MALCOLM JAMESON: Science Fiction Collection - 17 Books in One Edition. Malcolm Jameson
Читать онлайн книгу.
the next few days Winchester went quietly about his routine work, but there was never an hour that his brain was not seething. The dreams he had lived stayed with him, as clear and vivid as reality. He could not shake off the feeling that the devastating insight into human nature he had experienced was a revelation from some higher inner intellect. It was something that had to be digested and interpreted. Then he could apply it to his work.
His work! How to proceed? Brute force must be fought with brute force, of course. There was nothing else tyrants understood. But he must be ever on guard against the misuse of even the forces he himself employed. What if another Dominguez should appear to help him, only to set himself up as another Khan?
History was full of such instances — of men fighting upward from the ranks but forgetting their old comrades once they attained power. Charlemagne and Peter the Great built empires, but under their successors the empires degenerated into tyrannies.
No, he must use weapons to overthrow the Mongoloids. But once the fight was won, the ultimate control must be turned over to the wise and kind, and the weapons destroyed.
Winchester thought over all the men he had met in this new world. They fell roughly into two classes — the forceful and aggressive, and the industrious and retiring. The rulers, their police, the Dominguezes and a number of the industrial supervisors were among the first. The artists, scientists and engineers were among the second.
The first group was grasping and ambitious, the second productive. The latter sustained and supported the former, who rewarded them by ever demanding more. Yet they had only the choice of submission or extermination.
The furrow in Winchester's brow deepened. It began to look as if the only men who could defeat the men in power were men much like them. But his mind wandered farther down the social scale. Below the intellectuals were the lower classes — the laborers, the slaves and the criminals. Two generations of oppression had made them docile and useless — except the criminals.
"Ah, the criminals," Winchester thought. "'Criminals,' indeed! There is my tool."
He reflected on the old cynicism that there was no crime unless the misdeed was found out. But the "crimes" these men had committed were violations of a ruthlessly imposed criminal code. The code was at fault, not its victims.
Of course, there would be exceptions. There always were. But the corps of "criminals," in the main, would prove reliable.
"They have fight left in them," Winchester reflected. "Their greatest ambition is to escape a life of misery and live like human beings. When the revolt is over, the scientists and philosophers can take over.
"Not that I won't keep a judicious eye on them. Theory can be carried too far, too."
That night he wrote a strange request in his daily report.
"I request an audience with his Lordship, Prince Lohan, at the earliest possible date," he scribbled. "I have a plan which will interest him greatly."
A little later he slowly stirred the dissolving ashes in the liquid that devoured them, and then listened to the gurgling as the evidence of his message disappeared down the drain. His face was a mask, for he did not know whether it could be seen by the scanner.
But inwardly he was exultant. At last he had a plan — a definite plan. It was daring and dangerous, even desperate, but there was a chance that it would work. He must gain the full confidence of Prince Lohan. Once he had that, he might overthrow the empire, virtually alone and single-handed.
More than that, he could reorganize the lost Utopia afterward. It meant following a course of cunning ruthlessness for awhile, and the shedding of blood. But the prize was worth the cost.
That night he slept soundly. It was the first time since he had emerged from that clump of bushes growing upon the rubble that had been Munich.
It was a false assurance.
Winchester's message went unanswered, and he fretted. Time was passing, and the annual competitions were near. He did not know quite what that signified, but to him it meant danger to his Cynthia. Prince Lohan's cryptic remark had told him little, and that little he did not fully believe. She was well — but not too happy. Was she still in that school to which she had been sent, learning to sing and dance and practising the other antics that might render her pleasing in the eyes of men?
Or had she rebelled, as he had, and been sent to the female counterpart of his prison? It might well be the latter; for another hint Lohan had dropped was that her fate depended in the end on him. That suggested Cynthia was standing fast, cost what it might.
He ground his teeth and worked furiously on with his weird plant seedlings. The suspense was growing unbearable. It would be an empty victory if he should overthrow the tyrants in the end, yet be too late to save Cynthia. He wanted her alive and happy and well.
Then one day the summons came, by a mysterious messenger, as before. This time Winchester was to proceed to a change of station, ostensibly to the Ellis Island of this world — the immigration and quarantine station on the Moon, where returning Jovian and Martian settlers had to undergo examination, and imported plants and animals be searched for alien spores and germs.
But Winchester was not to arrive there. Arrangements had been made — cleverly, as always — for him to disappear en route.
In due time he clicked the secret door, and once again he faced Number Eight.
"No answer means no," the chief said harshly. "One does not demand to see a prince of the Imperial blood, much less repeat the demand."
"It was a request, not a demand," said Winchester quietly.
"We won't quibble," said Number Eight shortly. "It was denied."
He studied Winchester a moment.
"What was your proposition?" he asked, as if indifferent to the answer, so casual was the tone of the question. Winchester eyed him unswervingly.
"Plans designed for Imperial princes' ears," he said haughtily, "are not to be revealed to underlings — "
"It is the prince's own order," interrupted Number Eight icily.
"I will believe that when I hear it from his own lips," said Winchester, with a frigidity that matched his superior's.
The AFPA section chief sprang to his feet, his face livid. Winchester's heart exulted. His shot in the dark had hit home. For the man before him had never shown emotion before, and now he was trembling with it.
Winchester knew that Number Eight could witness his flaying without the turn of a hair — if it had been ordered by higher authority. He knew likewise that vituperation and epithets would rebound from the man's brassy hide as drops of rain from a duck's back.
Yet by the mere intimation that the man was lying, Winchester had hit him in the raw. The fellow was trying to put something over him!
Number Eight glared at him for an instant. Then with a sudden impulsive gesture he smashed his palm against a nest of buttons on his desk. At once panels slid open and the room swarmed with guards.
"Ha!" snorted Winchester derisively, glancing at them. "So you're going to push your bluff further, eh? Did it ever occur to you, my dear superior, that you are watched as closely as I? But go ahead. You have called your guards. Now what?"
Number Eight's eyes wandered uneasily from Winchester to the guards, then back to his desk. He was pale, and his hands shook.
"Return to your posts," he said weakly. "It was an error — my hand fell on the wrong buttons."
The guards saluted, and with inscrutable expressions wheeled and disappeared from the room as abruptly as they had entered. Winchester waited until the last secret door slid shut and the walls resumed their normal appearance of solid hewn stone. Then he folded his arms upon his breast and faced 8-RYF. There was a glint of satisfaction in his gaze, and the faintest suggestion of a smile on his straight-set lips.
"It's still your move," Winchester told him.
"Another