C Kornbluth - His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

Whether he's the real Sir Mallory turned traitor doesn't matter much.

He may have popped the real Sir Mallory and taken his place with disguises. Anyway, you recall the outrageous bombing of the Hotel de Oslo et d'Universe, or whatever it was. That was the feeblest bombing I ever encountered, and yet Sir Mallory and a few old hens got excited about it.

"He proposed a military police of unlimited powers. That was a very bad sign. It was the first step towards wrecking the Conference. It denied democracy itself, the principle the Conference was constructed on. There could have been no bombing or killing half so disruptively effective as that move."

Kay wearily agreed. Her knees were scratched, and her hands were calloused with crawling. But she'd got over her illness and felt hard as nails. The rough-and-ready bullet extraction that Bazasch had performed on Ballister had healed nicely.

Showdown

On the big night there was no moon. Jose had planned it that way, he claimed. They started at dusk, carrying their first two meals.

It was a horrible grind for an old man, a girl and a recently-shot person.

They made crevasses that seemed impossible, climbed lofty trees to sight. After some hours of the terrible labor they sighted the lights of the landing field glowing dimly through the night. Fearing no cars they made good time along the highway, turning quietly into three roadside shadows when they passed the blockhouse that surmounted the dam.

They found the city to be a bigger blotch of black in the general darkness.

Slipping down the alleys and lanes of the city, silent as so many ghosts, the three made their way to the center of town. By prearranged plan Ballister unlatched the front door of the Mayor's little office building.

They entered behind him; Ballister felt for the cellar door. It swung open and a blaze of light poured through, shocking, dazzling after the hours-long trek through pitch-blackness.

"Aha!" whispered Bazasch. His cat's eyes contracted; from his belt flicked a knife, eight wicked inches of blank steel. It slipped through the air, lodged in the throat of a burly "Basque" who had made the mistake of drawing his gun.

"Close it," said Kay, dashing down the stairs to kick the gun away from the hand of the "Basque," wounded but not yet dead. She finished him for the moment with a kick to the side of his head.

Ballister and Bazasch tore after her, the door bolted as securely as it could be.

Kay inspected the tower of machinery, marvelling. "Don't ask me," she finally griped. "I agree with my ignorant colleague. Whatever it is, it drinks lots of juice and it looks like a concrete mixer."

Ballister picked up the gun. It was a hefty hand-weapon, a wide-gage projector of lead slugs that mushroomed effectively. "What do we do now?" he asked weakly. "That individual sent in an alarm, to be sure, before he even drew."

"Take a good look," said Kay. She indicated the man on the concrete flooring. "Isn't the face familiar?"

"There's a swell resemblance to that old rascal, Sir Mallory Gaffney. You mean it?"

"Nothing but that. What's it signify?"

"You have me there. What is it, Hoe?"

"It is the besiegers—can be no others. They come!"

There was the clump of boots outside, up the stairs.

Ballister slipped Bazasch the gun: "Can you hold them, Hoe? Hold them by yourself? Because we're going to be busy down here. Will you?"

The Basque took the gun, sighted along its barrel for a moment before slowly replying: "They must have killed my whole family, which I disgraced by becoming sheep-thief. I will no longer disgrace."

"Good man," gasped Ballister, holding his wounded shoulder. "Go get

'em!"

The little man scrambled up the stairs, chose a shallow niche. A big grin spread over his face as he raised his gun-muzzle and fired once through the door. He commanded the position completely; while his ammunition lasted—he neatly caught the pouch Kay unhooked from the man and tossed up to him—he was impregnable.

With feverish speed Ballister stripped the man on the flooring. Kay went through the pockets; came up triumphantly with a slim pamphlet.

"In German!" she explained.

"Let me." He took the little book and ruffled through it, then cast a despairing glance at the monstrous mechanism that nearly filled the room. "It's a handbook for this thing—the German for it is duplo-atomic-radexic-multiplic-convertor. What do you suppose that means?

The wiring's beyond me completely. I couldn't repair an electric bell."

She took the thing and unfolded the gatefold wiring-diagram, studied it with wrinkled brows. "Sweet Lord of Creation!" she muttered. "I have to crack this on an empty stomach!" Whipping out a pencil she traced—

tried to trace—the wires and tubes to their source. Finally she snapped:

"There's a switchboard somewhere on the side of the thing. Find it, please."

Ballister hunted, finally climbing the rickety iron ladder that led to the summit of the machine. "Got it!" he said. "And it makes sense!"

"Turn on the power," she called at him.

He threw the switch that seemed appropriate. His reward was a shock that nearly threw him from the structure. But the power went through; tubes lit here and there.

Eagerly Kay hunted in the vitals of the mechanism, comparing it with the diagram. "See a hopper-opening?" she asked.

Jose fired three times in rapid succession, brought four dead "Basques"

tumbling down the stairs. He waved cheerily at Ballister.

"There's a switch for it," he said, throwing it down. A metal shutter opened; its cavernous maw led into blackness. Kay, shuddering a little, peered in. "Ought to light," she said desperately. "There should be a battery of tubes that the raw material—whatever it is—passed under.

Fish for it, will you?"

Ballister stabbed at a switch; gears began to clank like a windmill's crushers. He tried another. "Okay!" yelled the girl. "They light!"

He scrambled down, squatted beside her. She had cast the book aside and was weeping. "Here," she sobbed, "all the power we need, a machine that does something terrible and wonderful to it, and we can't use it! We don't know how!"

Ballister, before replying, administered a mercy-kick to one of the

"Basques" who was trying to reach his gun, wounded as he was. Jose caught the weapon. He was grinning with fiendish delight as he fired another burst through the door.

Ballister and Kay rose. The girl's tears dried on her face as she studied the three new corpses.

"Spitting images," said Ballister, his throat hoarse. This was something uncanny, something that transcended warfare and science. Except for minor details of hair-line and clothes, the four bodies were alike—all the image of Sir Mallory.

"I get it," said the girl briskly. "There was talk of it in a Sunday feature I did. It's the only simple, logical explanation for your city of the future built as if by one man. It was built by one man, and he was Sir Mallory."

"That's what the machine does," snapped Ballister. "Rearranges molecules to suit the pattern. Set the pattern for a man and feed in your raw material, and out come as many copies as you want. Perfect war-unit, perfect rapport between and among the slew of them. Perfect for spy-systems. And the Gestapo flair for disguises took care of enough variations to satisfy us. Hell, who'd look for a thing like that?"

The girl was scrambling up the stairs again. "Excuse me," she barked rudely at Bazasch. "Not at—" he was beginning to reply. He shut his mouth with a snap as she began to undress him without ceremony.

She pulled from his chest his home-made undershirt, fingered the soft, short-cropped fur. "Go right ahead," she said. "Thanks."

"Brilliant," admitted Ballister after a moment's thought. "Utterly brilliant. Very sure you can make it work?"