly a warning of danger.

Hober Mallow shuffled his feet wearily as he leafed through the reports. Two years of the mayoralty had made him a bit more housebroken, a bit softer, a bit more patient – but it had not made him learn to like government reports and the mind-breaking officialese in which they were written.

“How many ships did they get?” asked Jael.

“Four trapped on the ground. Two unreported. All others accounted for and safe.” Mallow grunted. “We should have done better, but it’s just a scratch.”

There was no answer and Mallow looked up. “Does anything worry you?”

“I wish Sutt would get here,” was the almost irrelevant answer.

“Ah, yes, and now we’ll hear another lecture on the home front.”

“No, we won’t,” snapped Jael, “but you’re stubborn, Mallow. You may have worked out the foreign situation to the last detail but you’ve never given a care about what goes on here on the home planet.”

“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? What did I make you Minister of Education and Propaganda for?”

“Obviously to send me to an early and miserable grave, for all the co-operation you give me. For the last year, I’ve been deafening you with the rising danger of Sutt and his Religionists. What good will your plans be, if Sutt forces a special election and has you thrown out?”

“None, I admit.”

“And your speech last night just about handed the election to Sutt with a smile and a pat. Was there any necessity for being so frank?”

“Isn’t there such a thing as stealing Sutt’s thunder?”

“No,” said Jael, violently, “not the way you did it. You claim to have foreseen everything, and don’t explain why you traded with Korell to their exclusive benefit for three years. Your only plan of battle is to retire without a battle. You abandon all trade with the sectors of space near Korell. You openly proclaim a stalemate. You promise no offensive, even in the future. Galaxy, Mallow, what am I supposed to do with such a mess?”