Watchers of the Dark (9 page)

“I’ll take them all in numerical order,” Darzek said.

From ONE he received a surfeit of technical jargon and a quick awareness that the arena of interstellar finance held no charms for him. Neither could he think of any conceivable weapon that it might offer against the Dark. He extricated himself at the first moment that he could do so politely and moved on.

TWO was a surprise to Darzek. An old trader, a veteran of fantastic, far-flung business arrangements, his squeaky voice somehow rang with authority when he spoke of them.

At the first opening, Darzek came directly to the point. The lamented Biag-n had been a dealer in textiles and had thought to take Darzek into the business with him as a cover for his activities. Supreme would be asked to assign another of its agents to assist Darzek, but the new agent might not be so advantageously situated. Darzek liked the idea of an occupation that would give him an excuse to travel freely.

“I know nothing about this Biag-n,” TWO said. “If he traveled freely, he must have been a mere peddler. What impression do you wish to make?”

“I don’t know,” Darzek said. “What do you suggest?”

“A peddler can go anywhere, but he is respected by no one. A factor commands very little respect, and a peddler none at all. A trader, on the other hand, whatever his volume of business, is respected according to his merit.”

“I don’t understand the difference.”

“The trader works for himself. He buys, and then sells what he has bought. The peddler and the factor work for others. Both sell merchandise or products that others control.”

“Can all of them move about freely?”

“The trader travels wherever business takes him, but he has a headquarters, a place of business. The factor has a headquarters, but he does not travel. His activities are restricted to one world, or even to part of a world. The peddler travels at will, but has no headquarters. Peddlers are wanderers. They remain on a world only until they achieve sufficient solvency to take them elsewhere. They normally specialize in cheap varieties of a single product, and they deal in small quantities—usually with native tradesmen. No one takes much notice of a peddler.”

Darzek nodded politely. He could understand why an agent of Supreme would choose to be a peddler; but it was also obvious that someone had taken considerable notice of the peddler Biag-n. In the future any peddler would be suspect, and that was reason enough for not becoming one. And Darzek did not care to restrict his movements by becoming a factor.

“How does one get to be a trader?” he asked.

TWO’s antennae twitched nervously. Or perhaps mischievously. “One trades.”

“Trades what?” Darzek persisted. “What products would one start with? Remember that I know nothing. I don’t know the value of anything, I don’t know where or whom to buy from, or how to go about selling. Where would I begin?”

TWO gave his antennae a meditative flip. “Perhaps it would be better if you became a peddler. A peddler needs to know very little.”

“I’ll consider it. Right now I want to know how to be a trader.”

“It would be very difficult. I’d suggest that you begin as an undertrader, learn a few specialties—”

“Trader,” Darzek said firmly. “There isn’t time for me to work my way up from the ranks. It doesn’t matter whether I actually do any trading, as long as I
act
like a trader. How would I begin?”

“You would first have to choose a world for your headquarters.”

“A world close to the Dark,” Darzek suggested.

“You should consult THREE about that. The perimeter worlds are his concern.”

“I’ll pick the world later. First let’s talk in general terms. Buying and selling, transferring solvency, that sort of thing. I should be taking notes. One moment, please. I have a notebook in my suitcase.”

He hurried back to his own quarters, fumbled for his key, opened his suitcase. He stared for a moment. Then, notebook forgotten, he relocked the suitcase.

EIGHT appeared in the doorway as he turned away. “I heard you enter,” he said. “Have you finished with the others?”

“Come in here, please,” Darzek said. He waved EIGHT into the room and went to close the door. “You were wondering how the agents of the Dark could have learned I was coming. Would it surprise you if I said there was an agent of the Dark on the Council?”

It shocked him into speechlessness.

“Someone opened my suitcase and ransacked it,” Darzek said. “Is there anyone here except the Councillors?”

“No.”

“No service or maintenance people, or anyone like that?”

“No one is admitted except with a certified pass,” EIGHT said. “You are the first outsider to be present at a Council meeting in my memory.”

“Very well. Why would a Councillor want to search my suitcase?”

“None of them would,” EIGHT said confidently. “It is unthinkable that
anyone
would molest the personal possessions of another.”

“Then you’d better revise your thinking. Someone went through my suitcase. Nothing is missing, but that may be because nothing there was worth taking.”

“Surely you are mistaken.”

“When Jan Darzek packs a suitcase, he knows precisely what is in it, and where, and in what condition. When he finds the contents topsy-turvy and his one remaining pressed shirt wadded up, you can’t convince him that no one was in his suitcase. Who among the Councillors would know how to pick a lock—a rather complicated lock.”

“What is this
picking
a lock?” EIGHT asked.

Darzek explained and then demonstrated with his key. EIGHT pondered the lock silently. “I have never heard of such a thing,” he announced.

“You must have locks. You have a word for them.”

“But no locks like this one. Our locks do not have to be opened—cannot be opened. They open themselves, at the touch of the person they are attuned to. But they are rarely used because they are not needed.”

“Personalized locks,” Darzek said thoughtfully. “Are you certain that none of the Councillors would have experience of a lock that requires a key?”

“I do not see how any of them could. I did not know that there were such locks.”

“I happen to know that even a person with considerable experience of such locks and their workings would have difficulty with this one. And yet it was opened. I’m positive of that. I’d like to have another talk with the Council.”

“All of it? Now?”

“Yes.”

With a last, frustrated glance at his suitcase, Darzek followed EIGHT into the Council Room.

It had been done so
quickly.
Darzek had been with TWO no more than twenty minutes, and with ONE much less than that. And yet one of the Councillors had been able to enter Darzek’s rooms, open a lock of a kind he had never seen before and of a quality that would have frustrated a trained locksmith for hours, hurriedly examine the suitcase’s contents, lock it again, and depart.

The thing
was
impossible, but it had been done.

So obsessed was he with the puzzle of how the suitcase had been opened that it was some minutes before the realization smote him that he’d made a momentous discovery. A traitor on the Council of Supreme! The thought of it sent his pulse racing feverishly. No wonder the Dark had seemed omnipotent, had scored incredible victories with ease.

They entered one at a time through the arches opposite their rooms. TWO lumbered in first. Darzek idly wondered if he should apologize for not returning to him and decided that it could wait.

TWO, he thought, was out of it. TWO would have had only the brief ten minutes Darzek had spent with ONE, and that was not enough time. EIGHT was out of it, or at least Darzek hoped he was.

Of the others, ONE would have had twenty minutes, the rest perhaps half an hour. As they took their places he looked at them with a deepening sense of futility. If they had been humans he might have had a ghost of a chance, but how could he read signs of guilt in those grotesque features?

As soon as they were seated he got to his feet and backed away slowly until he had all of them in his field of vision. He said quietly, “You have brought me here to assist you in your struggle with the Dark. Already I have made some progress. I have learned one reason for the Dark’s success.” He paused to look at each of them in turn and then snapped, “One of you is an agent of the Dark!”

EIGHT stared at Darzek rigidly, as though refusing to comprehend the enormity of the charge. The others stirred, shifted positions. Uneasily? Resentfully? He could not tell. He went on, “One of you is in league with the Dark. He has betrayed the secrets of this Council. I say to him now—will you confess your error, or shall I, Jan Darzek, wrench your foul secret from your wretched, perverted mind?”

He had never perpetrated a bluff with so little to back it up—and with such a meager result. ONE had edged forward over the table, his suckers gripping it, his multiple limbs trembling. TWO’s antennae waved wildly. Three’s faceless heads were bent far back so that the row of eyes in his chest could stare at Darzek. FOUR, a monstrous, shell-less snail in fur clothing, was motionless, but his voice box emitted a crackling static. FIVE’S body was slowly deflating. SIX was plaiting his tentacles into two pulsating braids. SEVEN—

Darzek looked again at SIX. The tentacles were long and sinuous, tapering to fine threads. To strong, wiry threads. “What a marvelous thing to pick a lock with,” he thought. “A lock pick with a sense of touch. Every well-equipped thief should have one.”

SEVEN was a blank blur behind his tinted hood. EIGHT was still staring rigidly at Darzek. He turned again to ONE, but he kept his eyes on SIX. The tentacles unbraided, fanned out, became longer and slenderer, braided again. The tips would have to be extremely strong, to open a lock.

Darzek felt himself poised on a height, and about to make a reckless, dizzying plunge.

He whirled abruptly. “You!” he shouted.

SIX jerked to his feet and reeled backward. The tentacles lashed about, drooped, whipped forward. They held an Eye of Death.

Darzek dove. The beam crackled above his head. He twisted and drew his automatic cleanly, but as he aimed EIGHT leaped in front of him. SIX pivoted as he fired again. The upper part of EIGHT’S body splashed to the floor, spurting blood. His trunk teetered slowly and collapsed. Darzek emptied his automatic, deliberately searching for a vulnerable spot. Riddled with bullets, SIX staggered sideways and turned his weapon on FOUR, who had opened a panel and was touching out a message.

Keeping low, Darzek crept around the table. Screams of pain and terror rent the air as the Eye of Death crackled again and again. Ozone hung heavily in the room, and blended with it was an ominous smell of smoke. Glancing behind him, Darzek saw a wall in flames.

SEVEN leaped to grapple with SIX and died horribly. ONE scooted for an exit, and was sliced into segments as a section of wall burst into flame behind him.

Darzek’s shots were slowly taking effect. SIX’s tentacles jerked with violent tremors, and he had difficulty steadying his weapon as he attempted to bore through the table and kill Darzek. Darzek ducked down again, crawled, risked another glance. He saw THREE’S two heads vanish in a snap of ozone and shouted a warning to TWO—too late. He heaved up a chair and sent it crashing across the table at SIX. Flames had reached the ceiling, and in a twinkling the upper part of the old building was a roaring inferno.

SIX stood motionless, tentacles quivering, his entire body seized with an uncontrollable spasm. Darzek edged around the table and rushed him, and he fell heavily. The Eye of Death rolled away. SIX’s tentacles twitched once and went rigid.

Darzek snatched up his automatic and shouted, “Let’s get out of here!”

FIVE had deflated completely, and was a motionless mound on his chair. The others were dead. Darzek seized FIVE, hauled him toward an exit The leathery body was slippery, oozing fluid, and surprisingly heavy. Darzek lunged through a wall of flame, reached the transmitter alcove, pushed FIVE through. He dove after him, choking on the thick, pungent smoke.

FIVE lay on the floor of a red-lit tunnel, still deflated. Struggling with the slippery body, Darzek slowly made his way forward to the normal light of the corridor beyond.

Not until then did he realize that FIVE was dead, his body a sickly, grayish white.

He waited in the corridor for a long time, though he knew that no one remaining in that building could have lived. Finally he turned away, found EIGHT’s transmitter, and stepped through.

Miss Schlupe was sleeping. She woke with a start when he bent over her. “You smell smoky,” she said. Then she sat up abruptly. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so. Just my pride. I got seven innocent people killed and maybe lost the galaxy to the Dark—all in something under ten minutes.”

“Nonsense!”

“It’s true. The galaxy is now without a government. The Council of Supreme has been wiped out to the last Councillor, and because of the secrecy in which it worked, probably nobody will know that for years. Not even Supreme will know.”

“Supreme—”

“Supreme is a machine. A computer. No one person could administer the millions of worlds of a galaxy. Not even an army of administrators could do it. A computer can, if it has reliable servants to supply the information it needs. My guess is that its most important source of information was the Council. Each member was a specialist in a critical area of knowledge. They kept Supreme informed, and maybe they made policy decisions. Now they’re dead, and Supreme can’t get along without them.”

“Can’t they elect a new Council?”

“Supreme chooses the Councillors. Only Supreme knows who they are, and they work in absolute secrecy. When one dies, the other Councillors notify Supreme, and Supreme chooses a successor. Supreme could choose a new Council, but it won’t, because it doesn’t know it needs one. The only person who could tell it is me, and I don’t know how. Now the Dark has no opposition at all. It’s a cancer eating away at the galaxy, and there’s no one to prescribe medicine.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we try to go back—to Earth?”

“No.”

Darzek backed into a chair and sat down gloomily. “I should have guessed that the traitor would be armed. If I could carry a weapon to a Council meeting, so could he. And I should have known how he would react. The fact that we polished off three of his invincibly armed agents probably had him thinking I was something supernatural. That was why he went through my suitcase. He was already scared to death and frantic to find out something about me. When I exposed him by apparently reading his mind, he went berserk. So now the whole Council is dead.”

“EIGHT?”

“The whole Council. Don’t you see what that means? Supreme has its agents, but the information they supply is useless unless someone can act on it, and Supreme can’t act. It can’t even recommend, unless someone asks it to.” He got to his feet. “This affair has been blundered from the start. There wasn’t any need to bring us here.” He stared at her. “SIX! It must have been SIX’s idea. The others, being nice monsters without a suspicious thought in their collective heads, or wherever they had thoughts, went along with him. He wanted to get rid of us before we got close enough to the Dark to do any damage. Pack up, Schluppy. I’m going to see if I can buy a new suitcase by transmitter. Then we’ll get out of here.”