Space Police Read online

  Iliff waited and made no comment, because when the old boy got as confidential as all that, he was certainly leading up to something. And he did not usually bother to lead up to things without some good reason—which almost always spelled a lot of trouble for somebody else.

  There was nobody else around at all, except Iliff.

  “I had an unexpected visit three days ago,” the Co-ordinator continued, “from my colleague, the Sixteenth Co-ordinator, Department of Cultures! He’d been conducting, he said, a personal investigation of Lannai culture and psychology—and had found himself forced to the conclusion there was no reasonable objection to having them join us as full members of the Confederacy. “A people of extraordinary refinement . . . high moral standards—’ Hinted we’d have no further trouble with the Traditionalists either. Remarkable change of heart, eh?”

  “Remarkable!” Iliff agreed, watchfully.

  “But can you imagine,” inquired the Co-ordinator, “what brought Sixteen—between us, mind you, Iliff, as pig-headed and hidebound an obstructionist as the Council has been hampered by in centuries—to this state of uncharacteristic enlightenment?”

  “No,” Iliff said, “I can’t.”

  “Wait till you hear this then! After we’d congratulated each other and so on, he brought the subject back to various Lannai with whom he’d become acquainted. It developed presently he was interested in the whereabouts of one particular Lannai he’d met in a social way right here on Jeltad a few weeks before. He understood she was doing some work—”

  “All right,” Iliff interrupted. “It was Pagadan.’’

  The Co-ordinator appeared disappointed. “Yes, it was. She told you she’d met him, did she?”

  “She admitted to some circulating in our upper social levels,” Iliff said. “What did you tell him?”

  “That she was engaged in highly confidential work for the Department at present, but that we expected to hear from her within a few days—I had my fingers crossed there!—and that I’d see to it she heard he’d been inquiring about her. Afterwards, after he’d gone, I sat down and sweated blood until I got her message from the destroyer!”

  “You don’t suspect, I suppose, that she might have psychoed him?”

  “Nonsense, Iliff!” the Co-ordinator smiled blandly. “If I had the slightest suspicion of that, it would be my duty to investigate immediately. Wouldn’t it? But now, there’s one point—your robot, of course, made every effort to keep Pagadan from realizing there was no human crew manning the ship. However, she told me frankly she’d caught on to our little Department secret and suggested that the best way to keep it there would be to have her transferred from Interstellar to Galactic. As a matter of fact, she’s requested Zone Agent training! Think she’d qualify?”

  “Oh, she’ll qualify!” Iliff said dryly. “At that, it might be a good idea to get her into the Department, where we can try to keep an eye on her. It would be too bad if we found out, ten years from now, that a few million Lannai were running the Confederacy!”

  For an instant, the Co-ordinator looked startled. “Hm-m-m,” he said reflectively. “Well, that’s hardly likely. However, I think I’ll take your advice! I might send her over to your Zone in a week or so, and—”

  “Oh, no,” Iliff said quietly. “Oh, no, you don’t! I’ve been waiting right along for the catch, and this is one job Headquarters is going to swing without me!”

  “Now, Iliff—”

  “It’s never happened before,” Iliff added, “but right now the Department is very close to its first case of Zone Agent mutiny!”

  “Now, Iliff, take it easy!” The Co-ordinator paused. “I must disapprove of your attitude, of course, but frankly I admire your common sense. Well, forget the suggestion—I’ll find some other sucker.”

  He became pleasantly official.

  “I suppose you’re on your way back to your Zone at present?”

  “I am. In fact, we’re almost exactly in the position we’d reached when you buzzed me the last time. Now, there wouldn’t happen to be some little job I could knock off for you on the way?”

  “Well—” the Co-ordinator began, off guard. For the shortest fraction of a second, he had the air of a man consulting an overstuffed mental file.

  Then he started and blinked.

  “In your condition? Nonsense, Iliff! It’s out of the question!”

  On the last word, Iliff’s thought and image flickered out of his mind. But the Third Co-ordinator sat motionless for another moment or so before he turned off the telepath transmitter. There was a look of mild surprise on his face.

  Of course, there had been no change of expression possible in that immobilized and anaesthetized embryonic figure—not so much as the twitch of an eyelid! But in that instant, while he was hesitating, there had seemed to flash from it a blast of such cold and ferocious malignity that he was almost startled into flipping up his shields.

  “Better lay off the little devil for a while!” he decided. “Let him just stick to his routine. I’ll swear, for a moment there I saw smoke pour out of his ears.”

  He reached out and tapped a switch.

  “Psych-tester? What do you think?”

  “The Agent requires no deconditioning,” the Psych-tester’s mechanical voice stated promptly. “As I predicted at the time, his decision to board U-1’s ship was in itself sufficient to dissolve both the original failure-shock and the artificial conditioning later connected with it. The difficulties he experienced, between making the decision and his actual entry of the ship, were merely symptoms of that process and have had no further effect on his mental health.”

  The Co-ordinator rubbed his chin reflectively.

  “Well, that sounds all right. Does he realize I . . . uh . . . had anything to do—?”

  “The Agent is strongly of the opinion that you suspected Tahmey of being U-1 when you were first informed of the Interstellar operative’s unusual report, and further, that you assigned him to the mission for this reason. While approving of the choice as such, he shows traces of a sub-level reflection that your tendency towards secretiveness will lead you to . . . out-fox . . . yourself so badly some day that he may not be able to help you.”

  “Why—”

  “He has also begun to suspect,” the Psych-tester continued, undisturbed, “that he was fear-conditioned over a period of years to the effect that any crisis involving U-1 would automatically create the highest degree of defensive tensions compatible with his type of mentality.”

  The Co-ordinator whistled softly.

  “He’s caught on to that, eh?” He reflected. “Well, after all,” he pointed out, almost apologetically, “it wasn’t such a bad idea in itself! The boy does have this tendency to bull his way through, on some short-cut or other, to a rather dangerous degree! And there was no way of foreseeing the complications introduced by the Ceetal threat and his sense of responsibility towards the Lannai, which made it impossible for him to obey that urgent mental pressure to be careful in whatever he did about U-1!”

  He paused invitingly, but the Psych-tester made no comment. “It’s hard to guess right every time!” the Co-ordinator concluded defensively.

  He shook his head and sighed, but then forgot Iliff entirely as he turned to the next problem.

  9. What of the future “private eye?” If the policeman’s lot is not a happy one, can the private detective in a galactic civilization hope for a life of ease? Magnus Ridolph had some ideas of his own concerning crime and punishment—and he was always open to hire.

  JACK VANCE

  The Sub-Standard Sardines

  Banish evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?

  MAGNUS RIDOLPH

  M
AGNUS RIDOLPH lay on a deck-chair, a green and orange umbrella bearing the brunt of the African sunlight. The table beside him supported a smouldering cigar, Shemmlers News Discussions turned face downward, a glass containing ice and a squeezed half-lime. In short, a picture of relaxation, idyllic peace . . . The transgraf clanged from within.

  After a restless interval Magnus Ridolph arose, entered the apartment, took the message from the rack. It read:

  Dear Magnus,

  My chef’s report on tomorrow’s dinner—broiled grouse with truffles and compote of Marchisand cherries, Queen Persis salad, Sirius Fifth artichokes. A subsidiary report of my own—wines from three planets, including an incredible Fragence claret, a final course of canned sardines.

  If you are free, I’d like your verdict on the menu—especially the sardines, which are unusual.

  Joel Karamor.

  Magnus Ridolph returned to the deck-chair, re-read the invitation, folded it, laid it on the table beside him. He rubbed his short white beard, then, leaning back in his deck-chair, half-closed his eyes, apparently intent on a small sailboat, white as the walls of Marrakech, plying the dark blue face of Lake Sahara.

  He arose abruptly, crossed into his study, seated himself at his Mnemiphot, keyed the combination for Sardines.

  For several minutes information played across the screen. Very little seemed significant and he found no notes of his own on the topic. The Sardinia pilchardus, according to the Mnemiphot, belonged to the herring family, swam in large shoals and fed on minute pelagic animals. There were further details of scale pattern, breeding habits, natural enemies, discussion of variant species.

  Magnus Ridolph wrote an acceptance to the invitation, ticked off Joel Karamor’s address code, dropped the message into the transgraph slot.

  Karamor was a large healthy man with a big nose, a big chin, a brush of brindle-gray hair. He was an honest man and conducted his life on a basis of candor, simplicity and good-will. Magnus Ridolph, accustomed to extremes of deception and self-interest, found him a refreshing variant.

  The dinner was served in a high room paneled in Congo hardwoods, decorated with primitive masks hung high in the shadows. One glass wall opened up on a magnificent expanse of clear blue twilight and, twenty miles south, the loom of the Tibesti foothills.

  The two sat at a table of burnished lignum vitae, between them a centerpiece of carved malachite which Magnus Ridolph recognized for a Three-Generation Work from the Golwana Coast of the planet Mugh—a product of father, son and son’s son, toiled over a hundred years to the minute.[*]

  The dinner surpassed Karamor’s usual standard. The grouse was cooked to a turn, the salad beyond exception. The wines were smooth and brilliant, rich but not cloying. Dessert was a fruit ice, followed by coarse crackers and cheese.

  “Now,” said Karamor, watching Magnus Ridolph slyly, “for our sardines and coffee.”

  Magnus Ridolph obliged with the wry face he knew to be expected of him. “The coffee, at least, I shall enjoy. The sardines will have to be of spectacular quality to tempt me.”

  Karamor nodded significantly. “They’re unusual.” He arose, slid back the panel of a wall-cabinet, returned to the table with a flat can, embossed in red, blue and yellow.

  “It’s yours,” and Karamor, seating himself, watched his guest expectantly.

  The label read: Premier Quality. Select Sardines in oil. Packed by Chandaria Canneries, Chandaria.

  Magnus Ridolph’s fine white eyebrows rose. “Imported from Chandaria? A long way to bring fish.”

  “The sardines are top-grade,” said Karamor. “Better than anything on earth—delicacies of prime quality and they bring a premium price.”

  “I still should not, at first thought, imagine it profitable,” was Magnus Ridolph’s doubtful comment.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” declared Karamor. “Of course you must understand the cannery expenses are very low, and compensate for the shipping costs. And then spacefreight is not especially expensive. Actually we’re doing very well.”

  Magnus Ridolph looked up from the can. “We?”

  “George Donnels, my partner in the canning business, and myself. I financed the proposition, and I look after the sales. He runs the cannery and fishing operations.”

  “I see,” said Magnus Ridolph vaguely.

  “A few months ago,” continued Karamor, frowning, “he offered to buy me out. I told him I’d consider it. And then—” Karamor gestured toward the can. “Open it.”

  Magnus Ridolph bent over the can, raising a tab, pressing the lid-release button. . . . Bang! The lid flew high in the air, the contents of the can sprayed in all directions.

  Magnus Ridolph sat back, raising eyebrows mutely at Karamor. He felt his beard, combing out the fragments of fish which had become entangled in the hairs.

  “Spectacular indeed,” said Magnus Ridolph. “I agree. What were the other tests you wished me to make?”

  Karamor rose to his feet, circled the table. “Believe me, Magnus, that surprised me as much as it did you. I expected nothing like that—”

  “What did you expect?” inquired Magnus Ridolph drily. “A flight of birds?”

  “No, no, please believe me, Magnus. You must know I wouldn’t indulge in a stupid joke of that sort!”

  Magnus Ridolph wiped his face with a napkin. “What is the explanation for the—” he licked his lips—“the occurrence?”

  Karamor returned to his seat. “I don’t know. I’m worried. I want to find out. I’ve opened a dozen cans of sardines in the last week. About half were in good condition. The rest—all tampered with, one way or another.

  “In one can the fish were threaded with fine wires. In another the flesh tasted of petroleum. Another gave off a vile odor. I can’t understand it. Someone or something wants to ruin Chandaria Cannery’s reputation.”

  “How widespread is this tampering?’’

  “Only the last shipment, so far as I know. We’ve had nothing but compliments on the product up to now.”

  “Whom do you suspect?”

  Karamor spread out his big hands. “I don’t know. Donnels couldn’t benefit, that’s certain—unless he figured he could scare me into selling and I think he knows me better than that. I thought you might investigate—act for me.”

  Magnus Ridolph considered a moment. ‘‘Well—at the moment, so it happens, I’m free.”

  Karamor relaxed, smiled. “The import seals were all intact,” he told his guest.

  “And they are applied at the cannery?”

  “Right.”

  “Then,” said Magnus Ridolph, “it is evident that the mischief occurs on Chandaria.”

  Magnus Ridolph rode the passenger packet to City of the Thousand Red Candles, on Rhodope, Fomalhaut’s fourth planet, where he took a room at the Ernst Delabri Inn.

  He enjoyed a quiet dinner in the outdoor dining room, then hired a barge and let the boatman paddle him along the canals till long after dark.

  Next morning Magnus Ridolph assumed a new character. Ignoring his white and blue tunic, he buttoned himself into a worn brown work-suit, pulled a gray cloth cap over his ruff of white hair. Then, crossing the King’s Canal and the Panalaza, he threaded the dingy street of the Old Town to the Central Employment Pool.

  Here he found little activity. A few men, a few nervous tom-tickers, a knot of Capellan anthropoids, one Yellowbird, a few native Rhodopians listlessly watched the call-screen. Prominent on the wall was a sign reading:

  CANNERY WORKERS!

  WANTED ON CHANDARIA!

  —a notice which excited little attention.

  Magnus Ridolph strolled to the assignment window. The velvetskinned Rhodopian clerk bobbed his head courteously, lisped, “Yes, sir?”

  “I’d like to try the cannery on Chandaria,” said Magnus Ridolph.

  The Rhodopian flicked him a seal-brown glance. “In what capacity?”

  “What positions are open?”

  The Rhodopian glanced at a list.
“Electrician—three hundred munits; integrator-feed mechanic—three hundred twenty munits; welder—two hundred ninety munits; laborer—two hundred munits.”

  “Hm,” said Magnus Ridolph. “No clerical work?”

  “At the present, no.”

  “I’ll try the electrician job.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the Rhodopian. “May I see your Union Journeyman Certificate?”

  “My word,” said Magnus Ridolph. “I neglected to pack it.”

  The Rhodopian showed blunt pink teeth. “I can send you out as a laborer. The steward will sign you up on the job.”

  “Very well,” sighed Magnus Ridolph.

  A cargo freighter conveyed the cannery recruits to Chandaria—a thick wobbly shell permeated through and through with the reek of hot oil, sweat and ammonia. Magnus Ridolph and a dozen others were quartered in an empty hold. They ate in the crew’s mess and were allowed two quarts of water a day for washing. Smoking was forbidden.

  Little need be said of the voyage. Magnus Ridolph for years afterward labored to expunge the memory from his brain. When at last the passengers filed, blinking, out on Chandaria, Magnus Ridolph looked his part. His beard was unkempt and dirty, his hair hung around his ears and he blended completely with his fellows.

  His first impression of the planet was dismal watery distance, drifting patches of fog, wan maroon illumination. Chandaria was the ancient planet of an ancient red sun and the land lay on a level with the ocean—prone, a gloomy peneplain haunted with slow-shifting mists.

  In spite of its age Chandaria supported no native life more advanced than reeds and a few fern trees. Protozoa swarmed the seas and, with no natural enemies, the twenty thousand sardines originally loosed into the waters throve remarkably well.

  As the passengers alighted from the hold of the freighter a young man with a long horse-like yellow face, very broad shoulders, very narrow hips, stepped forward.

  “This way, men,” he said. “Bring your luggage.”

  The newcomers obediently trooped at his heels, across ground that quaked underfoot. The path led into fog and, for a quarter-mile, the only features of the landscape were a few rotten trees thrusting forlorn branches through the mist, a few pools of stagnant water.