chapter 7

 I might as well have joined the Marine Corps instead of the Treasury Department, Orison thought, resting her fists on her knees. She had no weapons now, nothing to help her break out from this steel-shuttered cellar. What's more, the only clear evidence she had of the crime these extraterrestrials were plotting was a single counterfeit twenty-dollar bill wadded up in her hand. It looked entirely genuine, she thought. It was perhaps too perfect for her purpose. It was quite possible that this bill could be established as a counterfeit only by the unlikely discovery of a genuine note with the same serial-number. The paper-makers and chemists of Chilif, the engraving millions of Microfabridae, had done their work too well. Suddenly, across Orison's field of regard there danced dozens of brilliant, five-pointed stars—over the weapons-carriers and the tanks, the jeeps and the two lolling guards, the concrete floor and the steel doors. Orison rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, but the stars were still there. "Don't worry," someone said. "I painted the stars on the backs of your eyes only to get your attention." The stars disappeared, and Orison heard again the music of the Microfabridae, a singing almost unhearable. "Who's that?" Orison demanded, her voice uncertain. "Don't speak. You'll frighten the guards," the mysterious voice said. "We have had long association, Orison. It was I who, so close in empathy with you, prevented your eating lobster, for example. Earth's lobster is a distant relative of mine. I could not see you ingest one without feeling deep qualms. And it is to me you have been reading, filling my mind with knowledge and amusement while I was engaged in the dull work of projecting the images of currency to the Microfabridae at work at their printing-plates. I am known as Elder Compassion, and I am your friend." "And Dink's friend?" "His especially," the voice said. "Our business right now is to help you escape. We must know exactly where you are, Orison." "I'm in the basement of the National Guard Armory," Orison said softly. "Where are you?" "I'm on the ninth floor of the Bank building," Elder Compassion said. "Yes, that means telepathy, of a weak and uncertain sort. I am not one of the true telepaths, those gold and mighty minds I can hear trumpeting in the night. I can but whisper, and eavesdrop a bit in minds that let me. And is the fact that I speak within your ear and listen to the currents that make words within your mind so much more mysterious than your pillow that whispers?" "Tell me what to do," Orison said. "Look at the entrance of your basement," Elder Compassion said. Orison stared at the steel doors at the top of the ramp. "Yes, Dink. You're in the right place." The inner voice ceased for a moment; and into Orison's mind flashed a picture of those doors seen from outside. An automobile was parked a dozen feet from the door. Dink's car! Wanji was at the wheel and Dink, grandly uniformed, was beside him. A pink, animate thread dipped down from the trunk of the Rolls and began working its way toward the steel doors. Microfabridae, Orison guessed. Then the picture in her mind flicked off, and she was alone again. She watched the doors at the top of the ramp. For ten minutes or so, there was nothing new to be seen. Then—a pinpoint of light, a tiny movement. "Look away," Elder Compassion said within her. "We don't want to make your guards suspicious." From the corner of her eye Orison could see the thin pink line approaching the Sherman tank upon which one guard was sitting, at ease but alert. The line of Microfabridae split into two columns, and one set out toward the second guard, seated in his weapons-carrier, facing the little room where C Company's commanding officer was imprisoned. Orison knotted her fists to keep from screaming, reminding herself that these creeping things weren't spiders. She heard, faint at first, but growing at the edge of her consciousness, the song of the Microfabridae. The twin columns were thicker now. It seemed impossible that the guards hadn't yet seen them. A living thread oozed up the side of the tank and busied itself a moment at the guard's ankles. "What's going on?" the captain, Orison's fellow-prisoner, shouted from his hidden cell. "Mmmmf," the guard assigned to the captain replied. Then he was entirely silent. Orison stood. Her own guard was strapped to the steel of his tank by a hundred strands of Lilliputian thread. A thin net of the stuff, fine as angel-hair, covered his mouth. The second guard, in the weapons-carrier, was bound in the same manner. He stared at Orison and moved his jaw, but could say nothing. "They'll not be injured," Elder Compassion told her. "It is impossible for me to allow a living being to be hurt. Now, go look at the man who just called out." Orison went to the cell where the Captain was, avoiding as she walked the pools of Microfabridae scattered about the floor. The man stood in a barred room, evidently designed as the toolroom of the motor-pool, his hands around the bars. "Good afternoon," he said. "What's going on here?" "We're getting out," Orison told him. "Ask him if he can drive a tank," Elder Compassion whispered to Orison. "Those steel doors are too well built to be quickly opened by our little locksmiths." "Can you drive a tank, Captain?" Orison asked. "Miss, I piloted one of those M4E8 Sherman's across Europe sixteen years ago. I've still got the strength to pull a landrel. But you'll have to get me out there to do it; because there isn't room in this cell." "I'll get you out," Orison promised. "You want the Microfabridae to chew through the lock?" the voice-in-her-head asked gently. "That's what I had in mind," Orison said. "I know," Elder Compassion said. "Please look at the lock, so that I may direct our little friends to it." Orison gazed at the lock. A line of Microfabridae snaked up the steel door-frame and entered the keyhole. From inside the door came a chittering sound, like a clock gone berserk. Then the crustacea reformed and marched down the door to the floor. Orison pressed the door-catch. The eviscerated lock gave way. The captain stepped out to stare at the Microfabridae. "Miss," he said, "you and I could make a fortune with a team of those trained termites. There isn't a bank in the country that could stand up against us." "It's been thought of," Orison said. "Help me get this man down from the tank, please, and we'll be on our way." Between them they lifted the cocooned guard, wrapped like a larva in Microfabridaean silk, to the cot, the little workers snipping with their chelae the threads that had bound him to the steel. "Can you unlock the steel doors?" Orison asked. "I don't have the key," the Captain said. "Then we'll have to go through them," Orison said. "Can we do it?" "We've got thirty-five tons to roll up that ramp," the captain said. "If we can't bust out with a punch like that, shame on us. Seems kind of rough on the taxpayers to bulldoze through that expensive door." "If we don't make it out of here, those taxpayers may find themselves paying their thirty per cent to someone less friendly than Uncle Sam," Orison said. She clambered up the side of the tank and tugged at the hatch. "Let me," said the captain. He opened the hatch and dropped inside. "You sit here to my right. We're going out the hard way, and buttoned up." He closed the hatch, then reached over his left shoulder to tug the master battery switch, squeezed together the twin butterfly switches on the panel and grabbed hold of the steering-landrels. "Hold on, Miss. We're headed for sunlight." The Sherman's thirty-five tons were rolling along at ten miles an hour when its bow met steel. Concrete splinters flew from the sides of the door, which crumpled as the tank fisted into its middle. The door broke free of its supports and slammed outside, forming a deckway over which the treads of the tank crunched. The captain killed the engine and opened the hatch. He boosted Orison out, and followed her. "Orison! Over here!" Dink Gerding shouted. Orison leaped from the tank and ran toward the Rolls-Royce. "Get down!" Dink shouted again. He ran to seize her, and threw her to the ground. "And stay down!" He was up, drawing his sword. There was a crash. A smear of lead appeared on the concrete beside Orison. Dink, bellowing rage, was running down the ramp into the armory basement, his sword raised. Kraft Gerding stood at the head of his troops at the foot of the ramp. In hand he had an Army .45. He shouted to his men, a dozen purple-ears, dressed in fatigues, each as big and ugly as the two who'd been guarding Orison and the Captain. They strained forward to follow him—but fell like ten-pins, tripped up by strands of web knitted between their ankles by fast-working Microfabridae. "Don't stop him, Elder Cousin!" Dink shouted, his words evidently meant for the mysterious brain-guy, Elder Compassion, in the ninth floor of the Taft Bank Building. "This I must do," Dink said. Kraft Gerding dropped the automatic and slicked his sword from its scabbard. The blade, Orison saw, rising to her feet, was by no means an ornament. It looked most naked and competent. Dink advanced upon his brother, each holding his sword at the ready like scorpions ready to do battle. "It would distress me to wound you, elder sibling," Dink said. "Lese majesty or no, my liege," Kraft shouted, "I intend to chop you to stew-meat!" Their blades met and clashed, the swordsmen taking the shock of their contact with skillful springing of their arms and shoulders. Behind the clash of steel, Orison heard a new sound, the scream of a siren. A second siren called out, and both grew louder. "The police!" Wanji shouted. "Stop it, Sires!" The captain stood beside Orison. "I've seen Hamlet played," he said, "but the sword-fight was nowhere near so violent as this. Who are these two nuts, anyway?" "My fiance, and the man who, if he lives, will be my brother-in-law," Orison said. "Excuse me," the captain said. Orison gripped the captain's arm and tried not to cry out at Dink's danger. Kraft parried his brother's blade, raising it high and to his right. Then he went in like a flash, hacking his edge down toward the juncture of shoulder and neck. Dink fell aside. Kraft's sword bit concrete. Dink flipped his sword in a jeweled arc, slamming Kraft's blade from his hand to spin end-over-end through the air like a drum-majorette's baton. Kraft's sword slammed to the pavement. In an instant a pool of Microfabridae had covered it, binding the steel to the concrete with strands of their angel-hair. Dink advanced on his brother, backing him against the bulk of the Sherman tank. Kraft Gerding stood with his hands at his sides, his face composed in dignity, waiting for the coup de grace. "Bind the traitor, Elder Cousin," Dink said, addressing an ear not present. Microfabridae, obedient to the command they alone heard, rolled in little waves across the steel door and knit Kraft in a web from ankles to larynx. The police were very near now, their sirens dying as they slowed to halt. Dink sheathed his sword. "Wanji!" he called. "Put him in the car. It is time that we withdraw." Wanji ran up to the cocooned figure, saluted, and dumped Kraft Gerding across his shoulder like a giant spool of silk. The Microfabridae flowed to the Rolls and pooled themselves somewhere in its trunk. "To the Bank, Wanji," Dink ordered, seating himself beside his driver. Orison sat in the back, next to the trussed-up Kraft. Police appeared, whistling and brandishing their revolvers. One occupied himself with kicking at Kraft's grounded sword, tied to the pavement by tendrils tougher than steel wire. Another guarded the ankle-bound purple-ears, obviously unable to believe what he was seeing. "You in the car there, stop!" a police officer shouted. Wanji, erect and unheeding at the wheel, took the limousine around the corner of the armory and down the street toward the Bank. "You'd have done better, brother, to have killed me," Kraft Gerding said, strait-jacketed in silk. "Killing would seem appropriate, although our Elder Cousin declares it unlawful," Dink said over his shoulder. "Your crime is treason against the Triple Crown, attempted assassination of the Heir Apparent, mutiny and kidnap. What punishment would you mete out to an officer so turpitudinous, were you Defender of the Crowns?" "I would have him put to death in a manner befitting his station," Kraft said. "I would not bind him like a sausage and pelt him with taunts." "Perhaps you can gain a special dispensation from Elder Compassion, allowing me to grant you a properly noble death," Dink said. "We'll ask him, if you like." The William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company was closed, the ostensible reason given by an easel set up in front of the glass doors of the front entrance: "National Holiday: Birthday of Millard Fillmore." One of the loyalist Purple-Ears materialized behind the glass as the Rolls rolled up to the curb, and unlocked the doors. Wanji and the guard carried Kraft Gerding between them into the bank-lobby, Dink relocking the doors behind them. A knot of spectators gathered on the sidewalk outside, shading their eyes, examining with much conversation the sign, the purple-eared guard, the uniformed Wanji and Dink and the figure trussed up like a rolled carpet on the parquet floor. "I think this busts up your counterfeiting ring, Dink," Orison said. "What now?" "That is, darling, precisely the question I want to ask our brain-trust, Elder Compassion," Dink said. "He is both our leader and in a sense our warden, you see. He came with us to Earth to guarantee that we in no way violate the principle of reverence for life in our conquest of your planet." The elevator appeared, piloted by another of the Purple-Ears. "Nine," Dink snapped. Wanji and the guard towed the packaged Kraft aboard. The anteroom into which the elevator door opened on ninth floor smelled of ozone and dryness. Faint music vibrated the desert air. "Bach?" Orison asked. "Scarlatti," Dink said. "His music consoles Elder Compassion for the violence of men. Here—you'll need these." He handed Orison a pair of almost opaque goggles, the sort that welders wear. "Come on," he said, tugging Orison through a door. Even with the heavy goggles, the room beyond was brilliant beyond belief, a Sahara summer-solstice noon in brightness. The floor was covered by tons of sand, duned up against the windows in waves that would have disheartened a camel. The music now was almost as oppressive as the heat and the light. Great booming gouts of sound came from every direction. Suddenly, as though responding to Orison's mental protest, the music stopped. The lights dimmed somewhat. "We have come, Elder Cousin," Dink announced to the sand. "I speak to the lovely woman," an interior voice said to all of them. "Do not fear me, Orison, though I will seem to you a most hideous worm. My world nestles next its sun. I, made to fit a homeworld that would seem a Hell to you, could hardly be expected to conform to green Earth's standards of beauty. Reflect, Orison, that I wish you well." Something dragged itself across a dune. "My God!" Orison whispered, gripping Dink's right arm with both her hands. "Orison, this is my mentor and my dearest friend," Dink said. "His name is Elder Compassion. He is older than the language you speak. And he is, though housed in strange flesh, a Man of Good Will." The thing that squatted across the mid-room dune was twelve feet long from the tip of the arched scorpion-telson to the twin pincers that formed a chitinous mustache beneath its mouth. It stared at her with a pair of compound eyes the size of hub-caps. "I'll not weary you further with squeezing words into your minds," the interior voice said. "Bring me the writing-boards, Son and Cousin." "Cornet!" Dink snapped. "Bring scratchboards." "Sire!" A young officer ran back to the anteroom and came back with a stack of blackened boards, one of which he set up in the sand before the monster, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the lance-like tip that quivered in the air above him. "It is a fearsome thing, this killing-tool my body is equipped with," the voice said, "and embarrassing. It is rather as though your good Gandhi had been forced to carry a sub-machine gun through life." The cornet scrambled out of way through the sand, and the giant sting lowered itself to the scratchboard. The words he inscribed into the blackness were written in a delicate italic, hardly larger than human penmanship: "My son, she is lovely." "It is gracious of you, Elder Cousin, to recognize beauty in a form so unlike your own species," Dink said, bowing. There was a mental chuckle. "Her mind, you clod!" the monster sketched in the scratchboard. "Her lovely, lovely mind." "I am pleased that you ratify my choice of wife, Elder Cousin," Dink said. "She will assist you in the most difficult task ever a scion of the Triple Crown had to accomplish, Son and Cousin," Elder Compassion wrote. "She will aid you in preparing the Golden Worlds to accept Coca-Cola." "Your meaning, Elder Cousin, is hidden from my poor understanding," Dink said. "I mean this," Elder Compassion sketched on his scratchboard. "You came for conquest bearing with you the seeds of violence, and thus defeat. You came to subvert Earth by pandering to Earth's greed. You were yourself, through the agent of your greedy brother, rendered impotent. Violence has been done. We must now retreat, making such amends as we can. In the years that will soon be upon us, Earth's men will follow us to the Golden Worlds, where you, as Emperor, and Orison, Empress, will greet them." "To the ship, then?" Dink asked. "What will we do with the rebels? With Kraft, my brother?" "They have earned the payment of exile," Elder Compassion wrote. "We will leave them here." Dink turned to the young officer. "Cornet, assist our Elder Cousin to the ship," he ordered. He turned to two of the purple-ears. "Take Kraft to the vault," he said. Orison spoke to the monster. "Sir," she said, "you spoke of making amends for the damage you have done. You must first of all destroy the paper with which you'd hoped to ruin us." "I'll give those orders, Orison," Dink said. "What will be done about the counterfeit money you've already spent, financing your subversion?" she asked. Elder Compassion was writing on his board. "Three miles beneath this city lies a vein of gold," he wrote. "The Microfabridae are this minute plumbing the earth to reach it. We will leave full payment for our fiscal sins." Dink took Orison's hand. "You'll come with us?" he asked. "I will, Dink." "Then I, Rex-Imperator, Son of the Triple Crown, Prince Porphyrogenous of Empire, take you to wife," he said. "If you're sure this is quite legal," Orison said, "I do." "There are voices all about us," Elder Compassion spoke in their minds. "The traitor, Kraft, is in the vault, bound and seated in the midst of wealth. We must go, or there will be more violence." "The moment the Microfabridae have left their golden payment for our folly, Elder Cousin, guide them to the ship," Dink said. "I long to show my Princess her dominions." "She is the first," the voice spoke again. "The first of the irresistible conquerors from Earth."