Inferno: A Chronicle of a Distant World (The Galactic Comedy) (15 page)

"What about the other three?"

"Two are mobile, one won't last out the hour."

"All right," said McCreigh. "Let me see the map."

"You have to take me with you!" mumbled Beddoes.

"You'll never make it," said McCreigh, studying a map someone had handed him. "We're going to drop you off at a hospital on the way to our ships."

"I'll take my chances," mumbled Beddoes. "Just get me out of here."

"You're already going into shock," said the doctor, injecting something in her arm. "Just lay back and try to relax."

"He'll kill me!"

"He won't lay a finger on you," said McCreigh. "Trust me."

She was about to ask him why she should trust him about anything, let alone her life, when the ceiling started spinning and everything went black.

15.

Beddoes was aware of voices, some near, some distant, none of them speaking to her. Then she realized that the sun was shining on her face, and she turned her head away from it.

"I think she's coming around," said yet another voice. "Susan?"

"Go away," mumbled Beddoes.

"Susan, this is Arthur. Open your eyes."

Beddoes tried to reach her pillow to put it over her head; the pain of moving her arm was agonizing and severe, and suddenly she heard a scream. It took Beddoes a moment to realize that the sound had come from her.

"Welcome back," said another voice. "I thought we were going to lose you for awhile there."

She opened her eyes, flinched from the brightness of the sunlit room, and things slowly came into focus.

Arthur Cartright was sitting on a chair next to her bed, and Anton McCreigh was leaning lazily against a white wall.

"Where am I?" asked Beddoes.

"You're in the Boris Petrovitch Memorial Hospital in Remus," answered McCreigh. "Do you remember anything about how you got here?"

She closed her eyes again and concentrated. "I remember the rescue, and then everything goes blank." She paused. "Wait! I remember getting shot in the confusion. My shoulder, I think."

"Your shoulder was the least of your problems," said McCreigh.

"My knee!" she exclaimed, and then frowned. "I don't feel anything there."

"I'd be surprised if you did," said McCreigh. "We've got a brand new one on order for you."

"They
amputated
my leg?" she asked, horror-stricken.

"No choice," said McCreigh. "Even if they could have rebuilt the knee, the rest of your leg was hanging on by just a couple of threads of muscle. There was no way to get any blood circulating down there."

"I'm sorry, Susan," said Cartright. "You'd lost an enormous amount of blood; they were more concerned with saving your life."

"Besides, the new one will be prettier than the old one," added McCreigh lightly. "No varicose veins."

"How can you joke about it?" demanded Beddoes furiously. "I've just lost my leg!"

"You'd be surprised what they're doing with prosthetics these days," replied McCreigh.

"That's easy for
you
to say!" snapped Beddoes.

McCreigh smiled. "Easier than you think. Or would you like me to remove my right arm for you?" He held up the appendage, wiggling the fingers. "Works better than the original."

"The doctors assure us that you'll be walking within a few weeks, without any noticeable limp," said Cartright soothingly.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Beddoes bitterly.

"Believe it," said McCreigh. "The current holder of the 3,000 and 5,000 meter track records is a fellow with two artificial legs. They're trying to get him disqualified and his times disallowed." He paused. "And now, if you're all through thanking me for saving your life, is there anything else you'd like to know?"

"I don't think much of your bedside manner," muttered Beddoes.

"Well, if push comes to shove, I don't think much of your notion of 'Hit the deck,'" he answered pleasantly.

"Why are you still here?" demanded Beddoes.

"Because of you," said McCreigh.

"Because of me?" she repeated, frowning.

"Someone in the Republic decided not to leave you to the tender mercies of your President-For-Life."

"She's very tired, and in obvious pain," said Cartright. "Perhaps we should let her go back to sleep. We can talk about this later."

"I'm all right," said Beddoes. "I want to hear about it now."

"Are you sure you feel strong enough?" asked Cartright solicitously.

"I'm sure, Arthur." She turned to McCreigh. "Tell me about the rescue. What happened?"

"It was a success," said McCreigh. "We lost two of our men and one hostage. Killed all fourteen Lodinites, and about a hundred and fifty innocent bystanders."

"Innocent bystanders?" said Beddoes. "I didn't see any."

"Oh, they were all wearing Faligor military uniforms, but President Labu swears they were bystanders," said McCreigh with a grin. "Anyway, except for you, all the hostages are on their way back to the Republic. You were in no condition to transport."

"You still haven't told me why you're here."

"We thought there was a possibility that Labu might take out his frustration on the one survivor, so I was ordered to remain behind until you've recovered."

"And you are expected to hold off the entire Faligor army?" said Beddoes in disbelief.

"Not at all," replied McCreigh. "I'm here as a representative of the Republic to inform them that any reprisals taken against one Susan Beddoes will be considered an act of war against the Republic, which will respond to such provocation with all the firepower at its command."

"I don't want to be the cause of a war," said Beddoes.

"You won't be," replied McCreigh with a smile. "Our position is totally illegal, and I doubt that we'd follow through if push came to shove. But Labu doesn't know that."

"You've just publicly humiliated him by swiping the hostages from right under his nose," noted Beddoes. "What makes you think that he'll leave me alone, despite your threats?"

"Because his army is busy elsewhere. Since he's afraid to go to war with the Republic, and the moles are all gone, he's busy decimating a tribe called the Chijanga this morning."

"The Chijanga are pastoralists who live a thousand miles from here, and never bother anyone," said Beddoes. "How did they get involved in this?"

"Probably because they're pastoralists who live a thousand miles from here and never bother anyone," replied McCreigh. "Labu went on the air again this morning. He claimed that the Chijanga were in collusion with the Republic, and that they helped free the hostages just when Labu had both sides poised on the verge of an agreement."

"In other words, he's wiping out an entire tribe just to save face?"

"That's about the size of it," agreed McCreigh.

"Okay, you've delivered your message," said Beddoes. "Why are you still here—and more to the point, why hasn't Labu thrown you in jail for participating in the rescue?"

"Two reasons," answered McCreigh. "First, he was officially neutral during the crisis, and hence he can't favor one side over the other. Second, I've been attached to the Republic embassy, and while he probably doesn't know what diplomatic immunity means, he knows that you don't shoot embassy personnel."

Beddoes turned to Cartright. "You know him better that I do, Arthur. He's not going to stop with slaughtering the Chijanga, is he?"

"I doubt it," said Cartright.

"How bad are things going to get?"

"Worse, I think, than either of us can imagine."

It was an understatement.

16.

After the rescue at the Remus spaceport, something seemed to snap inside Gama Labu's mind. Where before he had been cunning and barbaric, now he was merely bloodthirsty and barbaric. Where before he had at least made a pretense of governing in accordance with those laws that remained on the books, he now became a law unto himself. Where before those who had been dragged out of their houses and arrested in the middle of the night at least knew what their government had against them, now such arrests followed no comprehensible pattern.

When one of Labu's cabinet members was shot and killed in retaliation for the slaughter of a nearby village, Labu issued a proclamation allowing all government employees and members of the military to shoot anyone they felt might endanger their lives. This was immediately interpreted as the right to shoot anyone who voiced any opposition to any government policy.

At the same time, corruption ran rampant. Taxes were collected by whim, with many of the same citizens being taxed five and six times a year. Any jason with an advanced degree who was still alive was drafted into the army and never seen again. Six more tribes vanished from the face of Faligor forever.

Rumors abounded about Labu himself. It was common knowledge that he was once again practicing the religion of his forebears, but those closest to him whispered that he had killed and eaten two of his wives at the urging of his witch doctor, who then disappeared, never to be seen again.

Another story told of Labu losing his courage on a hunting trip, when charged by a Plainstalker. Then, when his eldest son stepped forward and saved him by shooting the Plainstalker at point-blank range, Labu was said to have killed him and eaten his heart, convinced that his son's courage would now flow through his veins.

Where once one truck a day backed up to the Government Science Bureau, now they came and left by the hour, and the stench from the mass graves was omnipresent.

Any member of government who aroused Labu's ire or jealousy was either replaced or simply vanished. As a result, the Treasury Department was run by a former printer's apprentice whose answer to everything was to print more money. The Interior Department decided that the best way to eradicate a flying insect that carried a disease that was fatal to the domestic livestock was to kill every wild animal that might carry the insect from one livestock herd to another; within three months they had slaughtered most of the remaining five million wild animals on the planet, without making an appreciable dent in the population of the flying insect. The head of the Patent Bureau announced that there was nothing left to invent, closed its doors, and appropriated its funding for his personal use.

A few jasons and men still openly opposed the government. A group of eight religious leaders met with the President-For-Life to protest Labu's treatment of their followers; they were immediately arrested, and their anguished screams could be heard, night after night, throughout Romulus, until the last of them died eleven days later. A major in the army refused George Witherspoon's orders to set fire to his own village; he was stripped naked, covered with gasoline, and set ablaze. A jason doctor refused to stop tending to Labu's victims in a distant village; when word of his disobedience reached Labu, he was arrested and brought before the president, who filled one of the doctor's syringes with poison and injected it into him, then ate a hearty meal while watching the doctor's agonized death throes.

One by one, the civilized races of the galaxy closed their embassies and withdrew their personnel. The first to leave were the Canphorites, followed by the Domarians, the Lodinites, the Mollutei, and finally the only embassy left functioning was the Republic, which had placed an economic embargo on Faligor but was unwilling to turn its back on the few remaining Men who still lived there.

Labu's reaction was simple and straightforward: he declared war on each of the departing races. He didn't have the means to make war on distant planets, but he methodically burned down each empty embassy and issued shoot-to-kill orders should any member of that race set foot upon Faligor for any reason.

Although entire embassies had closed, Labu never officially lifted his restriction on emigration, and as a result Beddoes remained on Faligor, her request for an exit visa being turned down more than a dozen times. It was as if the president realized that he could not kill her for attempting to aid the hostages, but he decided he could at least force her to spend the remainder of her days as a virtual prisoner on Faligor.

McCreigh remained too, certain that the moment he left Beddoes and probably Cartright would both be murdered. Eventually he bought a farm in the area, for lack of anything better to do; the first month he was there, his livestock was mutilated; the second month, his wells were poisoned; the third month his house and barn were burned down, though he shot and killed seven of those responsible before they could flee. After that, he moved into the embassy compound, checking on Beddoes' situation every week or two, but taking no further interest in Faligor.

And despite all this, a few jasons still fought back. A Christian minister that the death squads had overlooked planted bombs in the Departments of Science and Agriculture, killing some four hundred government officials and leading Witherspoon a merry chase for the better part of three months before he was finally hunted down and tortured to death. Fifteen Enkoti females compiled a journal describing all the excesses of the past few years and managed, somehow, to smuggle it off the planet; Labu and Witherspoon never found out for sure who was responsible for it, but more than seven hundred Enkoti disappeared into the Government Science Building, never to emerge, during their attempts to learn the identities of the authors.

Perhaps the most successful rebellion was led by a schoolteacher named James Krakanna. When the army found out that he was criticizing the government to his young students, they sent a squad of twenty soldiers to arrest him. When the soldiers arrived, they were immediately mowed down by Krakanna and his "Children's Army," some fifteen jasons, none of them even adolescent, who had armed themselves with bows and poisoned arrows. They confiscated the dead soldiers' arms and disappeared into the dense forests encircling the Hills of Heaven, emerging when least expected to wipe out any of Labu's followers who were unlucky enough to cross their path. Within six months Krakanna's children numbered almost one thousand, all of them armed, and the threat became serious enough for Witherspoon to dispatch some 50,000 troops to the Hills of Heaven to root them out. They found a few here and there, lost some three thousand of their own personnel, and finally decided that the operation wasn't worth the effort and went home. Krakanna promptly began launching his attacks once more.