Citizen of the Galaxy (25 page)

Thorby's table was headed by his petty officer. Ordnance-man 2/c Peebie, down as “Decibel.” Thorby was eating one day with his ears tuned down, while he debated visiting the library after dinner or attending the stereo show in the messroom, when he heard his nickname: “Isn't that right. Trader?”

Thorby was proud of the nickname. He did not like it in Peebie's mouth but Peebie was a self-appointed wit -- he would greet Thorby with the nickname, inquire solicitously, “How's business?” and make gestures of counting money. So far, Thorby had ignored it.

“Isn't what right?”

“Why'n't y'keep y'r ears open? Can't you hear anything but rustle and clink? I was telling 'em what I told the Weapons Officer: the way to rack up more kills is to go after 'em, not pretend to be a trader, too scared to fight and too fat to run.”

Thorby felt a simmer. “Who,” he said, “told you that traders were scared to fight?”

“Quit pushin' that stuff! Whoever heard of a trader burning a bandit?”

Peebie may have been sincere; kills made by traders received no publicity. But Thorby's burn increased. “I have.”

Thorby meant that he had heard of traders' burning raiders; Peebie took it as a boast “Oh, you did, did you? Listen to that, men -- our peddler is a hero. He's burned a bandit all by his own little self! Tell us about it. Did you set tire to his hair? Or drop potassium in his beer?”

“I used,” Thorby stated, “a Mark XIX one-stage target-seeker, made by Bethlehem-Antares and armed with a 20 megaton plutonium warhead. I launched a timed shot on closing to beaming range on a collision-curve prediction.”

There was silence. Finally Peebie said coldly, “Where did you read that?”

“It's what the tape showed after the engagement I was senior starboard firecontrolman. The portside computer was out -- so I know it was my shot that burned him.”

“Now he's a weapons officer! Peddler, don't peddle it here.”

Thorby shrugged. “I used to be. A weapons control officer, rather. I never learned much about ordnance.”

“Modest, isn't he? Talk is cheap, Trader.”

“You should know, Decibel”

Peebie was halted by his nickname; Thorby did not rate such familiarity. Another voice cut in, saying sweetly, “Sure, Decibel, talk is cheap. Now you tell about the big kills you've made. Go ahead.” The speaker was non-rated but was a clerk in the executive office and immune to Peebie's displeasure.

Peebie glowered. “Enough of this prattle,” he growled. “Baslim, I'll see you at oh eight hundred in combat control -- well find out how much you know about firecontrol.”

Thorby was not anxious to be tested; he knew nothing about the Hydra's equipment. But an order is an order; he was facing Peebie's smirk at the appointed time.

The smirk did not last Hydra's instruments bore no resemblance to those in the Sisu, but the principles were the same and the senior gunnery sergeant (cybernetics) seemed to find nothing unlikely in an ex-trader knowing how to shoot. He was always looking for talent; people to handle ballistic trackers for the preposterous problems of combat at sub-light-speed were as scarce among Guardsmen as among the People.

He questioned Thorby about the computer he had handled. Presently he nodded. “I've never seen anything but schematics on a Dusseldorf tandem rig; that approach is obsolete. But if you can get a hit with that junk, we can use you.” The sergeant turned to Peebie. “Thanks, Decibel. I'll mention it to the Weapons Officer. Stick around, Baslim.”

Peebie looked astonished. “He's got work to do, Sarge.”

Sergeant Luter shrugged. “Tell your leading P.O. that I need Baslim here.”

Thorby had been shocked to hear Sisu's beautiful computers called “junk.” But shortly he knew what Luter meant; the massive brain that fought for the Hydra was a genius among computers. Thorby would never control it alone -- but soon he was an acting ordnanceman 3/c (cybernetics) and relatively safe from Peebie's wit. He began to feel like a Guardsman -- very junior but an accepted shipmate.

Hydra was cruising above speed-of-light toward the Rim world Ultima Thule, where she would refuel and start prowling for outlaws. No query had reached the ship concerning Thorby's identity. He was contented with his status in Pop's old outfit; it made him proud to feel that Pop would be proud of him. He did miss Sisu, but a ship with no women was simpler to live in; compared with Sisu the Hydra had no restrictive regulations.

But Colonel Brisby did not let Thorby forget why he had been enlisted. Commanding officers are many linkages away from a recruit; a non-rated man might not lay eyes on his skipper except at inspections. But Brisby sent for Thorby repeatedly.

Brisby received authorization from the Exotic Corps to discuss Colonel Baslim's report with Baslim's courier, bearing in mind the critical classification of the subject. So Brisby called Thorby in.

Thorby was first warned of the necessity of keeping his mouth shut Brisby told him that the punishment for blabbing would be as heavy as a court-martial could hand out. “But that's not the point. We have to be sure that the question never arises. Otherwise we can't discuss it.”

Thorby hesitated. “How can I know that I'll keep my mouth shut when I don't know what it is?”

Brisby looked annoyed. “I can order you to.”

“Yes, sir. And I'll say, 'Aye aye, sir.' But does that make you certain that I wouldn't risk a court-martial?”

“But -- This is ridiculous! I want to talk about Colonel Baslim's work. But you're to keep your yap shut, you understand me? If you don't, I'll tear you to pieces with my bare hands. No young punk is going to quibble with me where the Old Man's work is concerned!”

Thorby looked relieved. “Why didn't you say it was that, Skipper? I wouldn't blab about anything of Pop's -- why, that was the first thing he taught me.”

“Oh.” Brisby grinned. “I should have known. Okay.”

“I suppose,” Thorby added thoughtfully, “that it's all right to talk to you.”

Brisby looked startled. “I hadn't realized that this cuts two ways. But it does. I can show you a dispatch from his corps, telling me to discuss his report with you. Would that convince you?”

Brisby found himself showing a “Most Secret” dispatch to his most Junior, acting petty officer, to convince said junior that his C.O. was entitled to talk with him. At the time It seemed reasonable; it was not until later that the Colonel wondered.

Thorby read the translated dispatch and nodded. “Anything you want. Skipper. I'm sure Pop would agree.”

“Okay. You know what he was doing?”

“Well . . . yes and no. I saw some of it. I know what sort of things he was interested in having me notice and remember. I used to carry messages for him and it was always very secret But I never knew why.” Thorby frowned. “They said he was a spy.”

“Intelligence agent sounds better.”

Thorby shrugged. “If he was spying, he'd call it that. Pop never minced words.”

“No, he never minced words,” Brisby agreed, wincing as he recalled being scorched right through his uniform by a dressing-down. “Let me explain. Mmm . . . know any Terran history?”

“Uh, not much.”

“It's a miniature history of the race. Long before space travel, when we hadn't even filled up Terra, there used to be dirtside frontiers. Every time new territory was found, you always got three phenomena: traders ranging out ahead and taking their chances, outlaws preying on the honest men -- and a traffic in slaves. It happens the same way today, when we're pushing through space instead of across oceans and prairies. Frontier traders are adventurers taking great risks for great profits. Outlaws, whether hill bands or sea pirates or the raiders in space, crop up in any area not under police protection. Both are temporary. But slavery is another matter -- the most vicious habit humans fall into and the hardest to break. It starts up in every new land and it's terribly hard to root out After a culture falls ill of it, it gets rooted in the economic system and laws, in men's habits and attitudes. You abolish it; you drive it underground -- there it lurks, ready to spring up again, in the minds of people who think it is their 'natural' right to own other people. You can't reason with them; you can kill them but you can't change their minds.”

Brisby sighed. “Baslim, the Guard is just the policeman and the mailman; we haven't had a major war in two centuries. What we do work at is the impossible job of maintaining order on the frontier, a globe three thousand light-years in circumference -- no one can understand how big that is; the mind can't swallow it.

“Nor can human beings police it. It gets bigger every year. Dirtside police eventually close the gaps. But with us, the longer we try the more there is. So to most of us it's a job, an honest job, but one that can never be finished.

“But to Colonel Richard Baslim it was a passion. Especially he hated the slave trade, the thought of it could make him sick at his stomach -- I've seen. He lost his leg and an eye -- I suppose you know -- while rescuing a shipload of people from a slaving compound.

“That would satisfy most officers -- go home and retire. Not old Spit-and-Polish! He taught a few years, then he went to the one corps that might take him, chewed up as he was, and presented a plan.

“The Nine Worlds are the backbone of the slave trade. The Sargony was colonized a long time ago, and they never accepted Hegemony after they broke off as colonies. The Nine Worlds don't qualify on human rights and don't want to qualify. So we can't travel there and they can't visit our worlds.

“Colonel Baslim decided that the traffic could be rendered uneconomic if we knew how it worked in the Sargony. He reasoned that slavers had to have ships, had to have bases, had to have markets, that it was not just a vice but a business. So he decided to go there and study it.

“This was preposterous -- one man against a nine-planet empire . . . but the Exotic Corps deals in preposterous notions. Even they would probably not have made him an agent if he had not had a scheme to get his reports out. An agent couldn't travel back and forth, nor could he use the mails -- there aren't any between us and them -- and he certainly couldn't set up an n-space communicator; that would be as conspicuous as a brass band.

“But Baslim had an idea. The only people who visit both the Nine Worlds and our own are Free Traders. But they avoid politics like poison, as you know better than I, and they go to great lengths not to offend local customs. However Colonel Baslim had a personal 'in' to them.

“I suppose you know that those people he rescued were Free Traders. He told 'X' Corps that he could report back through his friends. So they let him try. It's my guess that no one knew that he intended to pose as a beggar -- I doubt if he planned it; he was always great at improvising. But he got in and for years he observed and got his reports out.

“That's the background and now I want to squeeze every possible fact out of you. You can tell us about methods -- the report I forwarded never said a word about methods. Another agent might be able to use his methods.”

Thorby said soberly, “Ill tell you anything I can. I don't know much.”

“You know more than you think you do. Would you let the psych officer put you under again and see if we can work total recall?”

“Anything is okay if it'll help Pop's work.”

“It should. Another thing --” Brisby crossed his cabin, held up a sheet on which was the silhouette of a spaceship. “What ship is this?”

Thorby's eyes widened. “A Sargonese cruiser.”

Brisby snatched up another one. “This?”

“Uh, it looks like a slaver that called at Jubbulpore twice a year.”

“Neither one,” Brisby said savagely, “is anything of the sort. These are recognition patterns out of my files -- of ships built by our biggest shipbuilder. If you saw them in Jubbulpore, they were either copies, or bought from us!”

Thorby considered it. “They build ships there.”

“So I've been told. But Colonel Baslim reported ships' serial numbers -- how he got them I couldn't guess; maybe you can. He claims that the slave trade is getting help from our own worlds!” Brisby looked unbearably disgusted.

Thorby reported regularly to the Cabin, sometimes to see Brisby, sometimes to be interviewed under hypnosis by Dr. Krishnamurti. Brisby always mentioned the search for Thorby's identity and told him not to be discouraged; such a search took a long time. Repeated mention changed Thorby's attitude about it from something impossible to something which was going to be true soon; he began thinking about his family, wondering who he was? -- it was going to be nice to know, to be like other people.

Brisby was reassuring himself; he had been notified to keep Thorby off sensitive work the very day the ship jumped from Hekate when he had hoped that Thorby would be identified at once. He kept the news to himself, holding fast to his conviction that Colonel Baslim was never wrong and that the matter would be cleared up.

When Thorby was shifted to Combat Control, Brisby worried when the order passed across his desk -- that was a “security” area, never open to visitors -- then he told himself that a man with no special training couldn't learn anything there that could really affect security and that he was already using the lad in much more sensitive work. Brisby felt that he was learning things of importance -- that the Old Man, for example, had used the cover personality of a one-legged beggar to hide two-legged activities . . . but had actually been a beggar; he and the boy had lived only on alms. Brisby admired such artistic perfection -- it should be an example to other agents.