Страница 37 из 38
It must have been the cold that was chilling my brain because I realized, for the first time, that I was the only one in our party who was armed.
“Go back to your school, Hanasu. You are not wanted here,” Kome shouted, getting in the first word. Hanasu ignored him, waking forward until he was face to face with the other man. When he spoke he spoke loudly so all could hear.
“I tell you all to put your guns away for what you are doing is against the rule of Moral Philosophy. By that rule we must lead the weak races. By that rule we must not commit suicide by fighting all the other races who outnumber us millions to one. If we fight them as we are doing now we will all be killed. Is this what the Thousand taught us? You must…”
“You must get out of here,” Kome called out. “It is you who break the rule. Go or be killed.” He raised his gun and pointed it. I slipped out of the door of the car.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said, my own gun pointing.
“You bring an alien here!” Kome’s voice was loud, almost angry. “He will be killed, you will be killed…”
His voice broke off and there was a loud crack as Hanasu stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face.
“You are proscribed,” Hanasu said, and there was a gasp of indrawn breath from all the watchers. “You have disobeyed. You are ended.”
“Ended? Not me, you!” Kome cracked, his voice roared with rage, whipping up his gun.
I dived to the side, trying for a shot, but Hanasu was in the way. There was the crackling roar of gunfire.
Yet Hanasu still stood there. Unmoving as Kome’s ragged body fell to the ground. All of his followers had fired at him at the same time. The rule of Kekkonshiki Moral Philosophy had destroyed him. Calm and undisturbed, Hanasu turned to all those present and explained his newly discovered interpretation of the Law. They tried not to show expression, but it was obvious that they were relieved. There was solidity in their lives again, structure and order. Kome’s huddled body was the only evidence that there had ever been a schism and, from the way they stood, they obviously did not see it nor want to look at it. Order had returned.
“You can come down now,” I ordered into my radio.
“Negative. Priority override orders.”
“Negative!” I shouted into the microphone. “What are you talking about. Get those crates down here instantly or I’ll fry your commander and eat him for lunch.”
“Negative. Order issuing vessel on way ETA three minutes.”
The co
“You!” I cried.
“Yes, it is I. And just in time to prevent a miscarriage of moral justice.”
It was Jay Hovah, boss of the Morality Corps. And I had more than a strong suspicion why he was here.
“You’re not needed here,” I said. “Nor are you dressed for the weather. I suggest you get back inside.”
“Morality comes first,” he shivered, for no one had told him about the climate and he was wearing just his usual bathrobe outfit.
“I tried talking to him, but he would not listen,” an even more familiar voice said, and Angelina emerged from behind him.
“Darling!” I called out and we had a quick embrace then drew away as Jay Hovah’s voice came between us.
“It is my understanding that your mission here is to convince these people to use psychcontrol techniques on the aliens so we can win the war. These techniques are immoral and will not be used.”
“Who is this who comes here?” Hanasu asked in his coldest voice.
“His name is Jay,” I said. “In charge of our Morality Corps. He makes sure that we don’t do things that violate our own moral codes.”
Hanasu looked him up and down like some specimen of vermin, then turned away and forced me. “I have seen him,” he said. “You may now take him away. Have your ships land so the operation against the aliens can begin.”
“I don’t think you heard me,” Jay Hovah said through chattering teeth. “This operation is forbidden. It is immoral.”
Hanasu turned slowly to face him and impaled him with an arctic stare. “You do not talk to me of immorality. I am a Leader in Moral Philosophy and I interpret the Law. What we did to the aliens to start this war was a mistake. We will now utilize the same techniques to stop it.”
“No! Two wrongs do not make a right. It is forbidden.”
“You ca
“You will be stopped…”
“Only by death. If you ca
“Here, lads. Help this poor old man back into his ship so he can warm up and consider the old philosophical problem of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”
Jay tried to protest, but they gave him a firm clutch and frog-marched him back aboard.
“What happens now?” Angelina asked.
“The Kekkonshiki are unleashed and go out and try to win the war. There is no way that the Morality Corps can find justification for killing them in order to stop them from saving us. I think that will be a little too much hair-splitting even for Jay and Incuba. He can maybe order us not to give aid to the Kekkonshiki, but will probably have a hard time justifying even that.”
“I’m sure that you are right. Then what is next?”
“Next? Why, saving the galaxy, of course. Again.”
“That’s my ever-modest husband,” she said, but tempered her admonitory words by kissing me soundly.
Twenty-Two
“That really looks impressive, don’t you think?” I asked.
“I think it looks disgusting,” Angelina said, wrinkling her nose. “Not only that, they stink.”
“An improvement over the first model. Remember, where we are going anything bad must be good.”
In a way Angelina was right. It did look disgusting. Which was good, very good. We stood at the front of the main cabin of the spaceliner we had commandeered for this job. Before us stretched row after row of heavy chairs, almost five hundred in all. And in each chair there crouched, or flopped, or oozed, a singularly repulsive alien. Something to gladden the eyestalks of the enemy I was sure, for all of these had been patterned after my first alien disguise. More of the same race, the Geshtunken. What would not have gladdened the multiple hearts and plasma pumps of the enemy, if they had known, was the fact that each of these aliens held a solemn-faced Kekkonshiki. While built into each thrashing tail was a high powered synaptic generator. Our crusade for peace had begun.
Not that organizing it had been easy. The Morality Corps was still resolutely set against our brain-twisting the enemy. But their authority worked through planetary governments and the heads of staff. For once I blessed the complex tangle of bureaucratic tanglement. While orders were issued and routed a few of us in the Special Corps launched a rush program to circumvent the orders before we received them. Key technicians were whisked away and their destination lost in the files. A protesting Prof Coypu was ripped from his midnight bed and found himself in deep space before he had put his socks on. A certain highly automated manufacturing planet had been co-opted by our agents and the Kekkonshiki volunteers were spacelifted there. While the alien disguises were being fabricated, Hanasu headed the programming team of psychcontrol technicians. We had barely succeeded in time, finally blasting off short hours ahead of the battleship that Morality Corps had dispatched to stop us. In the end this aided instead of hurting since we zipped up to the alien fleet with the battleship belting along after us. A few barrages from the spacewhales had it turning tail.