Norman Spinrad - The Men in the Jungle

CHAPTER ONE

Bart Fraden sat loosely on the edge of the desk, a strange mixture of

tension and repose, like a hunting cat at rest. What the hell, he thought,

biting off another savory piece of pheasant leg, you can't expect to ride the

same gravy train forever.

He dropped the pheasant leg casually back onto the tooled silver tray

which rested on the heavily waxed walnut desk top, picked up the half-full

bottle of chilled Rhine wine, and washed down the bit of fowl with a small

swallow. The wine was good, it was damned good and it had better be,

considering that each bottle of the stuff set the Belt Free State back thirty

Confedollars.

The pheasant, on the other hand, was kind of dry and overdone. But after

all, Fraden thought indulgently, Ah Ming must be having a hard time

concentrating on his cooking with the good old Belt Free State falling in

around our ears.

Ah Ming, after all, as personal chef to the President of the B.F.S., had a

nice little thing going here on Ceres, and, Fraden knew, strictly from outside

observation, the average cat pretty much goes ape when the bird in his hand

suddenly begins to take wing.

It was an attitude that Bart Fraden found utterly alien. After all, a cat

with a given talent just had to stick his nose in the air and sniff out the

proper arena for his particular line of evil. When one flower runs dry on

nectar, the bee goes on to the next. A chef as good as Ah Ming could carve

himself out a nice little niche anywhere from Earth to Antares. He could do

something superlatively that most men couldn't do at all. That, after all, was

the only security any man, chef or politician, could ever really have.

Fraden reached across his desk and took a big Havana cigar out of the

hand-carved ivory desk-humidor. He sniffed at it appreciatively for a moment,

then stuck it in his mouth and lit it. He sucked rich smoke and stared for one

wistful moment around the office--at the teak-paneled walls, the red wool

wall-to-wall carpeting, the Picasso, the Calder, the Mallinstein, the wall bar

stocked with the best booze, every drop of it imported all the way from Earth,

the constant-humitemp closet filled with cases of cigars...

Quite a layout for the Asteroid Belt. This room alone must've cost

something like ten thousand Belt Dollars. There was nothing like the

Presidential Dome this side of Mars--wood, food, cigars, whiskey...And every

bit of it imported directly from Earth at enormous expense to the B.F.S.

treasury. The first and last President of the Belt Free State lived in high

style.

Fraden sighed wistfully, but the wistfulness did nothing to soften his

hard, angular face, handsome in its own stark way. Fraden's face was all flat

planes, sharp angles, and hard shadows playing up his deep-set dark brown eyes

and sharp though well-proportioned nose. With his hard, live face, his

large-boned, but wiry body, his thick crest of black hair, Fraden looked every

inch the predator that he was.

Bart Fraden caught his own moment of wistfulness and forced a sharp,

mocking laugh. "Hey, man," he said aloud, perhaps trying to convince himself,

"the Asteroid Belt ain't the only catfish in the sea! Easy come, easy go!"

He turned to the communicator on the stand next to his desk. It was really

time to make sure things were ready to go; in fact, it was about time to

split, if only that damned Valdez would show up already. If the Confederal

blockade kept him from getting through...

That was an eventuality that Bart Fraden did not care to consider. Things

were bad enough as they were, without ringing in theoretical disasters. The

so-called rebels-actually nothing more than regular troops of the newly

organized Confederated States of Terra--already held just about every rock in

what had been the Belt Free State except the capital worldlet of Ceres and a

few surrounding asteroids. Most important, they had already captured every

last one of the Uranium Bodies, those chunks of nearly pure pitchblende which

were the real reason for the so-called revolution in the first place. Sure,

the official flack was that the Oppressed People of the Asteroids were

rebelling against the despot Fraden so that they could join with their

Terrestrial comrades in the newly formed C.S.T., et cetera, ad infinitum, ad

nauseum. But the truth of course, as every microcephalic idiot in the solar

system over the age of two knew, was that the new amalgam of the Atlantic

Union, the Greater Soviet Union and Great China was feeling its collective

cheerios and had decided that it was tired of paying Bart Fraden good hard

cash for the Belt's uranium and that grabbing the Belt for its very own would

be cheaper in the long run. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Fraden pressed one of a large cluster of buttons and spoke into the

communicator. "Ling? Fraden here. The starship, I trust, is loaded and ready?

Good. Keep it primed for lift-off. Remember, Captain, my Swisstate bank has

orders to transfer a hundred thousand Confedollars to your numbered account

the moment we're safely beyond Pluto. Spotted Valdez's ship yet? Well, call me

the moment you do. And transfer the cargo pronto, the moment he lands. Right.

Out."

Fraden sighed and puffed on his cigar for comfort. Anyway, he thought, no

one can say that Bart Fraden can't read the handwriting on the wall.

Said handwriting had been clearly visible to Bart Fraden for the better

part of two years. The first letters had appeared when the G.S.U., the A.U.,

and Great China, scared witless by a near-miss at a three-way thermonuclear

war over some trifle that was already an obscure footnote to history, had

banded together in mutual terror to form the Confederated States of Terra. To

anyone smart enough to come in out of the rain, the message was all too clear.

With the system's Big Boys at last banded together into one clutching cabal,

the days of the system's myriad little independent states--the Martian

Commonwealth, the Jovian Hegemony, the TransSaturnian Dominion, the Belt Free

State, and all the rest were numbered. The only questions were who would be

grabbed first and how soon.

Fortunately, the Confederation had been nice enough to tip its hand by

doubling its purchases of uranium from the B.F.S. Clearly it was stockpiling

the stuff, which meant that it expected the supply to be temporarily

interrupted, which was a dead giveaway that the B.F.S. was first on its

Christmas shopping list.

So even before the phony revolution started, Fraden had reached deep into

his large Swisstate numbered bank account and bought himself a small but by no

means cheap starship. Once a behemoth like the Confederation had eyes for the

Belt, there was nothing to be done about it but to prepare an exit, an exit to

the stars, where there were still scores of independent planets, at least one

of which should have the proper revolutionary potential for a man who knew

where it was at to knock over and set himself up a planetary government that

would keep him in goodies for centuries, or at least for the rest of his life.

With skill, and cunning, and a little insurance.

If only the damned blockade didn't stop that insurance, all one hundred

million Confedollars worth, from coming through.

Fraden shrugged. Might as well hear the latest disaster report, he

thought. Nothing else to do till Valdez shows.

"Have General Vanderling come to my office pronto," he said into the

communicator.

Willem Vanderling, a squat, bald bullet of a man, bustled through the

corridor connecting the main Ceres Dome with Fraden's self-contained little

mansion, scowling and shaking his head.

The military situation was, to be conservative about it, hopeless. Ceres

was already enclosed in all but the Plutoward direction, and it was only a

matter of time before the Con-men completed the englobement. And not a hell of

a lot of time at that, Vanderling thought. Bart'll have to give up his cozy

little nest in less than a standard day if he expects to get off with a whole

skin. The thought gave Vanderling a certain grim satisfaction.

Thing was, Bart seemed more bugged at the way Ah Ming's cooking had

deteriorated than at the prospect of losing the Belt Free State. The bastard

always acted as if he had four aces hidden up his goddamned hand-tailored

sleeve. Even now, with the B.F.S. being chewed to bits around him.

The hell of it was that Bart Fraden always did seem to end up pulling an

ace or two out of his sleeve. The man was always five steps ahead of every

political and economic bump in the road--even the ones that Vanderling didn't

feel when he went over 'em. Damn good thing Bart doesn't know a lasecannon

from a snipgun. If he knew as much as I do about running a war, I'd be out on

my ear in the vacuum, Vanderling thought. This way, at least, neither of us

knows word one about the other's line of evil. No chance of a double cross

either way--we need each other, we're a team.

Fraden and Vanderling had risen from a mutual gutter to rule the Belt Free

State together. Fraden had hit the Belt more or less fleeing Earth after his

first and only term as governor of Great New York Province in the Atlantic

Union, a term distinguished by a record for graft and corruption impressive

even for that infamous den of political backscratching and bakering.

Vanderling had been born in the Belt, of grandparents who had made the New

Vortrek and was the leader of a nice-sized band of hijackers that stayed one

step ahead of the New South African militia only by dint of his inborn

tactical genius.

Apart, they were a small-time pirate and a has-been politician grubbing

among the Asteroids, then ruled by the New Vortrekkers as New South Africa.

But when they came together in the catalytic atmosphere of the fetid

dictatorship that was New South Africa, they were suddenly transformed into a

revolutionary force, and they had replaced New South Africa with their own

Belt Free State in two intensive years of high-powered demagogy and low-key

guerrilla warfare.

Of course, as Fraden had contended from the first, it was true that New

South Africa was more than over-ripe for revolution. The Asteroids had been

originally settled by Boer refugees from the Great African Pogrom who hoped to

establish a new Boer state in the Asteroids, with their rumored mineral

wealth. Two years after the founding of New South Africa, the Uranium Bodies

were discovered, and the Great Uranium Rush began as thousands upon thousands

of hopefuls from Earth's poorer areas hocked their worldly goods to buy

one-way passage to the Belt, confident of striking it rich.

But of course when they got there, the Geiger Guys found that the Boer

government had staked out each and every Body for itself and that they were

back on the bottom of the heap without a ladder. Since most of the flood of

Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans had arrived stone broke, history

repeated itself with a vengeance, and New South Africa became the new South

Africa indeed, with a Boer oligarchy lording it over darker-skinned masses all

over again.

In short, as Fraden had quickly convinced Vanderling, an ideal pushover

for a good guerrilla leader and a smart politician who knew which end was up.

"Easy come, easy go," Vanderling muttered to himself, trying to draw some

reflected solace from Fraden's easy indifference and not at all succeeding.

Fleeing the Solar System for parts and planets unknown was not exactly

Vanderling's vision of the Good Life.

When Vanderling stormed through Fraden's outer office and into the inner

sanctum, unannounced as was his prerogative, he saw that Sophia O'Hara was

sitting in the big chair, with Fraden leaning against the desk. This is all I

need to make my day complete, Vanderling thought sourly.

Sophia was a girl who had attached herself to Fraden somewhere near the

end of the revolution. She was short, lithe, well-stacked, dark-skinned,

fine-featured with deep green eyes; flaming red hair fell down to her

shoulders, and she oozed sex appeal. Vanderling hated her guts, and the

feeling was quite mutual.

Sophia smiled at him with sweet sarcasm and said, "Here's our bullethead

come to tell us, no doubt, that he's saved the day, surrounded the Con-men,

and we'll all live happily ever after. You can tell by the cheery smile on his

noble Neanderthal puss."

Vanderling, as usual, totally ignored her. "It's bad, Bart," he said.

"It's very bad. They're about twelve hours from completing the englobement,

which means with luck we can hold Ceres for another thirty hours. Maybe. If

we're gonna get out at all, we damn well better get out now."

"Cigar, Willem?" Fraden said, with an infuriating smile. Damn him, he

enjoyed watching that chick of his bad-mouth people. But in spite of his

irritation, Vanderling took a cigar from the proffered ivory humidor, lit it

with Fraden's gold table lighter, and inhaled the rich Havana smoke. Fraden's

taste in tobacco was as good as his taste in women was lousy. You had to give

him that.

"How soon is `now'?" Fraden asked, lighting himself afresh cigar.

"How long will it take to get the ship loaded and ready?" Vanderling said.

"Except for one small item, we could leave now," Fraden said.

"Then I suggest that you and me and Little Miss Sunshine get aboard right

now and get the hell out of here. Thirty hours is the optimistic figure, it

might well be under a standard day. And once they've englobed Ceres a Martian

sandflea couldn't sneak past the blockade on his hands and knees."

"We can't leave yet," Fraden insisted.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" Vanderling snapped. "The ship's

loaded and ready to go, the Con-men are practically knocking on the door, and

you can't leave yet! What in blazes are you waiting for, a brass band to drum

you out of the System playing `Hearts and Flowers'?"

"The small item we're waiting for," Fraden said, "is one of those big

things that come in little packages. Valdez is running it through the blockade

all the way from Earth, and I'm shelling out a hundred thousand Confedollars

for the service. We've got to wait for it as long as we possibly can. It's our

insurance."

Here it comes, Vanderling thought with a mixture of annoyance and

admiration. "What kind of insurance?" he said dully.

"Use that naked head of yours," Fraden said. "We board the ship and split

the Solar System for some outback planet. With no money, and the Confederation

anxious for a little chat. So what happens then?"

"So you tell me, genius," Vanderling said wearily.

"We're grabbed and held for Confederal extradition, that's what happens.

No two-bit planetary government out there is about to play footsie with the

Confederation for the sake of three paupers."

"Paupers?" shouted Vanderling. "You flipped? We've got better than a

hundred million Confedollars in the Swisstate account!"

"Which," said Fraden, "anywhere outside the Solar System, we might as well

use to line garbage cans. You're forgetting that there's no galactic monetary

system. Each planet prints its own paper, and no other planet considers it

money. That goes in spades for Confedollars. Only a few things are valuable

everywhere--radioactives, manufactured stuff, Earthside gourmet food, tobacco,

and booze. And we'd need a whole fleet of ships to carry a hundred million

worth of any of 'em."

"So?"

"So," said Fraden, "I've used our little clandestine bank account to buy a

hundred million Confedollars worth of commodities which are universally

valuable, which do have small enough mass to be carried in the ship, and which

will be worth ten times what they're worth on Earth in the outback. That's

what Valdez's ship is carrying, and that's why we've got to take the chance

and wait for it."

Vanderling snorted. "And just what in the blue blazes is this--?" The buzz

of the communicator cut him off. Fraden turned the volume up and Vanderling

could hear a voice that he recognized as that of Captain Ling, the officer in

charge of the main port facilities.

"...Valdez is coming in now, but he's being chased by three Confederal

cruisers..."

"Well, cover him, man! Give him cover!" Fraden shouted. "Fifty thousand to

every man on the gun crews if Valdez lands safely. And get that cargo

transferred the moment he touches down."

Already halfway to the door, Fraden said over his shoulder, "Come on! This

is it! Whether he makes it or not, we leave immediately, one way or the

other."

With Sophia and Vanderling trailing behind him, Fraden burst through the

safety lock and into the Port Control Dome. For a vertiginous moment, he had

the sensation of standing under the naked stars--for the dome was clear

plexsteel and the sharp bright stars of Ceres' black sky were all around him,

seemed close enough to touch...

But this was hardly the time to enjoy the view. As he half-ran to the

control console in the center of the small dome, where Ling and several other

officers were tracking the incoming ships on the screens, he noted that the

four lasecannon turrets which bracketed the concrete-floored landing area

outside the dome were already sweeping their deadly red beams in intricate

patterns among the multicolored stars.

Reaching the control console, Fraden stared up along the beams, trying to

spot the four moving points of light that were Valdez and the three blockade

ships, among the unwinking stars of the Belt firmament.

"Over there, sir..." said Ling, a slight, balding half-oriental. He

pointed low on the horizon, well below the angle of the lasecannon pattern.

"We're trying to get the beams between Valdez and the blockade ships. I think

he's gotten the idea; he's dropping fast."

Fraden sighted along Ling's finger and saw a tiny dot of light dropping

toward the jagged and nearby Cerean horizon. Above it, three similar dots were

following it down, but now the deadly red pencils of laser light interposed

themselves above Valdez's ship, a gridwork of red death between the Confederal

ships and Valdez.

Valdez's ship waxed as he watched it; now it was a clearly visible silver

needle, streaking low, almost parallel to the jagged surface, headed straight

for the landing field. Above, leery of the lasecannon at this range, the

Confederal ships were veering off, giving up.

He's making it! Fraden thought. By damn, he's got it made! Valdez's ship

was over the field now, nosing up and settling to the concrete surface on a

thick orange tail of retrorocket fire...

"Look! Look!" Vanderling suddenly shouted, grabbing his arm and pointing

wildly with his free hand. "We've got one of the buggers!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Fraden saw one of the Confederal ships burst

into flame as a laser beam hit its power plant and begin to spiral crazily

down beyond the horizon out of control. But he kept his eye on that which

mattered: Valdez's ship, the rockets now guttering as it touched down.

"Bully for our side, Chrome-dome!" he heard Sophia say sardonically. He

understood, this time. What was it with Willem that he gave a damn for one

very minor victory in a war already irrevocably lost?

As the two remaining Confederal ships turned tail, space-suited men were

already wheeling toward Valdez's ship on powered dollies to transfer the

precious cargo to the starship, which sat, a comparatively large silver ovoid,

at the other end of the field. Home free! Fraden thought.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get to the airlock. We can leave now. Say

goodbye to the Belt Free State. It was a good thing while it lasted."

"So is a mescbinge," said Sophia O'Hara. "But oh, what a morning after!"

Bart Fraden leaned forward in the copilot's seat of the small starship,

stared at the maze of gauges, screens, dials, and controls before him, and

said, "Damn good thing these newer models virtually fly themselves."

Willem Vanderling looked up from the check-out panel of the computopilot,

a board of amber lights that one by one were turning green as the computopilot

went through its check-out cycle, each light announcing, as it went green,

that the air supply, or the auxiliary rockets, or the stasis-drive generator,

or any one of 178 other factors necessary for a safe lift-off and voyage had

been automatically checked out and were go.

Vanderling looked at Fraden narrowly. "I can con this thing manually,

without the computopilot, if I have to," he said. "Thinking of ditching me

somewheres, Bart?"

That's Willem, Fraden thought, still doesn't trust me an inch. I wonder if

l have any business trusting him...But then, who trusts anyone? The only real

trust is when you've got something the other cat needs. So I can trust him.

"You're not thinking again, Willem," Fraden said. "If I wanted to dump

you, I could do it right here on Ceres without lifting more than my little

finger. I need you, and you need me. Once we pick us a planet and get a

revolution going, we'll--"

"And just how in hell do you expect to finance another revolution?"

Vanderling said, turning back to the check-out panel. "At least when we

started in the Belt, we had my two ships, twenty men and all that loot you had

from your term as governor of Great New York. Now all we have is our brains,

this ship, and a big-mouthed chick with expensive tastes."

"You're forgetting the crates from Valdez's ship. The crates that cost a

hundred million Confedollars..."

"Yeah, I sure am," Vanderling said surlily. "Ten damn crates that couldn't

weigh more than a couple hundred pounds, and you risked our necks for 'em.

Suppose you tell me what's in those crates that's worth about four hundred

thousand a pound."

"Three hundred pounds of assorted drugs," Fraden said smugly. "LSD,

Omnidrene, herogyn, opium, hashish, huxleyon...you name it, we got it."

"What?" Vanderling roared. "You blow a hundred million on a load of drugs?

I know you got expensive vices, man, but this is too much!"

"For crying out loud, Willem, even you can't really be that dense! We've

got more drugs in the hold than have ever left Earth in one lump before. Don't

forget, most of 'em are dependent on ingredients like opium or peyote that

won't grow on any other planet. Which means that any other planet in the

Galaxy that wants these drugs has to import them from Earth, which is, of

course, strictly verboten. Those drugs are money, Willem. They're better than

money because they're worth money anywhere. Can you think of anything else

that's universally valuable that we could carry a hundred million Confedollars

worth of in this crummy little ship?"

"No..." Vanderling muttered dubiously. "But well be awfully hot wherever

we try to peddle the stuff. What are you going to do about that? We escape the

Solar System and get grabbed for pushing drugs. That doesn't make one hell of

a lot of sense."

"You're learning, Willem, you're learning," Fraden said. "You have just

pointed out the reason why we're going to pick a planet where our first and

best customer will be the planetary government itself."

"That makes sense," Vanderling admitted. "You know a planet like that?"

"Nope," said Fraden. "But I'm sure the computopilot does'

CHAPTER TWO

As the ship drifted dead in space, somewhere beyond Pluto, Bart Fraden sat

in the Spartan ship's mess, glumly watching Sophia O'Hara wolf down great

quantities of eggs, bacon, coffee, and toast with real cow butter.

Still intent on the food, Sophia, without looking up, said: "Just how long

do we sit here in the tag-end of nowhere playing with ourselves?"

Fraden winced, not at what she said, but at the rate she was consuming the

ship's meager store of decent, Earth-grown food, "Soph," he said, "if you keep

eating like there's no tomorrow, we'll be out of the good stuff and on

S-rations within a week." Ugh! The thought of eating the wretched synthetic

glop that passed for Space-Rations did something to Fraden that losing the

Belt Free State could not. That damned computopilot had better complete the

program quick!

"I see you've managed to avoid answering my question," Sophia reminded

him, swabbing up egg yolk with a piece of toast--her fourth of the meal. "And

for your information, I'm doing us a big favor by gobbling up the goodies. The

sooner we run out, the sooner your delicate gut will start to rumble, and the

sooner you'll pick us a planet and get us the hell out of here, you miserable,

degenerate, lazy--"

"So if I'm such a lout," Fraden said with a smile, "why didn't you head

for Earth instead of tagging along? The Confederation couldn't care less about

you. The party was over, and you could--"

"Oh, shutup, idiot! You're the only man I've ever met who thought with

something besides his stomach and his crotch, albeit at distressingly

infrequent intervals. You've almost got a brain, Bart Fraden. I intend to

stick tight to you, whether you like it or not, and see to it that you use it"

Fraden looked across the table and his gaze met Sophia's green eyes. Her

face softened for a moment, and she leaned across the table and kissed him on

the lips, touching him lightly on the ear with a fingertip, and Bart Fraden

was reminded once again that this was the only human being in the universe who

really cared whether he lived or died.

Then the moment passed. Sophia went back to her food and said, "Why don't

we just head for the nearest inhabited planet? If we stay cooped up in this

sardine can with Bullethead Vanderling much longer, I'm afraid I'll contract

hydrophobia."

"Aw, come on, Willem is no prize, but he's not that bad."

"Isn't he? He's a shaved ape, a thug who bathes regularly, or at least I

assume he does. The man has no vices. He risks his life, but not because he

likes to eat well or take expensive drugs or keep a high-priced item like me

around. A man who fights Bart without supporting expensive tastes is doing it

just for kicks. He's a latent sadist. I just do not have eyes for being

confined in the same ship with him when he stops being latent. Therefore, I

suggest we make tracks for the nearest glob of mud that calls itself an

inhabited planet."

"It's not as simple as all that," Fraden said. "We've got very specific

and rather hard-to-fill requirements. That's what I spent the last three hours

working on. I set up a program for Willem to feed into the computopilot. We

need an inhabited planet that's out of the way, preferably one that doesn't

get visitors. The population shouldn't be too large. The local government

should be such that they'll be interested in the drugs. Most important, it

must be a planet with a high revolutionary potential."

"Now wait a minute! I can dimly understand that that mechanical moron can

come up with a list of planets of a given size or population or even form of

government. Are you trying to tell me that it's a mechanical Machiavelli that

can measure `revolutionary potential,' whatever that may be?"

"Hardly," Fraden said. "The computopilot has data on every inhabited

planet in the Galaxy, strictly objective data. But there are certain objective

criteria of revolutionary potential--dictatorial government, economic setup,

rigid class lines with high social tension, and about a hundred others. I

simply constructed a schema listing the factors. Willem programs the schema

into the computopilot, the computer cross-correlates the factors with the data

in its memory unit and prints out a list of planets in order of degree of

correlation. I do the thinking. The computopilot just looks things up like a

coolie librarian."

"Science marches on!" Sophia said dubiously.

"Think I'll go see how far it's marched by now," Fraden said. "Care to

join me?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world."

When they reached the control room, Vanderling was fumbling with a long

ribbon of print-out paper.

"That the list?" Fraden asked. "It looks awfully long."

"Well, you had me program the thing to give us the revolutionary potential

of every planet in the damn Galaxy, whether you realized it or not,"

Vanderling said. "However, seems like there's only four planets in the whole

Galaxy with potentials better than fifty per cent"

Fraden shrugged. It was about as he had expected. But after all, one

planet would be quite sufficient. "Lets have a data print-out on those four,"

he said.

Vanderling fiddled with the computopilot console. In about a minute, the

printer rattled off about two feet worth of data. Vanderling tore off the

paper and handed it to Fraden.

Fraden scanned the list. Sundown, Yisroel, Sangre, Cheeringboda. Never

heard of any of 'em, Fraden thought. Which means hardly anyone else has

either. So far, so good. Hmmm...Sundown looked good: .8967 Earth-normal,

population ten million, mixed SinoRussian population...Uh, oh. Population

about evenly divided between both groups. Good revolutionary potential either

way you played it. Which meant that you'd have a chronic revolutionary

situation that you could never eliminate. An easy planet to conquer, but

impossible to hold. Scratch Sundown!

Yisroel.... .9083 Earth-normal. Population, nine million. First settled by

ultra-orthodox Jews in '94. Later generally Jewish migration. Now ruled by

Chief Rabbi. Rumors of unrest by descendants of later migrants...Hmmm...looks

promising. Huh? Standard English unknown on planet. Classical Hebrew official

and only language...Two down!

"Well?" said Sophia. "By the look of your face, it's not so good."

"Too bad none of us speaks Hebrew..." Fraden muttered, still scanning the

data sheet.

"Hebrew? Have you been hitting the drugs in the hold?"

"Hey, wait a minute!" Fraden exclaimed, his face brightening. "I think

we've hit the jackpot! Listen to this. Sangre: .9321

Earth-normal...population, fifteen million humans, indeterminate number of

semi-intelligent natives...Semi-intelligent? That sounds impossible."

"Some of my best friends are semi-intelligent," Sophia observed.

"Yeah, sure..." Fraden muttered abstractedly. "...originally settled three

hundred years ago by religious splinter-group known as the Brotherhood of Pain

ejected from the Tau Ceti system on charges of murder and ritual torture which

were never proved...Believed to have taken slaves from the Lost Colony of

Eureka, which was found gutted fifty years later...Hey, dig this! No

officially verified off worlder touchdowns on Sangre for 220 years. Last

suspected contact in 2308 when looted ship was found on trajectory that

would've brought it within a light-year of Sangre. Ship believed to have

contained illicit shipment of herogyn for Balder...And that's all that's

printed-out on Sangre. That and two asterisks. What in hell does that mean,

Willem?"

"One asterisk means that a planet should only be touched down on in case

of dire emergency," Vanderling said. "Two, I guess means the same thing, only

in spades."

"It sounds like the Black Hole of Calcutta," Sophia said.

"Exactly!" replied Fraden. "In other words, it sounds great! Sounds like

there's a nice tight little oligarchy of nuts running the place, maybe even

with a slave population. Couldn't ask for a better revolutionary situation if

I designed it myself. And a good indication that the people who're running the

show have a more than passing interest in drugs. Sangre it is!"

"You're the boss," Vanderling said, without much enthusiasm. "Just wish we

knew something more about the place."

"I can tell you one more little piece of gossip," Sophia said. "Sangre is

the Old Spanish word for blood."

Norman Spinrad - The Men in the Jungle

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