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

  "How?" asked Cartright.

  "I want you to become our representative to the Republic, and to urge them to arrive with medics and supplies after we launch our final attack. Their presence here could save literally thousands of jason lives—on both sides."

  "I'm surprised you care what happens to your enemies," said Cartright.

  "There is a difference between necessary killing and senseless slaughter, Mr. Cartright," replied Krakanna. "And unlike my predecessors, I do not plan to unite this planet by killing off every last jason who disagrees with me. In case it has escaped your notice, it's been tried before without much success." He paused. "Well, Mr. Cartright, on which side do you stand?"

  "I'm not sure yet," answered Cartright. "I like what I have heard, but I have been fooled before." He stared at Krakanna. "Why are you on record as opposing a democratic form of government?"

  "I oppose it at this point in time because the general populace's lack of literacy and the sad state of communications—radio, video, holo, newspaper—makes it impossible for more than a small percentage of us to cast an informed vote."

  "And the alternative is to install yourself as dictator?" asked Cartright dryly.

  "I have no intention of being a dictator," rplied Krakanna. "There are many forms of government other than democracy and tyranny, Mr Cartright. "Your race's home planet offers numerous examples, ranging from monarchy through republic through socialism and communism. Your African nation of Botswana had a popularly-elected president and lower house of legislature, while the upper house was composed entirely of hereditary tribal chiefs."

  "You seem to have studied us very thoroughly."

  Krakanna smiled. "I was a teacher of political science before I became a guerilla leader. I have fond hopes of returning to that profession someday."

  Cartright stared at him for a long moment.

  "If you can convince me you are telling the truth," he said, "I will do whatever I can to help you."

  28.

  Dear Susan:

  I have been to see James Krakanna, and I have come away convinced that he is the one jason who can save this beleaguered world.

  I know, I know, I've said that before about other leaders, but this time I'm sure that I'm right. We spoke for many hours, and while I do not wholly approve of his politics or his methods, they were both shaped by the events that I helped to trigger through my ignorance and my idealism. Even an old man can learn from his mistakes, and I think I am learning from mine.

  Krakanna claims that he has no desire to rule Faligor, that he wants to reinstate the original constitution and hold elections within three months of forcing Dushu out of office. I've heard that before from every other leader, and I must confess that while I think he believes it, I don't foresee it happening. Nor would it necessarily be a good thing: Krakanna has too much to offer to go back to being a schoolteacher. There probably aren't twenty jasons left alive with the equivalent of a college education; Faligor can't afford not to make use of each of them.

  I spent almost two days as Krakanna's "guest," going where I pleased and speaking to whomever I pleased, and I rid myself of a number of misconceptions. For example, while I have been calling this a children's army for quite some time, well over half its members are battle-hardened adults, and they're in command of most of the units. But it's the children that you see and the children that you remember. During the time I was there I saw literally thousands of them. Most were undernourished, some were unarmed, very few of them spoke or understood Terran, but all of them were unfailingly friendly and polite—and most of them had been in combat.

  I stopped to speak to some of them, and inevitably their stories were the same: their families, and frequently their entire villages, had been destroted by Labu or Barioke or, in the case of the most recent recuits, Dushu. They had managed to escape and lived only for revenge. Eventually they linked up with other survivors, and finally they had found (or been found by) Krakanna's forces, which they had immediately joined. It was amazing to speak to fourteen-year-old jasons who had known nothing but the life of a soldier for five or six or even seven years.

  During my second day there, Krakanna took me to the Ramsey National Park. As we drove in through the main gate, I saw the remains of the devastation that Labu's goons had caused, and further on there were piles of bleached bones where they had used herds of Thunderbulls for target practice. There were a few avians in the sky, and a couple of small animals in the trees, but by and large my overwhelming impression was one of desolation.

  We drove about five miles, then turned off the track and headed toward a dense patch of bush. Finally he parked the vehicle just short of the bush and waited.

  I sat motionless for almost half an hour, wondering what it was we were anticipating, and then suddenly he grabbed my shoulder and pointed at a movement behind the nearest patch of foliage—and suddenly, nine stately, majestic Thunderbulls paraded past, on their way to water.

  Like everyone else, Krakanna had thought all the Thunderbulls were dead, and was thrilled to find out that he was wrong. These nine had been so widely dispersed that they might never have found each other in a park as huge as this one, but Krakanna's people managed to drive them togther, and now there is a breeding herd of two males and seven females. He told me he longed for the day that there would once again be thousands of Thunderbulls in the park, possibly all descended from these nine, and observed by tourists from a hundred different races.

  Personally, I don't think he gives a damn about Thunderbulls as such; he sees them as a way to rebuild the tourism industry and attract hard currency and put jasons to work—but on the other hand, I don't think his motives are as important as the end result, which will be to both save the wildlife and reestablish a necessary industry.

  I know I have had my enthusiasms in the past, but I truly believe that in Krakanna I have found the one jason who might yet save this planet. I have agreed to help him, to act as his go-between with the Republic, and suddenly I'm excited, because for the first time in too many years I'll be doing something to help, rather than just wringing my hands.

  It will be dangerous, but I feel alive again!

  Love,

  Arthur

  29.

  As if Faligor didn't have enough problems, it found itself visited with another during Sibo Dushu's reign. Villagers and city-dwellers alike began dying by the dozens, then the hundreds, and ultimately the thousands, with the villagers hit the worst. The symptoms were always the same: the victim would begin slurring his speech and limping, and within weeks or months would gradually lose control of his body until he could no longer walk or even feed himself. The muscles began to atrophy, and no amount of exercise or medication could strengthen them. Eventually, since he could not even masticate, he starved to death. Even those victims who were moved to hospitals and given intravenous fluids were unable to handle them, and the end was always the same: a grotesque, skeletal corpse.

  At first it was known as the Thinning Sickness, and finally, when doctors diagnosed the nature of the disease, it received its official name, an acronym that actually described the effects: SLIM, for Subclinical Lusinemia-Imperiled Metabolism. But while doctors understood the effects of the disease, they still had not discovered the cause.

  One Christian sect declared that this was God's punishment, that the jasons were a sinful and wicked race, but it didn't make many converts, since most jasons, whether they felt sinful or not, were convinced they had already undergone their share of suffering and then some.

  Barioke, for his part, had ignored SLIM, but by the time Dushu took over the reins of power it was too widespread to ignore. Since he was not only the president but the leader of the military, and a beleaguered military at that, his only thought was to find a way to harness the disease and spread it among Krakanna's followers, but since medical science hadn't yet determined the cause of it, nothing ever came of his efforts.

  Soon various relief organizations learned of SLIM's ex
istence, and sought permission to land on Faligor and treat the victims. Dushu tried to turn their offer to his advantage, and explained that he could not guarantee their safety under the present conditions, but that if James Krakanna and his followers would throw down their arms and surrender, he would welcome all the humanitarian aid he could get.

  Krakanna's answer, not surprisingly, was to blow up two munitions dumps and a subspace transmitting station, and that was the end, at least temporarily, of the relief organizations' efforts to help Faligor's SLIM victims.

  It was when two of Dushu's sons came down with the disease that he sent a private message to Krakanna, offering to call a temporary truce long enough to led relief and medical workers land of Faligor and start treating SLIM victims. Krakanna answered that if Dushu's army would throw down their arms and Dushu himself would surrender control of Romulus and Remus, Krakanna would be happy to allow the workers to land, but there could be no truce. After all the abuses and bloodshed, he would accept nothing short of total surrender.

  And that is where things stood five weeks after Arthur Cartright returned from James Krakanna's headquarters.

  30.

  The actual battle was brief but bloody.

  Krakanna attacked before dawn, striking not at Remus, which was closest to his position, but at Romulus, which was not as heavily fortified. By the end of the day the fall of Romulus was inevitable, but it took a week of house-to-house fighting before the city was secured and his army moved on to Remus.

  Cartright had delivered his message to the Republic, which sent a large contingent of medics to the system but kept them in orbit even after Romulus had fallen. They were not about to risk a single human life on this crazed, bloodthirsty planet, and they refused to land until Cartright could guarantee them that Dushu's government had fallen and that the streets of both Romulus and Remus were safe.

  The attack on Remus was even more savage. The children fought without fear and without mercy, their war cries sounding like the ululations of females above the din of battle. Four hours into the fighting, Dushu realized that his forces were going to lose, and he quietly left the city along a pre-arranged escape route, accompanied by his most trusted advisors and a handful of bodyguards.

  As with Romulus, even after the city had fallen, Krakanna's troops were faced with house-to-house battles for the next three days. When it was obvious that victory had been achieved, the Republic finally sent down its medical teams, which found that they had their hands full right on the battlefield before they could even begin to go into the hinterlands among the SLIM victims.

  31.

  Dear Miss Beddoes:

  I regret to inform you of the death of Arthur Cartright. He was instrumental in our efforts to free Faligor from the yoke of tyranny, and he devoted himself to our cause right up until the end.

  He was shot and killed by a sniper as he was escorting a Republic medical team through the streets of Remus on a humanitarian mission to aid the wounded of both sides.

  As you know, he had no family, and he had willed all his belongings to you. We are holding his effects until such time as you can retrieve them, or direct us in their disposition.

  Regretfully,

  J. Krakanna, Acting President

  CARBON

  Interlude

  You work on the jason children, stabilizing four, losing one, not a particularly bad percentage given their initial appearance, and then you walk away, overwhelmed by the death and destruction all around you. You are a doctor, you have spent your life with the sick and the injured, but you have never encountered them in these quantities before.

  Determined to get away from the carnage for just a few minutes, you wander off to the south end of town, but as you approach the savannah just beyond the edge of the city you see huge earth-moving equipment unearthing a grave that must hold five hundred decayed corpses. You wonder which of the three crazed presidents was responsible for this, and then shrug: does it really matter?

  You realize that there is no escape from the dying and the dead, and you head back toward the city center to see if you can be of further use. As you do so, you come to a medical clinic. It is a small building, and you enter it, wondering if there are any wounded who might have taken refuge here.

  The building is empty. The scattered instruments in the operating room are primitive by your standards, the supply of drugs and medications almost non-existent. The recovery room isn't much better; the "bed" is actually a converted kitchen table.

  The roof has caved in, and there is dust everywhere. When you concentrate you can still hear the crack of distant rifles, the hum of laser weapons, the gentle purr of sonic pistols being trained in different directions.

  Once again you mutter the question aloud: "How did it come to this?"

  And you are startled to receive an answer in thickly-accented Terran.

  "Come in here," says a voice from the recovery room, as you jump, startled, by its presence, "and I will tell you everything you want to know . . ."

  32.

  "Come in here, and I will tell you everything you want to know."

  I walked into the recovery room, and found an old jason sitting on the bed, his back propped up against the wall.

  "Have you been wounded?" I asked.

  "No," he replied. "I came in here when I saw the medics leave after the roof was hit. It seemed safe." He paused and twisted his lips into a smile. "Why would anyone bomb a hospital twice?"

  "I'm still trying to figure out why they'd bomb it once," I said.

  "Because it's here, and Sibo Dushu isn't going to leave anything for the next president to use." He slowly swung his feet to the floor. "I'm sorry that this had to be your first view of Faligor. It was once a very beautiful world."

  "I should be getting back to my work," I said. "There are still victims to be tended to."

  "You look exhausted," said the jason. "Sit down and rest. There will still be victims when you leave here."

  It occurred to me that I was exhausted, and I sat down on a chair and took my helmet off.

  "My name is Winston Maliachi," he said. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

  "I am Captain Milton Papagolos," I replied.

  "Captain? I thought you were a doctor."

  "A military doctor."

  "How long will you be stationed here?" asked Maliachi.

  "As long as it's necessary," I said.

  "Let us hope it is a long time."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Neither side will risk shooting any Men. They don't want the Republic interfering."

  "As a matter of fact, we came here at the request of James Krakanna," I pointed out.

  "Really?" he said. "Then perhaps he won't be as bad as the others."

  "You were going to tell me about all this," I said, indicating the destruction in the street. "How does an intelligent race choose three successive genocidal maniacs for leaders?"

  "You are laboring under two misapprehensions," said Maliachi. "First, we didn't choose them, and second, they weren't maniacs. Not all three of them, anyway."

  "The one who received all the publicity back in the Republic was Gama Labu," I said.

  Maliachi nodded. "Well, he was crazy. Not at first, but eventually."

  "And the other two weren't?"

  "No."

  "How can a sane being kill off millions of his countrymen?"

  "Expediency," answered Maliachi.

  "Expediency?" I repeated.

  "Oh, yes, Captain Papagolos."

  "Tell me how the hell all this can be justified by expediency."

  "I can't," he said. "I can only tell you how they justified it. It is an interesting story." He paused. "And when I am done, I will have a favor to ask of you in return."

  "What favor?"

  "It can wait."

  "Ask it now," I said.

  He shrugged, sending almost hypnotic ripples across his golden fur. "All right," he said. "The events I am going to recount to yo
u have left me without a family, a job, any money, or even a roof over my head." He paused. "During the length of time that you are stationed on Faligor, you will need help: a servant, a cook, an interpreter, perhaps a guide. I will be all these things for you, in exchange for food and shelter, and, if you can afford it, a nominal wage."

  "I don't need a servant," I said. "Or any of those other things, either."

  "I wasn't asking on your behalf," he said wryly.

  "You won't find it demeaning?"

  "Certainly I will," he replied.

  "Then why—"

  "It's been a long time since I was demeaned on a full stomach," he said. "I can learn to adjust."

  I shrugged. "All right, Maliachi," I said. "You've got a deal."

  He thanked me and the proceeded to give me a brief but thorough synopsis of Faligor's recent history, from the beginning of Arthur Cartright's well-meaning experiment through the progressive terror of Labu, Barioke and Dushu. He told me of James Krakanna's long years in the wilderness, living off the land and the charity of impoverished villagers, waiting for his army to grow both in numbers and age, and how he had finally mobilized against Sibo Dushu.

  "We have learned not to put too much trust in our leaders," concluded Maliachi dryly, "nor to hope too optimistically for a better future, but hope is nourishment for the soul, and our souls have had very little sustenance for the past decade, and so, despite all of our recent history, we hope once again. Perhaps Krakanna will keep his promises, or at least some of them."

  "Have you any reason to believe he will?" I asked.