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

  "Will you be remaining on Faligor?" asked Oglipsi.

  "It is my home," answered Cartright. "And I won't let Gama Labu or anyone else drive me away." He paused. "And you—what are your plans?"

  "I have my church and my flock," said Oglipsi. "I must return to them."

  "Be careful what you say," said Cartright. "I can't imagine that he's not having us watched."

  "I will do what I must do," said Oglipsi. He extended his golden hand. "God go with you, Arthur."

  "And with you," said Cartright.

  Oglipsi turned and started walking away, and Cartright found that he had to lean against the side of a building to steady himself. Well, he thought wryly, I'd been wanting to lose thirty pounds for some time now. I suppose instead of being bitter I should thank them.

  A wave of dizziness overcame him, and he waited until it passed, then walked away from the jail as rapidly as he could. He turned into a side street and approached a restaurant, then saw the proprietor lock the front door when he got within a few feet of it.

  I can't say that I blame you, thought Cartright. I've been three weeks without a shave or a bath or a change of clothes; I must look like Death warmed over. Belatedly it occurred to him that even had the restaurant allowed him inside, he had no money to pay for his food; he had been so anxious to leave the jail he hadn't asked for the return of his personal effects, nor had he any intention of going back to ask for them. Besides, the odds were that some jason had appropriated them within five minutes of his incarceration.

  He didn't even possess a coin for a newspaper, but he pulled a used one out of a garbage can and quickly skimmed it. The lead story, of course, was Labu's appointment—self-appointment, really—as President-For-Life. In honor of the event, the government had renamed the Jonathan Ramsey National Park as the Gama Labu National Park. The Bortai River was now the Labu River, and the Bularoki Reserve, one of the prime attractions for tourists, was now the Batisha Reserve, named in honor of Labu's youngest wife.

  He wondered if he possessed the strength to undertake the three-mile walk to his home, which was just beyond the city limits, when a vehicle pulled up and Dorothy Watts, a neighbor, offered him a ride.

  "Thank you," he said, getting into the vehicle.

  "We thought we'd lost you," she said he closed the door. "People have this habit of simply vanishing these days."

  "He won't kill any Men," said Cartright. "He may be crazy, but he's not stupid."

  "Well, truth to tell, there aren't that many of us left," said Watts. "I think half of us have left the planet in the past two weeks."

  "I'm glad to see you stayed."

  "Oh, I'm leaving, too. I have tickets on the flight to Pollux IV three days from now." She paused. "I assume you'll be leaving soon yourself?"

  Cartright shook his head. "Somebody's got to stay and put things right."

  "Arthur, it was a noble experiment, and maybe if Bobby had won the election, things would have turned out all right. But you can't deal with Labu and you can't reason with him. It's just a matter of time before he forces all the moles and Men to leave. At least if I go now, I can get some mole to buy my farm. If I wait until I'm kicked off the planet, Labu will wind up owning it, and I'll destroy the stock and poison the wells before I let that happen."

  "I'm sorry you feel that way," said Cartright.

  "I'm sorry you don't. At least I'll be alive at this time next year."

  "So will I. If he didn't kill me this time, he won't ever kill me."

  She shrugged. "I hope you're right."

  "Things will get better," insisted Cartright.

  "What makes you think so?"

  "If for no other reason, the fact that you and the rest of the humans who leave will report what's been going on."

  "So what?" she said. "Do you think the Republic is going to send the Navy here to stop a jason from killing other jasons and robbing the moles? They'll just shake their heads sadly, say that it's simply another example of what happens when you civilize primitive races too quickly and then leave them to their own devices, and twenty years from now some bleeding heart foundation on Deluros VIII might start a fund for those jasons who have suffered the most. And if they do, the fund will go right into the private bank account of Labu or whoever's in charge."

  "He's only been in power for a year. We can undo the damage in even less time."

  "Without overthrowing him?" she demanded. "Are you going to lead the charge against the presidential palace?"

  "Someone will," said Cartright. "Some jason."

  "What will he storm the barricades with? Sticks and stones?"

  "I don't know," admitted Cartright. "But I'm not prepared to cut and run, just because I don't know. There must be a way."

  She took her eyes off the road and stared at him, not without sympathy. "Arthur, I know how much this planet means to you, how much of yourself you've put into it, and I'm sorry things have turned out this way—but has it ever occurred to you that the situation will get a lot worse before it gets any better?"

  "These are decent beings," said Cartright adamantly. "They won't put up with this forever."

  "Probably not," she agreed. "But I'm 53 years old. I haven't got forever—and neither have you." She paused. "Look at them, Arthur. They play at government. They sit around and make motions and have no idea what they're doing. When they want money, they print it up, and when it turns out to be no good, they confiscate whatever they want from the moles' stores. They kill all the animals in the national parks for target practice, and then they can't understand why the tourist industry has died. They close down churches and erect statues to Conrad Bland. They're savages, Arthur. You did your best, but you've tried to move them too far too fast. Nobody blames you for it, but it's time you realized what you're dealing with here. Why should they obey the laws of civilized worlds? Nobody had even heard of those laws a generation ago. They tried to be a democracy and then wound up with William Barioke. They tried to correct that mistake and they got Gama Labu." She stared at him. "Do you really have much confidence in whoever they replace Labu with?"

  "There must be a way."

  She stared at him again, sighed wearily, and drove the rest of the way to his house in silence.

  When Cartright unlocked the door and went inside, he was not surprised to find that it had been thoroughly looted, and that his servants—all Enkoti—weren't on the premises. Most of the furniture was gone, except for his kitchen set and one easy chair, his computers were missing, his holovisions had been stolen, and his pantry was empty. All insurance on Faligor had been cancelled within a month of Labu's coup, but he methodically made a list of what was missing and ordered replacements from the few dependable local stores. He found a few containers of soup that the looters had overlooked or simply hadn't wanted, warmed a bowl and decided that it was about all his system could handle at present anyway, and then took the first shower he'd had in a month and collapsed on his bed. He slept for nineteen hours, awoke, and drove out to buy some supplies and a small holovision set. When he returned he made himself some porridge and turned on the holovision.

  The announcer, dressed—as they all seemed to be dressed these days—in a military uniform, was reading a weather forecast, which didn't take much effort: the weather was the same as always, moderate, temperate, with a brief afternoon shower. When he was done, he recapped the top news stories of the previous day: Labu's exalted new title, the name changes, the fact that amnesty had been declared for all prisoners (there was no mention of the one-in-five ration, or that it was for political prisoners only), and then there was a final item concerning the Reverend James Oglipsi, who had just returned from a three-week vacation to the Gama Labu (formerly Jonathan Ramsey) National Park.

  Evidently Oglipsi, a good friend of President Labu, had been attacked by crazed religious fanatics on his way home. For reasons unknown, they had tortured and finally crucified him. (A holograph of Oglipsi's terribly mutilated body was flashed on the screen, still
on its cross.) The perpetrators had been apprehended and incarcerated, but the army regretfully arrived on the scene too late to save the beloved religious leader.

  President-For-Life Labu was shocked by the death of his friend, and had announced that if Christianity could make otherwise reasonable being commit so perverse a crime, then from this day forth Christianity would be banned on Faligor. Oglipsi himself would receive a hero's funeral tomorrow afternoon; the President-For-Life regretted that affairs of state prevented him from attending, but he would send one of his wives, not Batisha but one of the older ones, in his place as his personal representative.

  Cartright stared numbly at the holograph of the jason he had seen just the previous day, and the image remained in his mind long after he had shut off the holovision. The dead eyes seemed to be staring directly into his soul, saying, I told you so, Arthur. He is not a madman, but a clever barbarian, and once more he has gotten what he wants.

  I will pray for your soul, my friend, answered Cartright silently.

  Why? Oglipsi's image seemed to ask. It is you who are in Hell, not I.

  12.

  Gama Labu knew better than to leave Faligor and pay state visits throughout the galaxy. After all, that was how he usurped power from William Barioke. But there were things out there that he wanted, and he set about trying to obtain them.

  Canphor VI and VII, known as the Canphor Twins, had developed all kinds of weaponry over the centuries in their continual wars with Mankind's Republic. Most of the weapons were obsolete, but only because the Republic had learned how to counter or negate them. They would still function on Faligor, where the most powerful weapon that could be mounted against the government was a laser rifle, and so Labu played host to a delegation of Canphorites, both the tall blue beings from Canphor VI and the short, burly, tripodal, red-hued beings from Canphor VII. They dined sumptuously, were entertained lavishly, and in the end they consented to supply Faligor with a few hundred weapons in exchange for the next year's production of silver and platinum from the mines. They never asked if the mines were still fully operational, and Labu never told them that eighty percent of them had been shut down due to his inability to pay for labor or replacement parts. By the time they found out, it was too late to reclaim the weapons, all of which had been strategically dispersed and most of which were already in various stages of disrepair.

  Labu then confounded the remaining Men on Faligor by publicly converting to Judaism, and offering the world of New Jerusalem an embassy in Remus. He unconverted just as quickly when it became apparent that no Men of any faith were going to supply him with weapons simply because he professed to share their faith.

  His conversions and unconversions became a public joke, until he hit upon an arcane idol-worshipping faith practiced by the Domarians, a stilt-legged race that spent most of their lives following their sun as it receded over their horizon. The Domarians supplied him with weapons and hard currency, and Rainche, their religion, soon became the official state religion of Faligor. It was just as well that the Domarians were chlorine breathers who were physically unable to visit Faligor, or they might have noticed that not a single religious edifice or idol had been constructed.

  While Labu had been amassing his weaponry, Romulus and Remus had been spared any serious disruptions. True, two or three jasons turned up missing every day, and some moles vanished while on a picnic, and a number of local business were looted and burned, but no weapons of mass destruction had been turned on the populace, there were no massacres such as had occurred in the past, the cities continued to limp along. When Labu put his soldiers to work repairing the highway between the two cities, a handful of the remaining Men came to the conclusion that now that he had his military toys and was the unquestioned leader of Faligor that he might actually have decided to try to do something constructive, if not to assure an honored place in the history books, then simply because there was no more power to be grabbed and he might as well put that which he had accumulated to use.

  That conclusion lasted until the morning that his troops surrounded the Republic's embassy in Romulus, trained their most powerful weaponry on the building, and demanded that the ambassador and his staff of seventeen present themselves for arrest on a charge of subversion. For proof, Labu went on holovision and furiously waved a captured message from the ambassador to Deluros VIII, calling him a tyrant and suggesting that he was responsible for the genocide of a minor tribe in the far north, where his soldiers had secretly been testing their weaponry.

  The Republic responded by demanding the release of all embassy personal. Labu refused.

  And three days later the sky of Faligor was black with ships, some six hundred in all, as the Navy delivered an ultimatum: release our people within twenty-four hours or suffer the consequences.

  Labu made no reply for fifteen hours, then went on holovision again to point out that he had never intended to keep the ambassador and his staff incarcerated, but simply refused to let them return to the embassy. He had no desire, he continued, to go to war with the Republic, which had completely misinterpreted his motives, and if the Commander of the 43rd Fleet would agree to take the undesirables off the planet, he would release them forthwith.

  The Navy did not answer, and four hours later, screaming his imprecations before the cameras, he ordered the immediate release and deportation of his prisoners, proclaiming to his people that only his willingness to humiliate himself before the warmongering Republic had saved the planet from total devastation. The ambassadorial personnel were released two hours before the deadline, rushed to the spaceport at Remus, and flown up to the flagship. The next morning the skies were empty again, and Labu looked about for some way to reestablish his authority.

  He didn't have to look far.

  It was obvious to him that he could not confront the Republic. It was just as obvious that most of his people were aware of that fact. He had shown weakness, and that had to be countered with a show of strength. He needed an enemy, a race—unlike Man—that he could dominate, and he just happened to have one on his planet: the moles.

  What were they doing here in the first place, he demanded. Why were they taking jobs and running businesses that by rights should have been owned by jasons?

  You think, he pointed out, that they have been trying to assimilate themselves into our society by learning our language and respecting our customs, but you are wrong. Their sole purpose is to subvert and control our economy. They have infiltrated every level of our society except the government, hoping that if they were quiet enough we wouldn't notice what they were doing. But I have noticed, said Labu, and I have seen enough.

  The government's propaganda machine, which heretofore had existed only to praise Labu, soon began attacking the moles. Were their children in the schools? They were taking up space that should have been occupied by jason children. Throw them out. Were their houses bigger and grander than the jasons'? They built them with jason money. Throw them out. Did they practice their own religious rituals, read their own books, keep to themselves? They were mocking the jasons, trying to show that they were superior to them. Throw them out.

  Colonel Witherspoon waited until the propaganda began working, then turned his soldiers loose in the major cities across the planet. Moles began disappearing with the same regularity as jasons. Government buildings, most of them standing empty and useless, were put to the torch, and moles were arrested and executed for the fires.

  Finally Labu took to the air once more to announce what he called his Mole Policy: all moles had sixty days to leave the planet. They could take nothing with them—not possessions, not food, not money. Any mole remaining on Faligor past the appointed day would be in breach of the law and summarily executed for high treason.

  The moles protested as vigorously as they could. Many of them had been born on Faligor. They had lived there, worked there, paid their taxes there, put up with discrimination, and now they were being thrown out with nothing more than the clothing on their
backs. Even if they wanted to obey the law, there weren't enough commuter ships to begin to accommodate them, and since Faligor's currency was worthless anywhere else in the galaxy, they could not charter ships from other worlds.

  Finally some of the alien embassies, seeing a chance to win the moles' home world to their cause, arranged for a contingent of rescue ships to come to Faligor and begin taking the moles off the planet. Labu decided to make their lot easier by systematically rounding up the moles from all over the planet and transporting them to detention camps until they could be transported offworld.

  It was a remarkable operation for a relatively undeveloped world. In less than sixty days some seven million moles were transported to the detention camps; all but four hundred thousand were taken off the planet, and Labu allowed the ships an extra week to rescue the remainder.

  When the last of the moles had gone—the few who steadfastly refused to leave were being systematically hunted down by Witherspoon's troops—Labu addressed his people again.

  Faligor, he informed them, is pure for the first time in a generation. With all our external enemies gone, like the moles, or held at bay, like the Republic, it is almost time to start building our Utopia.

  Just as soon, he added, as we eliminate the enemies within.

  13.

  Cartright was preparing his morning coffee when there was a knock at the front door. His first inclination was to hide, but he knew it would be useless. If they had come for him, they'd find him.

  His second inclination was to get his gun, but there was always a chance they just wanted him for questioning, or to inform on a neighbor, and the sight of a gun in his hand might result in an instant retaliation from one of Labu's thugs.