Part 2

"An ox. A brain made of soap and granite. He says it is a matter of principle. I knew then that I could do nothing. When an Anglo-Saxon talks about his principles, you may as well go home. He won't accept a weapon, he won't postpone the meeting. I think he wants to be a martyr."

Cudyk frowned. "Maybe he does. Have you seen Rack?"

"No. Ferguson pretends not to know where he is."

"That's rather odd. What is his motive, do you think?"

Seu said, "Basically, he is afraid of Rack. He cooperates with him--they use each other--but you know that it's not a marriage of minds. He knows that Rack is stronger than he is, because he is only an amoral egotist, and Rack is a fanatic. I think he believes this business may be Rack's downfall, and he would like that."

He stood up. "I have to go. Will you do it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Let me know." Seu walked out, as hastily as he had entered.

Nick Pappageorge had roused himself and was polishing a tall, fluted silver vase. Cudyk said, "Nick, go and find out where Mr. Harkway is. If he isn't busy, ask him if he'll do me the favor of dropping around to see me. Otherwise, just come back and tell me where he is; I'll go to him."

Nick said, "Sure, Mr. Cudyk," and went out.

Cudyk stared at the tray of unsorted gems on the desk before him. He stirred them with his forefinger, separating out an emerald, two aquamarines, a large turquoise and a star sapphire. That was all he had had to begin with--his dead wife's jewels, carried half across Europe when a loaf of bread was worth more than all the gem stones in the world. The sapphire had bought his passage on the alien ship; the others had been his original stock-in-trade, first at the refugee center on Alfhal, then here on Palumbar. Now he was a prosperous importer, with a business that netted him the equivalent of ten thousand pounds a year.

But the wealth was ashes; he would have traded all of it for one loaf of bread, eaten in peace, on an Earth that had not sunk back to barbarism.

Momentum, he told himself. Momentum, and a remnant of curiosity. Those are the only reasons I can think of why I do not blow out my brains. I wonder what keeps the others from it? Seu? Chong Yin? I don't know. Burgess has his fantasy, though it cracks now and then. Ferguson has the sensibility of a jackal. Rack, as Seu said, is a fanatic. But why do the rest of them keep on? For what?

* * * * *

The doorway darkened again as Harkway came in, followed by Nick. Nick gestured toward the rear of the shop, and Harkway advanced, smiling. His lower lip was stained by a purple substance with a glossy surface.

Cudyk greeted him and offered him a chair. "It was good of you to come over," he said. "I hope I didn't interrupt your work."

Harkway grinned stiffly. "No. I was just finishing lunch when your boy found me. I have nothing more to do until this evening."

Cudyk looked at him. "You got to the hospital after all, I see."

"Yes. Dr. Moskowitz fixed me up nicely."

Cudyk had been asking himself why the M.P.L. man looked so cheerful. Now he thought he understood.

"And Miss Burgess?" he asked.

"Yes," said Harkway, looking embarrassed. He paused. "She's--an exquisite person, Mr. Cudyk."

Cudyk clasped his square hands together, elbows on the arms of his chair. He said, "Forgive me, I'm going to be personal. Am I right in saying that you now feel more than casually interested in Miss Burgess?"

He added, "Please. I have a reason for asking."

Harkway's expression was guarded. "Yes; that's true."

"Do you think she may feel similarly towards you?"

Harkway paused. "I think so. I hope so. Why, Mr. Cudyk?"

"Mr. Harkway, I will be very blunt. Miss Burgess has already lost one lover through no fault of her own, and the experience has not been good for her. She is, as you say, exquisite--she has a beautiful, but not a strong personality. Do you think it is fair for you to give her another such experience, even if the attachment is not fully formed, by allowing yourself to be killed this evening?"

Harkway leaned back in his chair. "Oh," he said, "that's it." He grinned. "I thought you were going to point out that her father broke off the last affair because of the man's politics. If you had, I was going to tell you that Mr. Burgess looked me up this morning and apologized for his attitude yesterday, and breaking down and so on. He's very decent, you know. We're getting along very well."

He paused. "About this other matter," he said seriously, "I'm grateful for your interest, but--I'm afraid I can't concede the validity of your argument." He made an impatient gesture. "I'm not trying to sound noble, but this business is more important than my personal life. That's all, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

Another fanatic, Cudyk thought. A liberal fanatic. I have seen all kinds, now. He said, "I have one more argument to try. Has Seu explained to you how precarious our position is here on Palumbar?"

"He spoke of it."

"The Niori accepted this one small colony with grave misgivings. Every act of violence that occurs here weakens our position, because it furnishes ammunition for a group which already wants to expel us. Do you understand?"

There was pain in Harkway's eyes. "Mr. Cudyk, it's the same all over the galaxy, wherever these pitifully tiny outgroups exist. My group is trying to attack that problem on a galaxy-wide scale. I don't say we'll succeed, and I grant you the right to doubt that our program is the right one. But we've got to try. Among other things, we've got to clean out the activists, for just the reason you mention. And--pardon me for stressing the obvious--but it's Captain Rack who will be responsible for this particular act of violence if it occurs, not myself."

"And you think that your death at his hands would be a stronger argument than a peaceful meeting, is that it?"

Harkway shook his head ruefully. "I don't know that I have that much courage, Mr. Cudyk. I'm hoping that nothing will happen to me. But I know that the League's prestige here would be enormously hurt if I let Rack bluff me down." He stood up. "You'll be at the meeting?"

"I'm afraid so." Cudyk stood and offered his hand. "The best of luck."

He watched the young man go, feeling very old and tired. He had known it would be this way; he had only tried for Seu's sake. Now he was involved; he had allowed himself to feel the tug of love and pity toward still another lost soul. Such bonds were destructive--they turned the heart brittle and weathered it away, bit by bit.

* * * * *

The assembly hall was well filled, although Harkway had made no special effort to advertise the meeting. He had known, Cudyk thought, that Rack's threat would be more than sufficient. The youngster was not stupid.

There were no women or children. Ferguson was there, and a large contingent of his employees--gamblers, pimps, waiters and strong-arm men--as well as most of the Russian population. All but a few of the Chinese had stayed away, as had Burgess. But a number of men whom Cudyk knew to have M.P.L. leanings, and an even larger number of neutrals, were there. The audience was about evenly divided, for and against Harkway. If he somehow came through this alive, it was just possible that he could swing the Quarter his way. A futile victory; but of course Harkway did not believe that.

There was a murmur and a shuffle of feet as Rack entered with three other men--Monk, the one called Spider, and young Tom De Grasse, who had once been engaged to Kathy Burgess. The sound dropped almost to stillness for a few moments after the four men took seats at the side of the hall, then rose again to a steady rumble. Harkway and Seu had not yet appeared.

Cudyk saw the man to his right getting up, moving away; he turned in time to see Seu wedge himself through a gap in the line of chairs and sit down in the vacated place.

The fat man's face was blandly expressionless, but Cudyk knew that something had happened. "What is it?" he asked.

Seu's lips barely moved. He looked past Cudyk, inspecting the crowd with polite interest. "I had him kidnapped," he said happily. "He's tied up, in a safe place. There won't be any meeting today."

Seu had been seen. Someone a few rows ahead called, "Where's Harkway, Mayor?"

"I don't know," Seu said blandly. "He told me he would meet me here--said he had an errand to do. Probably he's on his way now."

Under cover of the ensuing murmur, he turned to Cudyk again. "I didn't want to do it," he said. "It will mean trouble, sooner or later; maybe almost as much trouble as if Harkway had been killed. But I had to make a choice. Do you think I did the right thing, Laszlo?"

"Yes," said Cudyk, "except that I wish you had told me earlier."

Seu smiled, his heavy face becoming for that instant open and confiding. "If I had, you wouldn't have been so sincere when you talked to Harkway."

Cudyk smiled in spite of himself. He relaxed in his chair, savoring the relief that had come when he'd learned that Harkway was not going to die. The tension built up, day by day, almost imperceptibly, and it was a rare, fleeting pleasure when something happened to lower it.

He saw the mayor looking at his watch. The crowd was growing restless: in a few more minutes Seu would get up and announce that the meeting was cancelled. Then it would be all over.

Seu was rising when a new wave of sound traveled over the audience. Out of the corner of his eye Cudyk saw men turning, standing up to see over the heads of their neighbors. Seu spoke a single, sharp word, and his hand tightened on the back of his chair.

Cudyk stood. Someone was coming down the center aisle of the room, but he couldn't see who it was.

Those who had stood earlier were sitting down now. Down the aisle, looking straight ahead, with a bruised jaw and a bloody scratch running from cheekbone to chin, came James Harkway.

He mounted the platform, rested both hands on the low speaker's stand, and turned his glance across the audience, once, from side to side. There was a collective scraping of chairs and clearing of throats, then complete stillness. Harkway said:

"My friends--and enemies."

Subdued laughter rippled across the room.

"A few of my enemies didn't want me to hold this meeting," said Harkway. "Some of my friends felt the same way. In fact, it seemed that _nobody_ wanted this meeting to take place. But here you all are, just the same. And here I am."

He straightened. "Why is that, I wonder? Perhaps because regardless of our differences, we're all in the same boat--in a lifeboat." He nodded gravely. "Yes, we're all in a lifeboat--all of us together, to live or die, and we don't know which way to turn for the nearest land that will give us harbor.

"Which way shall we turn to find a safe landing? To find peace and honor for ourselves and our children? To find safety, to find happiness?"

He spread his arms. "There are a million directions we could follow. There are all the planets in the galaxy! But everywhere we turn, we find alien soil, alien cultures, alien people. Everywhere except in one direction only.

"Our ship--our own planet, Earth--is foundering, is sinking, that's true. But _it hasn't--yet--sunk_. There's still a chance that we can turn back, make Earth what it was, and then, from there--go on! Go on, until we've made a greater Earth, a stronger, happier, more peaceful Earth--till we can take our place with pride in the galaxy, and hold up our heads with any other race that lives."

He had captured only half their attention, and he knew it. They were watching him, listening to what he said, but the heads of the audience were turned slightly, like the heads of plants under a solar tropism, toward the side of the chamber where Rack and his men sat.

Harkway said, "We all know that the Earth's technical civilization is smashed--broken like an eggshell. By ourselves, we could never put it back together. And if we do nothing, no one else is going to put it back together for us. But suppose we went to the other races in the galaxy, and said--"

A baritone voice broke in quietly, "'_We'll sell our souls to you, if you'll kindly give us a few machines!_'"

* * * * *

Rack stood up--tall, muscular, lean, with deep hollows under his cheekbones, red-grey hair falling over his forehead under the visor of his cap. His short leather jacket was thrown over his shoulders like a cloak. His narrow features were grey and cold, the mouth a straight, hard line. He said, "That's what you want us to tell the vermin, isn't it, Mr. Harkway?"

Harkway seemed to settle himself like a boxer. He said clearly, "The intelligent races of the galaxy are not devils and do not want our souls, Mr. Rack."

Rack ignored the "Mr." He said, "But they'd want certain assurances from us, in return for their help, wouldn't they, Mr. Harkway?"

"Certainly," said Harkway. "Assurances that no sane man would refuse them. Assurances, for example, that there would be no repetition of the Altair Incident--when a handful of maniacs in two ships murdered thousands of peaceful galactic citizens without the slightest provocation. Perhaps you remember that, Mr. Rack; perhaps you were there."

"I was there," said Rack casually. "About five hundred thousand vermin were squashed. We would have done a better job, but we ran out of supplies. Some day we'll exterminate them all, and then there'll be a universe fit for men to live in. Meanwhile--" he glanced at the audience--"we're going to build. We're building now. Not with the vermin's permission, under the vermin's eye. In secret. On a planet they'll never find until our ships spurt out from it like milt from a fish. And when that day comes, we'll squash them down to the last tentacle and the last claw."

"Are you finished?" asked Harkway. He was quivering with controlled rage.

"Yes, I'm finished," said Rack wearily. "So are you. You're a traitor, Harkway, the most miserable kind of a crawling, dirt-eating traitor the human race ever produced. Get down off the platform."

Harkway said to the audience, "I came here to try to persuade you to my way of thinking--to ask you to consider the arguments and decide for yourselves. This man wants to settle the question by prejudice and force. Which of us is best entitled to the name 'human?' If you listen to him, can you blame the Niori if they decide to end even this tiny foothold they've given you on their planet? Would you live in a universe drenched with blood?"

Rack said quietly, "Monk."

The squat man stood up, smiling. He took a clasp knife out of his pocket, opened it, and started up the side of the room.

In the dead stillness, another voice said, "No!"

It was, Cudyk saw with shock, Tom De Grasse. The youngster was up, moving past Rack--who made no move to stop him, did not even change expression--past the squat man, turning a yard beyond, almost at the front of the room. His square, almost childish face was tight with strain. There was a pistol in one big hand.

Cudyk felt something awaken in him which blossomed only at moments like this, when one of his fellow men did something particularly puzzling: the root, slain but still quasi-living, of the thing that had once been his central drive and his trademark in the world--his insatiable, probing, warmly intelligent curiosity about the motives of men.

On the surface, this action of De Grasse's was baldly impossible. He was committed to Rack's cause twice over, by conviction and by the shearing away of every other tie; and still more important, he worshipped Rack himself with the devotion that only fanatics can inspire. It was as if Peter had defied Christ.

The three men stood motionless for what seemed a long time. Monk, halted with his weight on one foot, faced De Grasse with his knife hand slightly extended, thumb on the blade. He was visibly tense, waiting for a word from Rack. But Rack stood as if he had forgotten time and space, staring bemused over Monk's shoulder at De Grasse. The fourth man, Spider--bones and gristle, with a corpse-growth of grey-white hair--stood up slowly. Rack put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him down again.

Cudyk thought: Kathy Burgess.

It was the only answer. De Grasse knew, of course, everything that had passed between Harkway and the girl. There was no privacy worth mentioning in the Quarter. Pressed in this narrow ghetto, every man swam in the effluvium of every other man's emotions. And De Grasse was willing, apparently, to give up everything that mattered to him, to save Kathy Burgess pain.

It said something for the breed, Cudyk thought--not enough, never enough, for you saw it only in pinpoint flashes, the noble individual who was a part of the bestial mob--but a light in the darkness, nevertheless.

Finally Rack spoke. "You, Tom?"

The youngster's eyes showed sudden pain. But he said, "I mean it, Captain."

There was a slow movement out from that side of the room, men inching away, crowding against their neighbors.

Rack was still looking past Monk's shoulder, into De Grasse's face. He said:

"All right."

He turned, still wearing the same frozen expression, and walked down the side of the room, toward the exit. Monk threw a glance of pure incredulity over his shoulder, glanced back at De Grasse, and then followed. Spider scrambled after.

De Grasse relaxed slowly, as if by conscious effort. He put away his gun, hesitated a moment, and walked slowly out after the others. His wide shoulders were slumped.

Then there was the scraping of chairs and boot-soles and a rising bee-hive hum as the audience stood up and began to move out. Harkway made no effort to call them back.

Cudyk, moving toward the exit with the rest, had much to think about. He had seen not only De Grasse's will, but Rack's, part against the knife of human sympathy. And that was a thing he had never expected to see.

* * * * *

"Times like this," said Ferguson, narrowing his grey snake's eyes in a smile, "I almost believe in God."

Father Exarkos smiled courteously and said nothing. He and Cudyk had been sitting in the back room of Chong Yin's since a half-hour after the meeting. Seu had been with them earlier, but had left. A little after twelve, Ferguson had strolled in and joined them.

"I mean it," said Ferguson, laughing a little. "There was Harkway, sticking his neck out, and there was little De Grasse standing in the way. And Rack backed down." He shook his head, still smiling. "Rack backed down. Now how would you explain that, gentlemen?"

It was necessary to put up with the gambler, who wielded more power in the Quarter than anyone else, even Seu; but sometimes Cudyk found himself dropping his usual attitude of detached interest in favor of speculations about the specific variety of horrible fate which Ferguson would most probably meet.

He was particularly irritating tonight, because Cudyk was forced to agree with him. Cudyk had still not solved the riddle of Rack's failure to finish what he had started.

It was conceivable that De Grasse should have acted as he did for reasons of sentiment; but to apply the same motive to Rack was simply not possible. The man had emotions, certainly, but they were all channeled into one direction: the destiny of the human race and of Lawrence Rack. De Grasse was at an age when the strongest emotions were volatile, when conversions were made, when a man could plan an assassination one day and enter a monastery the next. But Rack was fixed and aimed, like a cannon.

Ferguson was saying, "He must be going soft. Going soft--old Rack. Unless it's the hand of God. What's your opinion, Father?"

The priest said blandly, "Mr. Ferguson, since I have come to live upon this planet, my opinions have changed about many things. I no longer believe that either God, or man, is quite so simple as I once thought. We were too small in our thoughts, before--our understanding of temporal things was bounded by the frontiers of Earth, and of eternal things by the little sky we could see from our windows.

"Before, I think I would have tried to answer your question. I would have said that I think Captain Rack was moved by--a sudden access of human feeling--or I would have said that I think Captain Rack was touched by the finger of God. Perhaps I would have hesitated to say that, because even then I did not believe that God interferes with the small sins of men like Captain Rack. Or the small sins of anybody, for that matter."

Ferguson grinned. "Well, Father, that's the best excuse for an answer I ever heard, anyway." He dragged on his cigar, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips, as if the cigar were a tube through which his brains were being sucked. "In other words," he said, "you don't think the big blowup back home was a judgment on us for our sins. You think it was a good thing, only more people should have got out the way we did. That right?"

"Oh, no," said Father Exarkos. "I believe that the Famines and the Collapse were a judgment of God. I have heard many theories about the causes of the Collapse, but I have not heard one which does not come back, in the end, to a condemnation of man's folly, cruelty, and blindness."

"Well," said Ferguson, "excuse me, Father, but if you believe that way, what are you doing here? Back there--" he jerked his head, as if Earth were some little distance behind his right shoulder--"people are living like animals. Chicago, where I come from, is just a stone jungle, with a few beast-like scavengers prowling around in it. If the dirt and disease don't get you, some bandit will split your head open, or you'll run into a wolf or some other hungry animal. If none of those things happen, you can expect to live to the ripe old age of forty, and then you'll be glad to die."

He had stopped smiling. Ferguson, Cudyk realized, was describing his own personal hell. He went on, "Now, if you want to call that a judgment, I won't argue with you. But if that's what you believe, why aren't you back there taking it with the rest of them?"

He really wanted to know, Cudyk thought. He had begun by trying to bait the priest, but now he was serious. It was odd to think of Ferguson having trouble with his conscience, but Cudyk was not really surprised. The most moralistic men he had ever known had been gangsters of Ferguson's type; whereas the few really good men he had known, Father Exarkos among them, had seemed as blithely unaware of their consciences as of their healthy livers.

The priest said, soberly, "Mr. Ferguson, I believe that we also are being punished. Perhaps we more than others. The Mexican peon, the Indian fellah, the peasant of China or Greece, lives very much as his father did before him; he scarcely has reason to know that judgment has fallen upon Earth. But I think that no inhabitant of the Quarter can forget it for so much as an hour."

Ferguson stared at him, then grunted and squashed out his cigar. He stood up. "I'll be getting along home," he said. "Good night." He walked out.

Cudyk and Exarkos sat for a while longer, talking quietly, and then left together. The streets were empty. Behind them and to their left as they walked to the corner, the ghostly blue of the Niori beehives shone above the dark human buildings.

The priest lived in a small second-floor apartment near the corner of Brasil and Athenai, alone since his wife had died ten years before. Cudyk had only to go straight across Ceskoslovensko, but he walked down toward Brasil with his friend.

Near the corner, Cudyk saw a dark form sprawled in a doorway. "One of your congregation, Astereos?" he asked.

"It is probable," said the priest resignedly. "Steve Chrisudis has been drinking heavily again this past week; also the two Moulios brothers."

He stepped over and turned the man's face up to the light.

The face was bloody and broken, the eyes sightless. It was Harkway. He had been dead long enough to grow cold.