Poul Anderson - The Star Fox

“Daddy,” said the small voice. “Endre. I’m okay. I mean, they haven’t hurt me. A woman stopped me when I was about to get on the elway home. She said her bra magnet had come loose and would I please help her fix it I didn’t think anybody upper-class was dangerous. She was dressed nice and talked nice and had a car there and everything. We got in the car and blanked the bubble. Then she shot me with a stunner. I woke up here. I don’t know where it is, a suite of rooms, the windows are always blanked. Two women are staying with me. They aren’t mean, they just won’t let me go. They say it’s for peace. Please do what they want.” Her flat speech indicated she was doped with antiphobic. But suddenly herself broke through. “I’m so lonesome!” she cried, and the tears came.

The strip ended. After a long while Heim grew aware that Vadász was urging him to read a note that had also been in the package. He managed to focus on the typescript.

Mr. Heim:

For weeks you have lent your name and influence to the militarists.

You have actually paid for advertisements making the false and inflammatory claim that there are survivors at large on New Europe. Now we have obtained information which suggests you may be plotting still more radical ways to disrupt the peace negotiations.

If this is true, mankind cannot allow it. For the sake of humanity, we cannot take the chance that it might be true.

Your daughter will be kept as a hostage for your good behavior until the treaty with Alerion has been concluded, and for as long thereafter as seems wise. If meanwhile you publicly admit you lied about New Europe, and do nothing else, she will be returned.

Needless to say, you are not to inform the police of this message. The peace movement has so many loyal supporters in so many places that we will know if you do. In that event, we will be forced to punish you through the girl. If on the other hand you behave yourself, you to receive occasional word from her.

Yours for peace and sanity.

He had to read three or four times before it registered.

“San Francisco meter,” Vadász said. He crumpled the plastic and hurled it at the wall. “Not that that means anything.”

“Gud i himlen.” Heim stumbled to a lounger, fell down, and sat staring into the unspeakable.

“Why don’t they go straight after me?”

“They have done so,” Vadász answered.

“Personally!”

“You would be a risky target for violence. A young and trusting girl is easier.”

Heim had a feeling that he was about to weep. But his eyes remained two coals in his skull.

“What can we do?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Vadász said like a robot. “So much depends on who they are. Obviously not anyone official. A government need only arrest you on some excuse.”

“The Militants, then. Jonas Yore.” Heim rose and walked toward the exit.

“Where are you going?” Vadász grabbed his arm. It was like trying to halt a landslip.

“For a gun,” Heim said, “and on to Chicago.”

“No. Hold. Stop, you damned fool! What could you do except provoke them into killing her?”

Heim swayed and stood.

“Yore may or may not know about this,” Vadász said. “Certainly no one has definite information about your plans, or they would simply tip the Peace Control. The kidnappers could be in the lunatic fringe of the Militants. Emotions are running so high. And that sort must needs be dramatic, attack people in the street, steal your daughter, strut their dirty little egos—yes, Earth has many like them in the upper classes too, crazed with uselessness. Any cause will do. ‘Peace’ is merely the fashionable one.”

Heim returned to the bottle. He poured himself a drink, slopping much. Lisa is alive, he told himself. Lisa is alive , Lisa is alive. He tossed the liquor down his gullet. “How long will she be?” he screamed.

“Hey?”

“She’s with fanatics. They’ll still hate me, whatever happens. And they’ll be afraid she can identify them. Endre, help me!”

“We have some time,” Vadász snapped. “Use it for something better than hysterics.”

The glow in Heim’s stomach spread outward. I’ve been responsible for lives before, he thought, and the old reflexes of command awoke. You construct a games theoretical matrix and choose the course with smallest negative payoff. His brain began to move. “Thanks, Endre,” he said.

“Could they be bluffing about spies in the police?” Vadász wondered.

“I don’t know, but the chance looks too big to take.”

“Then… we cancel the expedition, renounce what we have said about New Europe, and hope?”

“That may be the only thing to do.” It whirred in Heim’s head. “Though I do believe it’s wrong also, even to get Lisa home.”

“What is left? To hit back? How? Maybe private detectives could search—”

“Over a whole planet? Oh, we can try them, but—No, I was fighting a fog till I got the idea of the raider, and now I’m back in the fog and I’ve got to get out again. Something definite, that they won’t know about before too late. You were right, there’s no sense in threatening Yore. Or even appealing to him, I guess. What matters to them is their cause. If we could go after it—”

Heim bellowed. Vadász almost got knocked over in the big man’s rush to the phone. “What in blue hell, Gunnar?”

Heim unlocked a drawer and took out his private directory. It now included the unlisted number and code of Michel Coquelin’s sealed circuit. And 0930 in California was—what? 1730?—in Paris. His fingers stabbed the buttons.

A confidential secretary appeared in the screen. “ Bureau de—oh, M. Heim.”

“Donnez-vous moi M. le Minister tout de suite, s’il vous plaît.” Despite the circumstances, Vadász winced at what Heim thought was French.

The secretary peered at the visage confronting him, sucked down a breath, and punched.

Coquelin’s weary features.

“Gunnar! What is this? News of your girl?”

Heim told him. Coquelin turned gray. “Oh, no,” he said. He had children of his own.

“Uh-huh,” Heim said. “I see only one plausible way out. My crew’s assembled now, a tough bunch of boys. And you know where Cynbe is.”

“Are you crazy?” Coquelin stammered.

“Give me the details: location, how to get in, disposition of guards and alarms,” Heim said.

“I’ll take it from there. If we fail, I won’t implicate you. I’ll save Lisa, or try to save her, by giving the kidnappers a choice: that I either cast discredit on them and their movement by spilling the whole cargo; or I get her back, tell the world I lied, and show remorse by killing myself. We can arrange matters so they know I’ll go through with it.”

“I cannot—I—”

“This is rough on you, Michel, I know,” Heim said. “But if you can’t help me, well, then I’m tied. I’ll have to do exactly what they want. And half a million will die on New Europe.”

Coquelin wet his lips, stiffened his back, and asked: “Suppose I tell you, Gunnar. What happens?”

“Space yacht Flutterby, GB-327-RP, beaming Georgetown, Ascension Island. We are in distress. Come in, Georgetown. Come in, Georgetown.”

The whistle of cloven air lifted toward a roar. Heat billowed through the forward shield. The bridge viewports seemed aflame and the radar screen had gone mad. Heim settled firmer into his harness and fought the pilot console.

“Garrison to Flutterby.” The British voice was barely audible as maser waves struggled through the ionized air enveloping that steel meteorite. “We read you. Come in, Flutterby.”