Arthur Clarke - Childhood’s End

Starting with me, I suppose, thought Stormgren. He wondered if the other had given him more than a fraction of the whole story. Did they really think that these gangster methods would Influence Karellen in the slightest? On the other hand, it was quite true that a well-organized resistance movement could make life very difficult. For Joe had put his finger on the one weak spot in the Overlords’ rule. Ultimately, all their orders were carried out by human agents. If these were terrorized into disobedience, the whole system might collapse. It was only a faint possibility, for Stormgren felt confident that Karellen would soon find some solution.

“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 few days, 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. “I read in Time the other day that you were a good poker player.” His voice suddenly became grave. “I hope there’s plenty of cash in your wallet,” he said anxiously. ’We never thought of looking. After all, we can hardly accept cheques.”

Quite overcome, Stormgren stared blankly at his captors.

Then, as the true humour of the situation sank into his mind, it suddenly seemed to him that all the cares and worries of office had lifted from his shoulders. From now on, it was van Ryberg’s show. Whatever happened, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it — and now these fantastic criminals were anxiously waiting to play poker with him.

Abruptly, he threw back his head and laughed as he had not done for years. There was no doubt, thought van Ryberg morosely, that Wainwright was telling the truth. He might have his suspicions, but he did not know who had kidnapped Stormgren. Nor did he approve of the kidnapping itself. Van Ryberg had a shrewd idea that for some tune extremists in the Freedom League had been putting pressure on Wainwright to make him adopt a more active policy. Now they were taking matters into their own hands.

The kidnapping had been beautifully organized, there was no doubt of that. Stormgren might be anywhere on Earth, and there seemed little hope of tracing him. Yet something must be done, decided van Ryberg, and done quickly. Despite the jests he had so often made, his real feeling towards Karellen was one of overwhelming awe. The thought of approaching the Supervisor directly filled him with dismay, but there seemed no alternative.

The communications section occupied the entire top floor of the great building. Lines of facsimile machines, some silent, some clicking busily, stretched away into the distance. Through them poured endless streams of statistics: production figures, census returns, and all the book-keeping of a world economic system. Somewhere up in Karellen’s ship must lie the equivalent of this great room — and van Ryberg wondered, with a tingling of the spine, what shapes moved to and fro collecting the messages that Earth was sending to the Overlords.

But today he was not interested in these machines and the routine business they handled. He walked to the little private room that only Stormgren was supposed to enter. At his instructions, the lock had been forced and the Chief Communications Officer was waiting there for him.

“It’s an ordinary teleprinter — standard typewriter keyboard,” he was told.

“There’s a facsimile machine as well if you want to send any pictures or tabular information — but you said you wouldn’t be needing that.”

Van Ryberg nodded absently. “That’s all. Thanks,” he said. “I don’t expect to be here very long. Then get the place locked up again and give me all the keys.”

He waited until the Communications Officer had left, and then sat down at the machine. It was, he knew, very seldom used, since nearly all business between Karellen and Stormgren was dealt with at their weekly meetings. Since this was something of an emergency circuit, he expected a reply fairly quickly.

After a moment’s hesitation, he began to tap out his message with unpracticed fingers. The machine purred away quietly and the words gleamed for a few seconds on the darkened screen.

Then he leaned back and waited for the answer. Scarcely a minute later the machine started to whirr again. Not for the first time, van Ryberg wondered if the Supervisor ever slept. The message was as brief as it was unhelpful.

NO INFORMATION. LEAVE MATTERS ENTIRELY TO YOUR DISCRETION. K. Rather bitterly, and without any satisfaction at all, van Ryberg realized how much greatness had been thrust upon him.

During the past three days Stormgren had analyzed his captors with some thoroughness. Joe was the only one of any importance; the others were nonentities — the riff-raff one would expect any illegal movement to gather round itself The ideals of the Freedom League meant nothing to them; their only concern was earning a living with the minimum of work.

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, and it soon became obvious to Stormgren that the big Pole had never thought seriously about the causes for which he was fighting. Emotion and extreme conservatism clouded all his judgments. 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 vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.

There was now little doubt, as far as Stormgren was concerned, that Karellen had failed to locate him. He had tried to bluff, but his captors were unconvinced. He was fairly certain that they had been holding him here to see if Karellen would act, and now that nothing had happened they could proceed with their plans.

Stormgren was not surprised when, four 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.

They were already waiting, gathered round the rickety table, when Joe waved him politely into the living room. Stormgren was amused to note that his jailer was now wearing, very ostentatiously, a huge pistol that had never been in evidence before. The two thugs had vanished, and even Joe seemed somewhat restrained. Stormgren could see at once that he was now confronted by men of a much higher calibre, and the group opposite him reminded him strongly of a picture he had once seen of Lenin and his associates in the first days of the Russian Revolution. There was the same intellectual force, iron determination, and ruthlessness in these six men. Joe and his kind were harmless; here were the real brains behind the organization.

With a curt nod, Stormgren moved over to the only vacant seat and tried to look self-possessed. As he approached, the elderly, thick-set man on the far side of the table leaned forward and stared at him with piercing grey eyes. They made Stormgren so uncomfortable that he spoke first — something he had not intended to do.

“I suppose you’ve come to discuss terms. What’s my ransom?”

He noticed that in the background someone was taking down his words in a shorthand notebook. It was all very businesslike.

The leader replied in a musical Welsh accent.

“You could put it that way, Mr. Secretary-General. But we’re interested in information, not cash.”

So that was it, thought Stormgren. He was a prisoner of war, and this was his interrogation.