Pattern for Conquest by George O. Smith - HTML preview

XXIII.

Billy Thompson faced the catman in spite of Linzete's hiss of disapproval.

"I know of our danger," snapped the ruler of Sscantoo. "Few know it better than I. I was on Terra just before trouble struck, and I know and appreciate the mass against me. And you tell me to submit willingly."

"Might as well," said Billy. "It's inevitable."

"Sscantoo has one chance," said Linzete. "And that is to use Terra's secret weapon."

"You haven't got it," said Billy flatly. "And if you mean spore-bombing, don't be an idiot."

"Idiot?" snarled Linzete. "Better an idiot than a turncoat that is now fighting his conquerors' battles for them. You commanded a certain amount of respect, Thompson. But that debt was canceled on the day that you started to curry favor. Go back and fawn upon the Loard-vogh; do you think that I don't know what's in your mind? You'll willingly sell Sscantoo into slavery in order to gain a little more voice in your plaintive wailing cry to Vorgan."

"I—"

"As you sold Tlembo to the Loard-vogh."

"I've sold no—"

"Where have you been?" snarled Linzete.

"Coming from Tlembo," admitted Billy with a laugh. "And there has been no communication because we have been traveling in subspace. It took us four days to cross space from Tlembo to here. We've been out of touch with the Universe for months, as far as we're concerned. Now if Tlembo is being sold, I don't know about it."

"Hotang Lu left three days ago because he was withdrawn. His statement was that Indan Ko was taking the trip to Vorgan's capitol in order to offer terms of surrender. Explain that!"

"Indan Ko was intelligent enough to understand the implications behind fighting. Look, Linzete, I sold Tlembo a theory of operations. You cannot hope to win alone."

"We can exterminate them."

"And in doing so, render unfit for life a quarter of the Galaxy? That I will not permit. And, Linzete, any extermination you perform will be strictly post-mortem. Granted that you have the ships and the men and the spores all grown or collected and packed into bombs. From a single bombing of a Loard-vogh planet to extermination of life on that planet will be a matter of six months to a year. Meanwhile, the Loard-vogh will have attacked and conquered you. Think Terra didn't think of it? We did and we considered it well. But Linzete, we like to remain alive. We destroyed seventeen million of the first-line fighting men. That was war, and the men were expendable. A nice nasty term. Terra lost seven thousand because Terra does not consider any man really expendable. The situation is about even. But consider their utter hatred and violence to find a single planet bombed into lifelessness ever afterwards by filling it with sheer death-rot."

"I see the point, but if we're to lose, let's lose honorably, die fighting, and take as many with us as we can."

"A poor attitude. You must fight to win and to live, Linzete. War is a means of forcing your will upon an enemy, Linzete. That means there are a number of different kinds of war. War per se is usually the last resort. There are social wars and economic wars, and people do not consider them too violent. But a shooting war gets everybody all worked up.

"There has been a lot of talk about Terra's secret weapon, Linzete. It has been explained again and again. Terra's secret weapon is the intelligence to recognize fact, even though obscured. If you had your choice, Linzete, which would you rather be, the nominal ruler of a sector or the man whose advice is taken on every decision—who, in fact, tells the ruler what to do?"

"Lacking the right to be both acknowledged ruler and factual ruler, I— That is a problem that has never occurred to me."

Billy said, very patiently, "Terra knows. Terra will win this war. Our will—to be imposed upon the Loard-vogh—is that they take their decisions from our advice. As such, we have the rule of the Galaxy. I tell you this because Sscantoo has too much to gain by absolute co-operation with Terra. Eventually the Loard-vogh will be seeking our advice. I have sent them Indan Ko, the ruler of a race that has caused them no end of trouble. Indan Ko will not arrive there for months, yet I can predict that Vorgan and Lindoo will place the Tlembans directly under Terran supervision for divers reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Vorgan will prefer to place under Terra any intelligent race who are more than conquered slaves. Allies, in a sense. That's because the Loard-vogh have never yet experienced any allying. Their past is devoid of practice. So it will be with Sscantoo. You will come under our jurisdiction."

Linzete shrugged. "Win, lose, or draw, Sscantoo seems doomed."

"Nonsense! Sscantoo will reap the benefits of a Galaxy-wide culture. Sscantoo will reap the benefits created by Terra, and without the battle scars that Terra will bear forever. Fight them, and you will die. There is little sense in being dead, Linzete. Never again will the Loard-vogh conquer and enslave. From now on in, they will find their selected victims prepared and allying with them, offering them facts and facets of culture, and sponsored by Terra. Terrans are already high in the councils of the Loard-vogh as technical advisors. They calculate and they advise, and they will advise terms for this system and for that system, and the end-product will be to weld the entire Galaxy into one solid culture.

"Fight them?" laughed Billy. "Why fight them when we can outmaneuver them before the logisticians can cover their first page of trial equations."

"Trouble is," said Linzete, "that Sscantovians are a rather belligerent race, and entirely individualistic. And the Loard-vogh are extreme militarists."

"Sscantoo's job is clear. Sscantovians like isolation and lone-wolfing. That's why I am here pleading with you." Billy pointed out of the overhead dome into the bright sky. "Out there, somewhere, there must be another culture that really needs extermination. More than half of the Galaxy lies out there. Linzete, take your lifetime and your planet's resources and go out and find for me a whipping post to keep the Loard-vogh in fighting trim. It's precious little warfare they'll get at home from now on in."

Linzete purred. "You seem to have solved our problem and theirs all in one plan. Terran, it is a deal."

"Sscantoo will not be sorry," promised Billy.

Linzete nodded, and poured a drink from the carafe at his elbow. "To a united Galaxy," he said. They drank. "Tell me, Billy, what happens when you meet a race that will not listen to reason, having planetary defenses too powerful to attack?"

"We have a means of rotating a five thousand mile sphere of their sun's core into subspace. It makes a violent variable out of it, and forces the race to migrate within a year. During migration, of course, they are helpless and they can be handled with ease."

"Um," swallowed Linzete. "I see."

The color of his face showed that he did see.

Once more the months rolled past. The trip was made to Terra in subspace, to save time, but when Billy arrived, his greeting to Patricia Kennebec was hungry and demanding.

"You'd think it were months," she objected mildly.

"For me it has been," he confessed.

Another month rolled by, and it went with a peculiar time-sense, for it was both violently swift at times, and at other times it dragged like eternity. Both of them would have preferred a quick wedding, but position interfered with the process. But the month ended eventually, and after a solid round of formal affairs punctuated by less formal details, they got the right and the opportunity to take to their spaceship together.

And the four months that followed drove past as swiftly as the light-years logged up on the recorder. Theirs was an ambling passage through prime space; they stopped at four or five intervening systems on their way.

Their arrival at Vorgan's capitol followed the visits from Indan Ko and Linzete. Billy knew, and smiled inwardly. He'd planned it that way.

"Stick around," he told her with a grin. "Females are strictly nom de something-or-other in there at present. I'll be out directly."

He entered and saluted Vorgan. Lindoo was less affable than the Lord of All, who smiled.

"A nice piece of work, Terran," said Vorgan.

"Thank you."

Vorgan turned to Lindoo. "You once told me that you would step down when your master at diplomacy came along," he twitted.

Billy smiled at Lindoo. "I gather that I executed your wishes to perfection," he said.

Lindoo blinked.

Vorgan turned back to the Terran. "His wishes?"

"Certainly. I admit that I took liberties with my orders, but I couldn't know whether settling the Sscantovian affair without losing a man included Tlembo as well, because by the time I took stock, they were allied, and we of Terra always consider that a confederate rates the same treatment as the prime contractor."

"But I do not understand. Did Vorgan issue any orders?"

"I am responsible to him. I am among his advisory staff. He selected me. It was his ability to select me that puts him in the position of ordering me."

"Proceed," said Vorgan.

"Lord of All, a responsible assistant certainly does not require a written order for every act. Not among Terrans, anyway. A good supervisor selects assistants who can anticipate and act upon his wishes. A good assistant can act as his superior would act, and knows his superior's wishes. Therefore I was but anticipating Lindoo's plan, and acting in accordance with my knowledge of his desire."

Lindoo blinked, and the storm cloud of his face cleared. Vorgan smiled slightly. "Keep him," he said. "He will do a lot for you."

Lindoo would require a bit more soothing, Billy knew, but that could come easily and soon enough.

He was dismissed and as he left, Billy smiled inwardly. Let them rule. He and his cohorts would rule the rulers. He had a fairly complete picture right now. They had rid themselves of Sezare the dissolute voluptuary, and Borgara, the tyrant, and there was a sector not too far away where one Terran had convinced the overseer that an experiment in offering the slaves better living quarters and a better future might pay off. It would, for the downtrodden sector against which the model project was stacked knew of the "race" in production and were taking it easy. The model project's output might even be double. And several sectors were combing close to locate intelligent assistants and specialists to aid the Terrans—the research sector. And Terrans in large groups were roaming the galactic front, using their ability to speak and communicate with any race. They could enter any system that used a reasonable facsimile of Terran air for an atmosphere, and disease and death did not touch them. Their arguments were brilliant, and they achieved without fighting that which the Loard-vogh could not do. If the Loard-vogh felt that things were moving too fast, they had but to inspect their birth records. With less fighting, there was less absence of the fighting men—

It would be a long, hard-driven road to travel, but it would lead to a united Galaxy. Meanwhile, Billy would be happy without fretting about his position. He was satisfied to advise Lindoo.

Vorgan, Emperor of the Loard-vogh, Lord of All, and his race fought for the unity of the Galaxy. They still thought they ruled it as they would—

THE END.