Philip E. High - The Prodigal Sun

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2024-12-20 0 0 392.13KB 172 页 5.9玖币
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The Prodigal Sun by
Philip E. High
CHAPTER ONE
THEY HAD NOT named the age, in truth there were few words to
describe it. The world had known times of plenty and times of famine,
ages of freedom and years of dictatorship. There had even been brief, if
localized, periods of near perfection but this was not one of them.
This period took the worst, threw them together and made quite sure
that nothing good got in.
It was not really the world's fault, having been pitchforked into it.
Mankind had just concluded its first interstellar war but the word
"victory" was purely relative.
True the enemy was flat on its back and quite helpless but Earth had
come out of the encounter on all fours. Today, five years after the enemy's
unconditional surrender, Earth was still licking its wounds and unable to
climb to its knees.
The race was sick, sick of its leaders and sick of each other. Its gut
ached from over-doses of expediency and its sinews creaked with the
bitterest cynicisms.
Whether the men in the long conference room were products or victims
of the age is an academic question and wholly irrelevant—it didn't make
them any nicer. They were mean, hard men, uninfluenced by any
consideration save advancement in their wholly personal rat-race.
This was the age of dog-eat-dog, here the cheap chiseler, the terrorist
and the extortioner blossomed like flowers on a refuse heap.
First there was General Statten, a harsh little man with beady eyes and
the face of an irritable peanut. The General wore a smart uniform,
impressive rows of ribbons and decorations but he had flown a desk in an
impregnable H.Q. two thousand feet under the Andes. He was a political
general, a brilliant organizer with a singular ability for discrediting those
immediately above him. Station's climb to the top had been a
tour-de-double-cross.
Facing him was Dowd, the industrialist, who had, during the years of
sorrow, acquired a financial empire without parallel in human history.
Dowd was insatiable, having grown drunk on power, he had developed an
everlasting thirst for more. He would have liked to possess the world but
Kaft wouldn't let him.
Kaft represented the secret police. Kaft kept secret files but neither
could bring the other down without his own collapse. Dowd had
insinuated himself so deeply into the financial sinews of the race that he
could not be removed without the collapse of the economy.
Kaft, on the other hand, held those revealing files and his untimely
death would bring them to light. Both took great care that the other
stayed alive but they hated each other venomously.
It was difficult to understand, even in war, how a police state had arisen
from a loosely democratic government. People don't turn round and say:
"Let's have a secret police," or do they?
In an all-out war manufacturing plants are switched from luxury goods
to war production and, inevitably, there are shortages and out of
shortages grows the black market.
In war the best food goes to the fighting men and there is rationing for
the civilian population. A thousand and one petty criminals rush forward
to bleed off this flow of supplies and the black market grows. Beside it
spring up subsidiary rackets, grafting on government contracts, phony
committees preying on the patriotic, forged papers for the draft-dodger.
The government has to counter these activities under emergency
powers and specially trained forces have to be created to deal with civil
corruption. Maybe, after all, people do turn round and say: "Let's have a
secret police."
Kaft was it. He had borrowed the techniques of all the police systems
which had preceded him and added a few of his own.
After a twenty-five year war it had got so bad that people were afraid to
be silent in case their lack of words be interpreted as sullen resentment
against existing order. They were also afraid to speak.
Kaft with his pinched pink senile face and scraggy neck. A man with a
mouth like a coin slot in a public vending machine, listening and biding
his time.
"I don't like it." Rickman rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to
the other. "It's all very well for Dowd to rub his hands and dream of
extending his empire but this could be dangerous. In my opinion we could
do without our visitor. In my opinion this man is a louse but he could also
be a menace."
He took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at them. "I'll concede
that his knowledge is valuable, immensely valuable, but getting at it is
another thing. A jewel encrusted bomb is just as dangerous as the other
kind and digging out a few of the gems is a poor return if the damn thing
blows your head off before you've finished."
"Bombs have been de-fused before now," said Dowd, stubbornly.
"Bombs we understand."
"Even bombs we don't. The Vrenka had a lot of gimmicks in the war but
we licked most of them."
"It's a danger to the whole race." There were rare occasions when
Rickman teetered on the brink of political honesty. "This louse sat out the
whole war on a neutral planet and we're going to welcome him back as a
V.I.P. Hell, he may not even be Duncan, he might be a damned alien or, at
the very least, a 'plant' for the Mattrain. All this red carpet stuff is being
laid on because Dowd wants to bleed him of advanced technologies and, I
repeat, it's damned dangerous, best keep him away."
He thrust the cigar back in his mouth and chewed at it angrily. "We
could sell out the race for thirty technical blue prints and Dowd could be
chief Judas."
Dowd sighed and smiled twistedly. He did not look at the politician but
addressed the others. "When our public spirited friend draws on his
meager biblical knowledge I must confess I am impressed, however—"
Dowd paused and smiled meaningly. "Mr. Rickman should take time off
for self-analysis because, believe me, he is highly skilled in the art of
implication." He looked at the other directly. "Mr. Rickman would like
others not only to arrange the crucifixion but to wash his hands as well.
What our political friend is trying to 'say, without, of course, implicating
himself is: 'Let's knock our visitor off as soon as he arrives.' "
"I protest!" Rickman was on his feet, flushed and angry.
"Order! Order!" Hodges the chairman banged his gavel noisely. "The
purpose of this meeting is procedure"
"Gentlemen, please." Kaft rose, his timing, as always, was perfect. "Mr.
Rickman's apprehensions are not only understandable but commendable."
He paused. His genius for soothing insincerities was well known but
seldom failed to convince at the time. "It is quite true that Duncan may be
a 'plant' for the Mattrain or, at the very least, working for their espionage
organization but we are not quite fools."
Duncan will be under constant surveillance and"—he smiled slyly—"I
have detailed a special bodyguard to 'protect' him. After the first few
public receptions Duncan won't get near enough to anyone or anything to
be dangerous.
"One question," General Statten's little eyes were hard but alert. "I have
received information that Independent News has appointed a permanent
contact. Thanks to its blasted charter rights we couldn't block the move."
Kaft smiled thinly. "We didn't try, too obvious. Let him report until
public interest wanes."
Rickman said, "Who is this contact and what's his job?"
Kaft leaned down and extracted something from a briefcase. "I have his
file here. His job is to write up a day by day account of Duncan and his
reactions to Earth. If we handle this carefully we may learn quite a lot."
"And the contact himself?"
"A man named Mark Gaynor, he's been screened of course. Has a flair
for factual reporting but fortunately an extrovert and without subtlety. An
excellent war record incidentally, organized and personally lead four
successful commando raids on Vrenka bases in the latter stages of the
war. Decorated twice, achieved rank of major…" Kaft closed the file slowly.
"A hard, tough man but excellent for our purpose. If we have to rub out
Duncan in a hurry we have a scapegoat conveniently at hand."
"Sounds as if this goat could butt back and hard," said Rickman,
savagely.
Kaft smiled. "Well make quite sure he butts the man we choose, thank
you."
"We're going to look this prodigal over personally?"
"But of course, the interrogation of such a man is not a task for
subordinates. We must handle this with subtlety, at first he must feel he is
among friends."
The transfer ship hung ready in space, withdrawn-looking and
somehow timeless. A dull black pear-shaped blob flung carelessly and
rather incongruously against an unwinking mist of stars.
At a distance, but close enough to be pointed, four bulbous and heavily
armed cruisers stood ready and waiting.
During the war the Mattrain, despite the tactical position of her Empire
directly between the two warring races, had remained uncompromisingly
neutral. It was not a stand which had endeared her to the human
race—surely one humanoid people should help another. Worse, since first
contact, the Mattrain had brusquely cold shouldered all attempts to
establish friendly relations. Keep away and stay away had been her only
response to countless suggestions of trade, cultural exchanges, pleas for
medical assistance by which Earth sought to establish profitable relations
with a people several thousand years ahead in culture and technology.
It was this technical superiority which had prevented both races from
seizing the Mattrain worlds for their own advantage. Both were acutely
aware that the Mattrain could have beaten both races to their knees in a
matter of days.
Again there were rumors… No one quite knew where these rumors
originated but put together they spelled out something unpleasant. It was
said that the Mattrain had something. No one knew quite what it was but,
boiled down, attacking the Mattrain was suicide for anyone.
There were a million guesses as to what this something was but no one
had put forward anything definite. Only one man might know, only one
man might have the answer. The man who had sat out the entire war on
those neutral Mattrain planets—a man called Peter Duncan.
The Mattrain ship, when it finally arrived, was so small it was almost an
insult. Here was no dignity, no ceremony, no sense of the appropriate.
The cruiser commanders had the uneasy feeling they were being
laughed at. The Mattrain pilot was probably making mocking and slightly
vulgar signs with his fingers. All this pointed show of force and they'd sent
that, a tiny bronze-colored cube no bigger than a ground car.
They would have liked to have done something about it. They would
have liked to have shown this cock-a-hoop flea cage just what they felt
about it. Their resentment was made worse by chagrined realization that
this same flea cage could probably beat hell out of the lot of them.
The Mattrain ship touched the side of the transfer vessel, hung there
briefly then drifted away. Watchers saw it boost suddenly to a killing
gravity, exhale sudden brightness and flick abruptly into hyper-drive.
Transfer was over.
The transfer ship was beaming vision and sound but viewers on Earth
caught only a brief glimpse of a fair-haired smiling man emerging from
the transit lock. He was lost almost immediately in a grim reception
committee of white coated and be-masked medics. They hustled him
quickly away and the white doors of the medical laboratories slid shut in
front of the tele-mikes.
Viewers had a long wait; medical science was taking no chances.
The experts began on the assumption that he was non-human and
worked backwards. Fortunately they had his natal charts but it made
them no less thorough. They checked his blood, respiration, retina
pattern, finger prints and his sexual organs. They measured, weighed and
analyzed the contents of his bowels, stomach and bladder. They ran off
charts on reflexes, glandular reactions and the results of deliberate
bruising and cuts. They removed fragments of flesh and skin, scrapings
from the teeth and hair from his head and body. Slowly, very slowly, they
became reassured.
At the end of the sixth grueling hour the Chief Medic removed his
medical mask. "I have no reasons to suppose you are not human. Our tests
give reasonable grounds for assuming you are the original Duncan." The
Chief Medic was not an ungracious man, just a frustrated one suffering
from a sense of anticlimax. Somehow the whole business had turned out
to be routine and wholly mundane.
There was nothing startling about Peter Duncan. A slim quiet man with
fair, rather untidy hair. Certainly he seemed almost unnaturally healthy
and well-muscled but, apart from that, a man you might meet anywhere.
Wide but not striking blue eyes, a good strong chin, a long amused and
faintly mocking mouth—hell, the man was ordinary.
"Nothing ever happens to me" thought the Chief Medic, savagely. He
had spent almost the entire war in a military hospital a thousand feet
underground and was suffering from a sense of frustration. He'd never
seen the war, only the beds, the lines of casualties tossed like unwanted
carcasses, one after another, onto the brightly lit operating tables.
"You may dress. Food will be brought as soon as you are ready."
Belatedly and with some effort he added: "Good luck, Duncan." The "By
God, you'll need it" showed only in his eyes.
Outside the tele-mikes were still 'live' and waiting. One of the news
circuits was filling in the time by giving a resume of past events.
It was a particularly cloying broadcast deliberately slanted and
predigested for the lower intelligence brackets and, therefore, coated with
an unreal intimacy. It was, however, reasonably accurate: "No one will
ever know what happened to the Mackley. Loading and preflight checks
had proceeded normally. She blasted out of orbit dead on schedule with
one hundred and eighty-three passengers and a crew of thirty five."
"She was never seen again."
"Her last routine message was received five days out of orbit but after
that her fate is one of the mysteries of space."
"We do know, however, that a Mattrain vessel recorded a disturbance,
possibly an explosion on her instruments and went to investigate."
"The aliens found only drifting metallic dust but, nonetheless their
instruments were recording distress signals. They immediately centered
on these calls and found single life-craft."
The announcer paused dramatically. "Within this vessel the aliens
found a man child, a six-month-old baby boy, the sole survivor of the
ill-fated Mackley."
"Whether the child's mother had a premonition of danger and carried
the baby boy to safety before the Mackley met her end we shall never
know. Perhaps there was prior warning but that, too, will never be
known…"
"To give the Mattrain their due, they immediately notified Earth and
arrangements were made to return the child to its own race."
"Fate, however, decreed otherwise. Before the negotiations could be
completed Earth's Empire was invaded by the cone ships of the Vrenka.
And, in the years of terror which followed, the Mackley and the baby boy
were forgotten."
"Only today, thirty years after the Mackley's disappearance, does the
survivor return, no longer a baby but a mature man—a man named Peter
Duncan."
There was a carefully timed pause. "What can we expect of this man
Duncan, raised on an alien planet by alien foster parents? Here is a symbol
denoting the unknown. A human being, yes, but with an alien background
and an alien education. A man whose mind must reason differently to our
own. A man to whom our way of life, our hopes, dreams and aspirations
may be totally incomprehensible."
The announcer lowered his voice dramatically. "Why does he return
now to his own race? We must remind ourselves that he was in no great
haste to return when our resources and strength were strained to the
limit."
"Again, what does he bring us? Does he come with the blessings of a
superior technology or as an agent of an alien race. Is he friend or foe?
Does he despise or pity us?
"All these questions must be asked and, when answered, proved beyond
shadow of doubt.
"Although today we killed the fatted calf for the returning prodigal,
shall we one day deplore his return and the efforts we made to make him
welcome?"
Duncan sat down to the solitary meal which the announcer had
described as the fatted calf. Earth had done her best but a calf?
There was syntha-steak, medium rare, mock onions and pseudo-tubers.
There was a dessert of lab-fruit and custard-concentrate.
Unhurriedly he finished the meal, fully conscious that alert eyes and
large numbers of instruments were recording every movement he made.
The rate his fork traveled from his plate to his mouth was, no doubt, the
subject of intense study. The number of times he masticated his food
would probably become the subject of Interdepartmental debate.
He smiled to himself inwardly. Might as well give them something to
gasp about.
He touched the delivery button and watched the servo eject the carton.
He extracted a cigarette, flicked off the plastic tip and watched the
tobacco light on contact with the atmosphere. Carefully, and with obvious
deliberation, he leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply.
He almost spoiled the effect in an effort to fight down a cough but
somehow he succeeded. The synthetic tobacco in no way approached the
perfection of Mattrain Kelsna but it would serve as a reasonable substitute
until…
CHAPTER TWO
DUNCAN WAS MET at the ferry port by a group of bleak-faced men
posing as a reception committee.
A minor government official shook his hand with obvious reluctance
and read a typed speech of welcome.
Precisely twelve seconds were allowed for the tele-mikes to get a
close-up of him then the reception committee hustled him into a waiting
vehicle and slammed the door.
"Make yourself comfortable," said a dry voice before he had landed on
the seat.
Duncan said: "Who the hell are you?" and sat down.
"I'm your bodyguard." He was a strangely flat-faced man with a button
nose and pale cold eyes.
"Bodyguard?" Duncan leaned back and crossed his legs.
"That's what they call it. I protect you against possible assault or
alternatively, protect the people against you—I make myself plain?" He
took something from his pocket and held it up. "In case you're unfamiliar
with our technology this is officially known as a C-type restraint weapon
or, to the vulgar and uneducated, as a club gun." He spun it deftly in his
hand. "It's tuned to the nervous system and, to the recipient, feels like a
numbing physical blow. Note the advance adjustment button close to the
butt. Pressure on this not only knocks the victim cold but clean out of this
world." He smiled faintly. He had a long curiously puckered mouth which
looked as if it had once possessed a zip fastener. "If it's of any interest I'd
be really grateful if you started something."
Duncan looked at him thoughtfully. "You have a name I take it, apart
that is, from the obvious dirty ones your attitude call to mind?"
The other's mouth thinned, carefully he put the gun away.
"The name is Hengist." He extracted a single cigarette from his breast
pocket, flicked off the plastic tip and studied the slow curl of smoke. "Tell
you something?" He hung the cigarette from the corner of his mouth. "If
there's one thing I hate above all else it's a comedian. Don't make me burst
out laughing, foster child."
Duncan shrugged indifferently and looked out of the window.
The vehicle was now leaving the ferry port by the main gate, flanked by
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ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.TheProdigalSunbyPhilipE.HighCHAPTERONETHEYHADNOTnamedtheage,intruththerewerefewwordstodescribeit.Theworldhadknowntimesofplentyandtimesoffamine,agesoffreedomandyearsofdictatorship.Therehadevenbeenbrief,ifl...

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