A Logic Named Joe Part 29

Don't tell me! I'd rather try to guess."

He waved his hand in cordial dismissal and an emba.s.sy servant showed Hoddan to his quarters. Ten minutes later another staff man brought him tools. He was left alone.

He delicately disa.s.sembled the set in his room and began to put some of the parts together in a novel but wholly rational fas.h.i.+on. The science of electronics, like the science of mathematics, had progressed away beyond the point where all of it had practical application. One could spend a lifetime learning things that research had discovered in the past, and industry had never found a use for. On Zan, industriously reading pirated books, Hoddan hadn't known where utility stopped. He'd kept on learning long after a practical man would have stopped studying to get a paying job.

Any electronic engineer could have made the device he now a.s.sembled. It only needed to be wanted, and apparently he was the first person to want it. In this respect it was like the receptor that had gotten him into trouble. As he put the small parts together, he felt a certain loneliness. A man Hoddan's age needed to have some girl admire him from time to time. If Nedda had been sitting cross-legged before him, listening raptly while he explained, Hoddan would probably have been perfectly happy. But she wasn't. It wasn't likely she ever would be. Hoddan scowled.

Inside of an hour he'd made a hand-sized, five watt, wave-guide projector of waves of eccentric form.

In the beam of that projector, air became ionized. Air became a high-resistance conductor comparable to nichrome wire, when and where the projector sent its microwaves.

He was wrapping tape about the pistol-like hand-grip when a servant brought him a scribbled note. It had been handed in at the emba.s.sy gate by a woman who fled after leaving it. It looked like Nedda's handwriting. It read like Nedda's phrasing. It appeared to have been written by somebody in a highly emotional state. But it wasn't quite-not absolutely-convincing.

He went to find the amba.s.sador. He handed over the note. The amba.s.sador read it and raised his eyebrows.

"Well?"

"It could be authentic," admitted Hoddan.

"In other words," said the amba.s.sador, "you are not sure that it is a b.o.o.by trap-an invitation to a date with the police?"

"I'm not sure," said Hoddan. "I think I'd better bite. If I have any illusions left after this morning, I'd better find it out. I thought Nedda liked me quite a bit."

"I make no comment," observed the amba.s.sador. "Can I help you in any way?"

"I have to leave the emba.s.sy," said Hoddan, "and there's almost a solid line of police outside the walls.

Could I borrow some old clothes, a few pillows, and a length of rope?"

Half an hour later a rope uncoiled itself at the very darkest outside corner of the emba.s.sy wall. It dangled down to the ground. This was at the rear of the emba.s.sy enclosure. The night was bright with stars, and the city's towers glittered with many lights. But here there was almost complete blackness and that silence of a city which is sometimes so companionable.

The rope remained hanging from the wall. No light reached the ground there. The tiny crescent of Walden's farthest moon cast an insufficient glow. Nothing could be seen by it.

The rope went up, as if it had been lowered merely to make sure that it was long enough for its purpose.

Then it descended again. This time a figure dangled at its end. It came down, swaying a little. It reached the blackest part of the shadow at the wall's base. It stayed there.

Nothing happened. The figure rose swiftly, hauled up in rapid pullings of the rope. Then the line came down again and again a figure descended. But this figure moved. The rope swayed and oscillated. The figure came down a good halfway to the ground. It paused, and then descended with much movement to two-thirds of the way from the top.

There something seemed to alarm it. It began to rise with violent writhings of the rope. It climbed.

There was a crackling noise. A stun-pistol. The figure seemed to climb more frantically. More cracklings. They were stun-pistol charges and there were tiny sparks where they hit. The dangling figure seemed convulsed. It went limp, but it did not fall. More charges poured into it. It hung motionless halfway up the wall of the emba.s.sy.

Movements began in the darkness. Men appeared, talking in low tones and straining their eyes toward the now motionless figure. They gathered underneath it. One went off at a run, carrying a message.

Someone of authority arrived, panting. There was more low-toned argument. More and still more men appeared. There were forty or fifty figures at the base of the wall.

One of those figures began to climb the rope hand over hand. He reached the motionless object. He swore in a shocked voice. He was shushed from below. He let the figure drop. It made no sound when it landed.

Then there was a rus.h.i.+ng, as the guards about the emba.s.sy went furiously back to their proper posts to keep anybody from slipping out. The two men who remained swore bitterly over a dummy made of old clothes and pillows.

Hoddan was then some blocks away. He suffered painful doubt about the note ostensibly from Nedda.

The guards about the emba.s.sy would have tried to catch him in any case, but it did seem very plausible that the note had been sent him to get him to try to climb down the wall. On the other hand, a false descent of a palpably dummy-like dummy had been plausible too. He'd drawn all the guards to one spot by his seeming doubt and by testing out their vigilance with a dummy. The only thing improbable in his behavior had been that after testing their vigilance with a dummy, he'd made use of it.

A fair distance away, he turned sedately into a narrow lane between buildings. This paralleled another lane serving the home of a girl friend of Nedda's. The note had named the garden behind that other girl's home as a rendezvous. But Hoddan was not going to that garden. He wanted to make sure. If the cops had forged the note . . .

He judged his position carefully. If he climbed this tree . . . kind of the city-planners of Walden to use trees so lavishly . . . if he climbed this tree he could look into the garden where Nedda, in theory, waited in tears. He climbed it. He sat astride a thick limb and considered further. Presently he brought out his wave projector. There was deepest darkness hereabouts. Trees and shrubbery were blacker than their surroundings. But there was reason for suspicion. Neither in the house of Nedda's girl friend, nor in the nearer house between, was there a single lighted window.

Hoddan adjusted the wave guide and pressed the stud of his instrument. He pointed it carefully into the nearer garden.

A man grunted in a surprised tone. There was a stirring. A man swore. The words seemed inappropriate to a citizen merely taking a breath of evening air.

Hoddan frowned. The note from Nedda seemed to have been a forgery. To make sure, he readjusted the wave guide to project a thin but fan-shaped beam. He aimed again. Painstakingly, he traversed the area in which men would have been posted to jump him. If Nedda were there, she would feel no effect.

If police lay in wait, they would notice at once.

They did. A man howled. Two men yelled together. Somebody bellowed. Somebody squealed.

Someone in charge of the flares made ready to give light for the police was so startled by a strange sensation that he jerked the cord. An immense, cold-white brilliance appeared. The garden where Nedda definitely was not present became bathed in incandescence. Light spilled over the wall of one garden into the next and disclosed a squirming ma.s.s of police in the nearer garden also. Some of them leaped wildly and ungracefully while clawing behind them. Some stood still and struggled desperately to accomplish something to their rear, while others gazed blankly at them until Hoddan swung his instrument their way, also.

A man tore off his pants and struggled over the wall to get away from something intolerable. Others imitated him. Some removed their trousers before they fled, but others tried to get them off while fleeing!

The latter did not fare too well. Mostly they stumbled and other men fell over them.

Hoddan let the confusion mount past any unscrambling, and then slid down the tree and joined in the rush. With the glare in the air behind him, he only feigned to stumble over one figure after another. Once he grunted as he scorched his own fingers. But he came out of the lane with a dozen stun-pistols, mostly uncomfortably warm, as trophies of the ambush.

As they cooled off he stowed them away in his belt and pockets, strolling away down the tree-lined street. Behind him, cops realized their trouserless condition and appealed plaintively to householders to notify headquarters of their state.

Hoddan did not feel particularly disillusioned, somehow. It occurred to him, even, that this particular event was likely to help him get off of Walden. If he was to leave against the cops' will, he needed to have them at less than top efficiency. And men who have had their pants scorched off them are not apt to think too clearly. Hoddan felt a certain confidence increase in his mind. He'd worked the thing out very nicely. If ionization made air a high-resistance conductor, then an ionizing beam would make a high-resistance short between the power terminals of a stun-pistol. With the power a stun-pistol carried, that short would get hot. So would the pistol. It would get hot enough, in fact, to scorch cloth in contact with it. Which had happened.

If the effect had been produced in the soles of policemen's feet, Hoddan would have given every cop a hot-foot. But since they carried their stun-pistols in their hip-pockets . . .

The thought of Nedda diminished his satisfaction. The note could be pure forgery, or the police could have learned about it through the treachery of the servant she sent to the emba.s.sy with it. It would be worthwhile to know. He headed toward the home of her father. If she were loyal to him, it would complicate things considerably. But he felt it necessary to find out.

He neared the spot where Nedda lived. This was an especially desirable residential area. The houses were large and gracefully designed, and the gardens were especially lush. Presently he heard music ahead. He went on. He came to a place where strolling citizens had paused under the trees to listen to the melody and the sound of voices that accompanied it. The music and festivity was in Nedda's name. She was having a party, on the night of the terrible day in which he'd been framed for life imprisonment.

It was a shock. Then there was a rush of vehicles, and police trucks were disgorging cops before the door. They formed a cordon about the house, and some knocked and were admitted in haste. Then Hoddan nodded dourly to himself.

His escape from the emba.s.sy was now known. No less certainly, the failure of the trap Nedda's note had baited had been reported. The police were now turning the whole city into a trap for one Bron Hoddan. Soon they'd have cops from other cities pouring in to aid in the search. And certainly and positively they'd take every measure they could to keep him from getting back to the emba.s.sy.

It was a situation that would have appalled Hoddan only that morning. Now, though, he only shook his head sadly. He moved on. Somehow he must get back into the emba.s.sy.

It was not far from Nedda's house to a public-safety kiosk. He entered it. It was unattended, of course.

It was simply an out-of-door installation where cops could be summoned, fires reported, or emergencies described by citizens independently of the regular home communicators. It had occurred to Hoddan that the planetary authorities would be greatly pleased to hear of a situation, in a place, that would seem to hint at his presence. There were all sorts of public services that would be delighted to operate impressively in their own lines. There were bureaus which would rejoice at a chance to show off their efficiency.

He used his micro-wave generator-which at short enough range would short-circuit anything-upon the apparatus in the kiosk. It was perfectly simple, if one knew how. He worked with a sort of tender thoroughness, shorting this item, shorting that, giving this frantic emergency call, stating that baseless lie.

When he went out of the kiosk he walked briskly toward an appointment he had made.

And presently the murmur of the city at night had new sounds added to it. They began as a faint, confused clamor at the edges of the city. The uproar moved centralward and grew louder. There were clanging bells and sirens and beeper-horns warning all non-official vehicles to keep out of the way. On the raised-up expressway snorting metal monsters rushed with squealing excitement. On the fragrant lesser streets, smaller vehicles rushed with proportionately louder howlings. Police trucks poured out of their cubby-holes and plunged valiantly through the dark. Broadcast units signaled emergency and cut off the air to make the placid ether waves available to authority.

All the noises and all this tumult moved toward a single point. The outer parts of the city regained their former quiet. But in the mid-city area the noise of racing vehicles clamoring for the right-of-way grew louder and louder. The sound was deafening as the vehicles converged on the large open square in front of the Interstellar Emba.s.sy. From every street and avenue fire-fighting equipment poured into that square.

In between and behind, hooting loudly for precedence, were the police trucks. Emergency vehicles of all the civic bureaus appeared, all of them with immense conviction of their importance.

It was a very large, open square, that s.p.a.ce before the emba.s.sy. From its edge, the monument to the first settlers in the center looked small. But even that vast plaza filled up with trucks of every imaginable variety, from the hose towers which could throw streams of water four hundred feet straight up, to the miniature trouble-wagons of Electricity Supply. Staff cars of fire and police and sanitary services crowded each other and b.u.mped fenders with tree-surgeon trucks prepared to move fallen trees, and with public-address trucks ready to lend stentorian tones to any voice of authority.

But there was no situation except that there was no situation. There was no fire. There was no riot.

There were not even stray dogs for the pound-wagons to pursue, nor broken watermains for the water department technicians to shut off and repair. There was nothing for anybody to do but ask everybody else what the h.e.l.l they were doing there, and presently to swear at each other for cluttering up the way.

The din of arriving horns and sirens had stopped, and a mutter of profanity was developing, when a last vehicle arrived. It was an ambulance, and it came purposefully out of a side avenue and swung toward a particular place as if it knew exactly what it was about. When its way was blocked, it hooted impatiently for pa.s.sage. Its lights blinked violently red, demanding clearance. A giant fire-fighting unit pulled aside.

The ambulance ran past and hooted at a cl.u.s.ter of police trucks. They made way for it. It blared at a gathering of dismounted, irritated truck personnel. It made its way through them. It moved in a straight line for the gate of the Interstellar Emba.s.sy.

A hundred yards from that gate, its horn blatted irritably at the car of the acting head of munic.i.p.al police.

That car obediently made way for it.

The ambulance rolled briskly up to the very gate of the emba.s.sy. There it stopped. A figure got down from the driver's seat and walked purposefully in the gate.

Thereafter nothing happened at all until a second figure rolled and toppled itself out on the ground from the seat beside the ambulance driver's. That figure kicked and writhed on the ground. A policeman went to find out what was the matter.

It was the ambulance driver. Not the one who'd driven the ambulance to the emba.s.sy gate, but the one who should have. He was bound hand and foot and not too tightly gagged. When released he swore vividly while panting that he had been captured and bound by somebody who said he was Bron Hoddan and was in a hurry to get back to the Interstellar Emba.s.sy.

There was no uproar. Those to whom Hoddan's name had meaning were struck speechless with rage.

The fury of the police was even too deep for tears.

But Bron Hoddan, back in the quarters a.s.signed him in the emba.s.sy, unloaded a dozen cooled-off stun-pistols from his pockets and sent word to the amba.s.sador that he was back, and that the note ostensibly from Nedda had actually been a police trap.

Getting ready to retire, he reviewed his situation. In some respects it was not too bad. All but Nedda's share in trying to trap him, and having a party the same night. He stared morosely at the wall. Then he saw, very simply, that she mightn't have known even of his arrest. She lived a highly sheltered life. Her father could have had her kept in complete ignorance.

He cheered immediately. This would be his last night on Walden, if he were lucky. Already vague plans revolved in his mind. Yes . . . he'd achieve splendid things; he'd grow rich; he'd come back and marry that delightful girl, Nedda; and then end as a great man. Already, today, he'd done a number of things worth doing, and on the whole he'd done them well.

Chapter 3.

When dawn broke over the capital city of Walden, the sight was appropriately glamorous. There were s.h.i.+ning towers and the curving tree-bordered ways, above which innumerable small birds flew. The dawn, in fact, was heralded by chirpings everywhere. During the darkness there had been a deep-toned humming sound, audible all over the city. That was the landing-grid in operation out at the s.p.a.ce-port, letting down a huge liner from Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would take off for Krim, Darth, and the Coalsack Stars, and if Hoddan were lucky he would be on it. At the earliest part of the day there was only tranquility over the city and the square and the Interstellar Emba.s.sy.

At the gate of the emba.s.sy enclosure, staff members piled up boxes and bales and parcels for transport to the s.p.a.ceport. There were dispatches to Delil, where the Interstellar Diplomatic Service had a sector headquarters, and there were packets of emba.s.sy-stamped invoices for Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta. There were boxes for Sind and Maja, and metal-bound cases for Kent. The early explorers of this part of the galaxy had christened the huge suns with the names of little villages and territories back on Earth.

The sound of the stacking of freight parcels was crisp and distinct in the morning hush. The dew deposited during the night had not yet dried from the pavement of the square. Damp, unhappy figures loafed nearby. They were the secret police, as yet unrelieved after a night's vigil about the emba.s.sy's rugged wall. They were sleepy, and their clothing stuck soggily to them, and none of them had anything warm to eat for many hours. They had not, either, anything to look forward to from their superiors.

Hoddan was again in sanctuary inside the emba.s.sy they'd guarded so ineptly through the dark. He'd gotten out without their leave, and had made a number of their fellows quite uncomfortable. Then he had made all the police and munic.i.p.al authorities ridiculous by the manner of his return. The police guards about the emba.s.sy were positively not in a cheery mood. But one of them saw an emba.s.sy servant he knew. He'd stood the man drinks, in times past, to establish a contact that might be useful. He smiled and beckoned to the man.

The emba.s.sy servant came briskly to him, rubbing his hands after having put a moderately heavy case of doc.u.ments on top of the waiting pile.

"That Hoddan," said the plainclothesman, attempting hearty ruefulness, "he certainly put it over on us last night!" The servant nodded.

"Look," said the plainclothesman, "there could be something in it for you if you-hm-wanted to make a little extra money."

The servant looked regretful.

"No chance," he said. "He's leaving today."

The plainclothesman jumped.

"Today?"

"For Darth," said the emba.s.sy servant. "The amba.s.sador's s.h.i.+pping him off on the s.p.a.celiner that came in last night."

The plainclothesman dithered.

"How's he going to get to the s.p.a.ceport?"

"I wouldn't know," said the servant. "They've figured out some way. I could use a little extra money, too."

He lingered, but the plainclothesman was staring at the innocent, inviolable parcels about to leave the emba.s.sy for distant parts. He took note of sizes and descriptions. No. Not yet. But if Hoddan was leaving, he had to leave the emba.s.sy. If he left the emba.s.sy . . .

The plainclothesman bolted. He made a breathless report by the portable communicator. He told what the emba.s.sy servant had said. Orders came back to him. Orders were given in all directions. Somebody was going to distinguish himself by catching Hoddan, and undercover politics worked to decide who it should be. Even the job of guarding the emba.s.sy became desirable. So fresh, alert plainclothesmen arrived. They were bright eyed men and bushy tailed, and they took over. Weary, hungry men yielded up their posts. They went home. The man who'd gotten the clue went home too, disgruntled because he wouldn't be allowed a share in the credit for Hoddan's actual capture. But he was glad of it later.

Inside the emba.s.sy, Hoddan finished his breakfast with the amba.s.sador.

"I'm giving you," said the amba.s.sador, "a letter to that character on Darth. I told you about him. He's some sort of n.o.bleman and has need of an electronic engineer. On Darth they're rare to nonexistent. But his letter wasn't too specific."

"I remember," agreed Hoddan. "I'll look him up. Thanks."

"Somehow," said the amba.s.sador, "I cherish unreasonable hopes for you, Hoddan. A psychologist would say that your group identification is low and your cyclothymia practically a minus quant.i.ty, while your ergic tension is pleasingly high. He'd mean that with reasonable good fortune you will raise more h.e.l.l than most. I wish you that good fortune. And Hoddan-"

"Yes?"

"I urge you not to be vengeful," explained the amba.s.sador, "but I do hope you won't be too forgiving of these characters who'd have jailed you for life. You've scared them badly. It's very good for them.

Anything more you can do along that line will be really a kindness, even though it will positively not be appreciated. But it'll be well worth doing. I say this because I like the way you plan things. And any time I can be of service . . ."

"Thanks," said Hoddan. "Now I'd better get going for the s.p.a.ceport." He'd write Nedda from Darth. "I'll get set for it."

He rose. The amba.s.sador stood up, too.