Inferno: A Chronicle of a Distant World (The Galactic Comedy) Read online

  "She's very tired, and in obvious pain," said Cartright. "Perhaps we should let her go back to sleep. We can talk about this later."

  "I'm all right," said Beddoes. "I want to hear about it now."

  "Are you sure you feel strong enough?" asked Cartright solicitously.

  "I'm sure, Arthur." She turned to McCreigh. "Tell me about the rescue. What happened?"

  "It was a success," said McCreigh. "We lost two of our men and one hostage. Killed all fourteen Lodinites, and about a hundred and fifty innocent bystanders."

  "Innocent bystanders?" said Beddoes. "I didn't see any."

  "Oh, they were all wearing Faligor military uniforms, but President Labu swears they were bystanders," said McCreigh with a grin. "Anyway, except for you, all the hostages are on their way back to the Republic. You were in no condition to transport."

  "You still haven't told me why you're here."

  "We thought there was a possibility that Labu might take out his frustration on the one survivor, so I was ordered to remain behind until you've recovered."

  "And you are expected to hold off the entire Faligor army?" said Beddoes in disbelief.

  "Not at all," replied McCreigh. "I'm here as a representative of the Republic to inform them that any reprisals taken against one Susan Beddoes will be considered an act of war against the Republic, which will respond to such provocation with all the firepower at its command."

  "I don't want to be the cause of a war," said Beddoes.

  "You won't be," replied McCreigh with a smile. "Our position is totally illegal, and I doubt that we'd follow through if push came to shove. But Labu doesn't know that."

  "You've just publicly humiliated him by swiping the hostages from right under his nose," noted Beddoes. "What makes you think that he'll leave me alone, despite your threats?"

  "Because his army is busy elsewhere. Since he's afraid to go to war with the Republic, and the moles are all gone, he's busy decimating a tribe called the Chijanga this morning."

  "The Chijanga are pastoralists who live a thousand miles from here, and never bother anyone," said Beddoes. "How did they get involved in this?"

  "Probably because they're pastoralists who live a thousand miles from here and never bother anyone," replied McCreigh. "Labu went on the air again this morning. He claimed that the Chijanga were in collusion with the Republic, and that they helped free the hostages just when Labu had both sides poised on the verge of an agreement."

  "In other words, he's wiping out an entire tribe just to save face?"

  "That's about the size of it," agreed McCreigh.

  "Okay, you've delivered your message," said Beddoes. "Why are you still here—and more to the point, why hasn't Labu thrown you in jail for participating in the rescue?"

  "Two reasons," answered McCreigh. "First, he was officially neutral during the crisis, and hence he can't favor one side over the other. Second, I've been attached to the Republic embassy, and while he probably doesn't know what diplomatic immunity means, he knows that you don't shoot embassy personnel."

  Beddoes turned to Cartright. "You know him better that I do, Arthur. He's not going to stop with slaughtering the Chijanga, is he?"

  "I doubt it," said Cartright.

  "How bad are things going to get?"

  "Worse, I think, than either of us can imagine."

  It was an understatement.

  16.

  After the rescue at the Remus spaceport, something seemed to snap inside Gama Labu's mind. Where before he had been cunning and barbaric, now he was merely bloodthirsty and barbaric. Where before he had at least made a pretense of governing in accordance with those laws that remained on the books, he now became a law unto himself. Where before those who had been dragged out of their houses and arrested in the middle of the night at least knew what their government had against them, now such arrests followed no comprehensible pattern.

  When one of Labu's cabinet members was shot and killed in retaliation for the slaughter of a nearby village, Labu issued a proclamation allowing all government employees and members of the military to shoot anyone they felt might endanger their lives. This was immediately interpreted as the right to shoot anyone who voiced any opposition to any government policy.

  At the same time, corruption ran rampant. Taxes were collected by whim, with many of the same citizens being taxed five and six times a year. Any jason with an advanced degree who was still alive was drafted into the army and never seen again. Six more tribes vanished from the face of Faligor forever.

  Rumors abounded about Labu himself. It was common knowledge that he was once again practicing the religion of his forebears, but those closest to him whispered that he had killed and eaten two of his wives at the urging of his witch doctor, who then disappeared, never to be seen again.

  Another story told of Labu losing his courage on a hunting trip, when charged by a Plainstalker. Then, when his eldest son stepped forward and saved him by shooting the Plainstalker at point-blank range, Labu was said to have killed him and eaten his heart, convinced that his son's courage would now flow through his veins.

  Where once one truck a day backed up to the Government Science Bureau, now they came and left by the hour, and the stench from the mass graves was omnipresent.

  Any member of government who aroused Labu's ire or jealousy was either replaced or simply vanished. As a result, the Treasury Department was run by a former printer's apprentice whose answer to everything was to print more money. The Interior Department decided that the best way to eradicate a flying insect that carried a disease that was fatal to the domestic livestock was to kill every wild animal that might carry the insect from one livestock herd to another; within three months they had slaughtered most of the remaining five million wild animals on the planet, without making an appreciable dent in the population of the flying insect. The head of the Patent Bureau announced that there was nothing left to invent, closed its doors, and appropriated its funding for his personal use.

  A few jasons and men still openly opposed the government. A group of eight religious leaders met with the President-For-Life to protest Labu's treatment of their followers; they were immediately arrested, and their anguished screams could be heard, night after night, throughout Romulus, until the last of them died eleven days later. A major in the army refused George Witherspoon's orders to set fire to his own village; he was stripped naked, covered with gasoline, and set ablaze. A jason doctor refused to stop tending to Labu's victims in a distant village; when word of his disobedience reached Labu, he was arrested and brought before the president, who filled one of the doctor's syringes with poison and injected it into him, then ate a hearty meal while watching the doctor's agonized death throes.

  One by one, the civilized races of the galaxy closed their embassies and withdrew their personnel. The first to leave were the Canphorites, followed by the Domarians, the Lodinites, the Mollutei, and finally the only embassy left functioning was the Republic, which had placed an economic embargo on Faligor but was unwilling to turn its back on the few remaining Men who still lived there.

  Labu's reaction was simple and straightforward: he declared war on each of the departing races. He didn't have the means to make war on distant planets, but he methodically burned down each empty embassy and issued shoot-to-kill orders should any member of that race set foot upon Faligor for any reason.

  Although entire embassies had closed, Labu never officially lifted his restriction on emigration, and as a result Beddoes remained on Faligor, her request for an exit visa being turned down more than a dozen times. It was as if the president realized that he could not kill her for attempting to aid the hostages, but he decided he could at least force her to spend the remainder of her days as a virtual prisoner on Faligor.

  McCreigh remained too, certain that the moment he left Beddoes and probably Cartright would both be murdered. Eventually he bought a farm in the area, for lack of anything better to do; the first month he was there, his livestock was mut
ilated; the second month, his wells were poisoned; the third month his house and barn were burned down, though he shot and killed seven of those responsible before they could flee. After that, he moved into the embassy compound, checking on Beddoes' situation every week or two, but taking no further interest in Faligor.

  And despite all this, a few jasons still fought back. A Christian minister that the death squads had overlooked planted bombs in the Departments of Science and Agriculture, killing some four hundred government officials and leading Witherspoon a merry chase for the better part of three months before he was finally hunted down and tortured to death. Fifteen Enkoti females compiled a journal describing all the excesses of the past few years and managed, somehow, to smuggle it off the planet; Labu and Witherspoon never found out for sure who was responsible for it, but more than seven hundred Enkoti disappeared into the Government Science Building, never to emerge, during their attempts to learn the identities of the authors.

  Perhaps the most successful rebellion was led by a schoolteacher named James Krakanna. When the army found out that he was criticizing the government to his young students, they sent a squad of twenty soldiers to arrest him. When the soldiers arrived, they were immediately mowed down by Krakanna and his "Children's Army," some fifteen jasons, none of them even adolescent, who had armed themselves with bows and poisoned arrows. They confiscated the dead soldiers' arms and disappeared into the dense forests encircling the Hills of Heaven, emerging when least expected to wipe out any of Labu's followers who were unlucky enough to cross their path. Within six months Krakanna's children numbered almost one thousand, all of them armed, and the threat became serious enough for Witherspoon to dispatch some 50,000 troops to the Hills of Heaven to root them out. They found a few here and there, lost some three thousand of their own personnel, and finally decided that the operation wasn't worth the effort and went home. Krakanna promptly began launching his attacks once more.

  Still, these were minor irritations to the President-For-Life, nothing more. His reign of terror continued unabated until two unrelated events occurred that, although no one knew it at the time, marked the beginning of his downfall.

  First, with the last of his foreign currency spent on armaments, Labu found that he was unable to pay his army with anything but totally worthless Faligor dollars. The fifteen billion dollars that the average soldier made each week would no longer buy a single loaf of bread.

  Second, he received word that William Barioke, who had been living in exile on neighboring Talisman ever since the coup, had been lobbying both the Talisman government and the Republic to overthrow Labu and restore him to power.

  It was, Labu decided, a heaven-sent opportunity to get his army's mind off the fact that their astronomical salaries were worthless. He had amassed some sixty-three spaceships since assuming power. They all sat, fueled, fully-armed, and ready to fly, on the landing strip at the Remus spaceport. It seemed the perfect opportunity to put them to use, assuage his army, and replenish his empty coffers by plundering another planet.

  The morning after he heard the rumors about Barioke, President-For-Life Gama Labu declared war on Talisman.

  17.

  "You know," said Beddoes, sitting across the dinner table from Cartright, "this could be the best thing that ever happened to Faligor."

  "How can you say that?" replied Cartright. "Nobody wins in a war."

  "Nonsense, Arthur. That sounds great in a university lecture or a book, but the fact is that someone always wins. Who do you think writes the history books? The winners." She paused to take a bite of her food and swallow it. "I think Labu's in over his head this time."

  "I don't know," said Cartright. "Talisman's economy is very little better than our own, and I don't remember anything about their having an effective military machine. I hope you're not counting on the Republic rushing to their aid; that ruler of theirs—that President Byamula—keeps turning down Man's overtures. More politely than Faligor, to be sure, but just as firmly."

  "Look," said Beddoes, "it's populated by an alien race, and the Canphor Twins and Lodin XI and all the others are looking for allies against the Republic. The very fact that Byamula is under attack by a madman and the Republic won't help should mean that a few dozen other alien worlds will leap to his defense."

  "And what if they do?" asked Cartright. "What then?"

  "Then Gama Labu's days are numbered."

  "So what? Talisman will take over Faligor, and we'll have another military dictatorship."

  "Talisman can't afford to do that," said Beddoes. "It can barely afford to keep its own government in business."

  "Maybe the combined outrage of the Republic and the alien planets will make Labu see reason," Cartright suggested hopefully.

  "I don't know why you think it will," replied Beddoes. "Nothing else has."

  "He's always played one side against the other," answered Cartright. "He's never really been in a position where everyone is against him."

  "I doubt that he's losing any sleep over it," said Beddoes. "No, our best hope is for Talisman to form some quick alliances and decimate the invading forces."

  "If it hasn't already fallen," replied Cartright gloomily.

  "We're not talking about the Republic invading a planet with twenty million men and turning the sky black with battleships. These are two impoverished worlds, both ill-equipped for war on a planetary scale. It's not going to end that fast."

  "But if Talisman gets the help it needs . . ."

  "Moses Byamula is a proud man. He won't ask for help until he knows he needs it. That could take a day, or a week, or a month. Or maybe we're wrong, and he's capable of winning a war without any help at all."

  "You make it sound like a problem in logic, Susan," said Cartright. "But it isn't—it's war. Right now it's taking place on Talisman, but if they fight off the invasion, the next battle will be fought here." He stared across the table at her. "Have you ever been in a war? I have, and take it from me, it's not pleasant."

  "Neither is what's happened to Faligor since Labu gained power."

  "That's for damned sure," agreed Cartright with a sigh. "Ah, well, there's no sense arguing about it. What will be, will be. Perhaps I should turn on the holo and see if we've received any news about it yet."

  She stared at him and shook her head sadly. "Poor Arthur. You still think of this as the world you wanted it to be, rather than the world it is."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I'll tell you right now what the broadcasts will say. They'll say that we're winning victory after glorious victory, that we're advancing on the enemy and he is sustaining massive losses, that President Byamula has gone into hiding, and that victory is within our grasp." She paused. "They'll keep saying it right up to the moment that Byamula's forces land on Faligor and march into Labu's mansion."

  "Yes, I suppose they will. Still, it can't hurt to see what's on."

  He activated the holo, and true to Beddoes' prediction, the announcers predicted an imminent victory.

  Then there was an insert of Gama Labu, stating that he personally abhorred war and would call it off as soon as Talisman agreed to surrender the traitor William Barioke to Faligor, and to pay the equivalent of two billion Republic credits as a penalty for harboring such a fugitive. Until Talisman's cowardly president met those two demands, the war would continue.

  When the broadcast went back to offering obviously inflated counts of the enemy's losses, Cartright turned the set off.

  "Surprised?" asked Beddoes humorlessly.

  "Puzzled."

  "Oh? What about?"

  "Why doesn't Moses Byamula just turn Barioke over to us?"

  "We also demanded extortion money to withdraw our army, remember?" said Beddoes.

  "I'm sure it's negotiable," answered Cartright. "What Labu really wants is Barioke."

  "That's not so, Arthur. He also wants an external enemy, so people don't start looking at him when their money's no good and the electricity doesn't work and t
he water won't run."

  "All the more reason why Byamula should give Barioke to Labu. I would."

  "Perhaps," said Beddoes dryly, "that's why you're not the president of Talisman."

  18.

  Talisman was prepared for the attack. It had given refuge to literally tens of thousands of jasons, many of them government officials who had fallen from favor and had much information to trade in exchange for sanctuary.

  Furthermore, Labu's ill-trained pilots were barely able to find Talisman, let alone their targets, and most of the initial rain of bombs fell into an ocean and onto an uninhabited desert. About half the weaponry Labu had purchased was in poor shape or else was incompatible with the ammunition he had bought for it.

  The Talisman forces were no better equipped, but they were better trained, and within hours of the attack, more than half of Faligor's fleet had been decimated and the rest found itself fighting for its life.

  Finally the commander of the flagship, a General Dushu, broke off his engagement and fled back to Faligor, followed by the twelve surviving ships of his Navy, and the first phase of the war was over.

  Moses Byamula, the President of Talisman, went before a meeting of the planetary heads of the Canphorite Federation, composed of some thirty-eight alien races, and asked for their support in his war against Gama Labu. The Federation went into private executive session, and emerged a few hours later with a statement condemning Labu's actions but stopping short of offering any tangible aid to Talisman.

  Byamula next contacted the Republic, hoping for arms or money to pay for arms, and received only a similar statement of moral support.

  Labu, for his part, was changing religions almost by the hour, looking for aid in exchange to his fealty to an alien god, but it was an old stunt and it didn't play well. Within days he was faced with the fact that almost every race in the galaxy had publicly condemned his act of aggression.