The Best of Sci-Fi-5

“Hest,” I said.

“Hest is valuable,” she said. “He thinks he is transferred often because we need him to set up procedures and routines. Actually it’s because he is a natural focal point for the wrong ones to gather round. Birds of a feather. Sending him out a couple months in advance of a trouble-shooter saves us a lot of time. We already know where to look when we get there.”

“He doesn’t catch on?” I asked.

“People get blinded by their own self-importance,” she said. “He can’t see beyond himself. And,” she added, “we vary our techniques.”

I sat there and thought about it for a few minutes. I could see the sense in it, and I could see, in the long run, how Libo would be a better, saner place for the inoculation that would make the better-balanced Earthers so sick of this kind of thing they’d never want any more of it. But it was damned cold-blooded. These scientists! And it was aside from the issue of my goonie clerk.

“All right,” I said. “I guess you know what you’re doing. But it happens I’m more interested in that goonie clerk.”

“That goonie clerk is another focal point,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for some such incident.”

“You might have waited a long time,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she answered. “There’s always an incident. We wait for a particularly effective one.”

I stood up.

“You’d sacrifice the goonie to the job you’re doing,” I said.

“Yes,” she said shortly. “If it were necessary,” she added.

“You can find some other incident, then,” I said. “I don’t intend to see that goonie mistreated, maybe worse, just to get a result for you.”

She stood up quickly, a flash of shimmering light.

“You will keep your hands entirely off it, Mr. MacPherson,” she said crisply. “I do not intend to have my work spoiled by amateur meddling. I’m a professional. This kind of thing is my business. I know how to handle it. Keep off, Mr. MacPherson. You don’t realize how much damage you could do at this point.”

“I’m not a Company man, Miss Wellman,” I said hotly. “You can’t order me.”

I turned around and stalked out of her door and went back to the main street of town. It was nearly deserted now. Only a few of the older hands were sitting around in the saloons, a few so disgusted with the frenetic meetings they wouldn’t go even to break the monotony.

I went over to the main warehouse and through the gate to the landing field. The crowd was there, sitting around, standing around, moving around, waiting for the show to start. At the far end there was a platform, all lighted up with floods. It was bare except for a simple lectern at the center. Very effective. Miss Wellman hadn’t arrived.

Maybe I could spot Hest somewhere up near the platform.

I threaded my way through the crowd, through knots of young Earthers who were shooting the breeze about happenings of the day, the usual endless gossip over trivialities. For a while I couldn’t pin it down, the something that was lacking. Then I realized that the rapt, trancelike hypnotism I expected to see just wasn’t there. The magic was wearing off. It was at this stage of the game that a smart rabble-rouser would move on, would sense the satiation and leave while he was still ahead, before everybody began to realize how temporary, pointless and empty the whole emotional binge had been. As Miss Wellman had said, her work here was about finished.

But I didn’t spot Hest anywhere. I moved on up near the platform. There was a group of five at one corner of the platform.

“Where could I find Mr. Hest?” I asked them casually.

They gave me the big eye, the innocent face, the don’t-know shake of the head. They didn’t know. I turned away and heard a snicker. I whirled back around and saw only wooden faces, the sudden poker face an amateur puts on when he gets a good hand—later he wonders why everybody dropped out of the pot.

I wandered around some more. I stood on the outside of little knots of men and eavesdropped. I didn’t hear anything of value for a while.

It wasn’t until there was a buzz in the crowd, and a spotlight swept over to the gate to highlight Miss Wellman’s entrance that I heard a snatch of phrase. Maybe it was the excitement that raised that voice just enough for me to hear.

“… Carson’s Hill tonight…”

“Shut up, you fool!”

There was a deep silence as the crowd watched Miss Wellman in her shimmering robe; she swept down the path that opened in front of her as if she were floating. But I had the feeling it was an appreciation of good showmanship they felt. I wondered what it had been like a couple of weeks back.

But I wasn’t waiting here for anything more. I’d got my answer. Carson’s Hill, of course! If Hest and his gang were staging another kind of show, a private one for their own enjoyment, Carson’s Hill would be the place. It fitted—the gang of juvenile delinquents who are compelled to burn down the school, desecrate the chapel, stab to death the mother image in some innocent old woman who just happened to walk by at the wrong moment—wild destruction of a place or symbol that represented inner travail.

I was moving quickly through the crowd, the silent crowd. There was only a low grumble as I pushed somebody aside so I could get through. Near the edge I heard her voice come through the speakers, low and thrilling, dulcet sweet.

“My children,” she began, “tonight’s meeting must be brief. This is farewell, and I must not burden you with my grief at leaving you …”

I made the yard gate and ran down the street to where my goonie team still waited beside the rickshaw.

“Let’s get out to Carson’s Hill as fast as we can,” I said to the team. In the darkness I caught the answering flash of their eyes, and heard the soft sound of harness being slipped over pelt. By the time I was seated, they were away in a smart mile-covering trot.

Miriam Wellman had been damned sure of herself, burning her bridges behind her while Hest and his rowdies were still on the loose, probably up there on Carson’s Hill, torturing that goonie for their own amusement. I wondered how in hell she thought that was taking care of anything.

The road that led toward home was smooth enough for a while, but it got rough as soon as the goonies took the trail that branched off toward Carson’s Hill. It was a balmy night, warm and sweet with the fragrance of pal-tree blossoms. The sky was full of stars, still close, not yet faded in the light of the first moon that was now rising in the East. It was a world of beauty, and the only flaw in it was Man.

In the starlight, and now the increasing moonlight, Carson’s Hill began to stand forth, blocking off the stars to the west. In the blackness of that silhouette, near its crest, I seemed to catch a hint of reddish glow—a fire had been built in the amphitheater.

Farther along, where the steep climb began, I spoke softly to the team, had them pull off the path into a small grove of pal trees. From here on the path wound around and took forever to get to the top. I could make better time with a stiff climb on foot. Avoid sentries, too—assuming they’d had enough sense to post any.

The team seemed uneasy, as if they sensed my tenseness, or knew what was happening up there on top. We understood them so little, how could we know what the goonie sensed? But as always they were obedient, anxious to please man, only to please him, whatever he wanted. I told them to conceal themselves and wait for me. They would.

I left the path and struck off in a straight line toward the top. The going wasn’t too bad at first. Wide patches of no trees, no undergrowth, open to the moonlight. I worried about it a little. To anyone watching from above I would be a dark spot moving against the light-colored grass. But I gambled they would be too intent with their pleasures, or would be watching only the path, which entered the grove from the other side of the hill.