[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
hurt me? I'm just good ol' Bish Ware. Good ol'
Bish! nobody hurt him; he'sh everybody's friend." He let go of the table and
staggered into a chair, upsetting it. Then he began to sing:
"Come all ye hardy spacemen, and harken while I tell
Of fluorine-tainted Nifflheim,
the Planetary Hell."
Involuntarily, I began clapping my hands.
It was a superb piece of acting Bish Ware sober playing Bish Ware drunk, and
that's not an easy role for anybody to play. Then he picked up the chair and
sat down on it.
"Who do you have around Hunters' Hall, and how do I get past them?" he asked.
"I
don't want a clipful from somebody on my own side."
Nip Spazoni got a pencil and a pad of paper and began drawing a plan.
"This is Second Level Down," he said. "We have a car here, with a couple of
men in it.
It's watching this approach here. And we have a ship's boat over here, with
three men in it, and a 7-mm machine gun. And another car no, a jeep, here.
Now, up on the First
Level Down, we have two ships' boats, one here, and one here. The password is
'Exotic,'
and the countersign is 'Organics.' " He grinned at Murell. "Compliment to your
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
company."
"Good enough. I'll want a bottle of liquor.
My breath needs a little touching up, and I
may want to offer somebody a drink. If I
could get inside that place, there's no telling
what I might be able to do. If one man can get in and put a couple of guards
to sleep, an army can get in after him."
Brother, I thought, if he pulls this one off, he's in. Nobody around Port
Sandor will ever look down on Bish Ware again, not even Joe Kivelson. I began
thinking about the detective agency idea again, and wondered if he'd want a
junior partner.
Ware & Boyd, Planetwide Detective Agency.
I went down to the floor below with him and got him my lighter gas-projector
and a couple of spare fills for it, and found the bottle of Baldur honey-rum
that Dad had been sure was around somewhere. I was kind of doubtful about
that, and he noticed my hesitation in giving it to him and laughed.
"Don't worry, Walt," he said. "This is strictly for protective coloration and
odoration. I shall be quite sparing with it, I
assure you."
I shook hands with him, trying not to be too solemn about it, and he went down
in the elevator and I went up the stairs to the floor above. By this time, the
Port Sandor
Vigilance Committee had gotten itself sorted out. The rank-and-file Vigilantes
were
standing around yacking at one another, and a smaller group Dad and Sigurd
Ngozori and the Reverend Sugitsuma and
Oscar and Joe and Corkscrew and Nip and the Mahatma were in a huddle around
Dad's editorial table, discussing strategy and tactics.
"Well, we'd better get back to the docks before it starts," Corkscrew was
saying. "No hunter crew will follow anybody but their own ships' officers."
"We'll have to have somebody the uptown people will follow," Oscar said.
"These people won't take orders from a woolly-pants hunter captain. How about
you, Sigurd?"
The banker shook his head. "Ralph Boyd's the man for that," he said.
"Ralph's needed right here; this is G.H.Q.,"
Oscar said. "This is a job that's going to have to be run from one central
command.
We've got to make sure the demonstration against Hallstock and the operation
against
Hunters' Hall are synchronized."
"I have about a hundred and fifty workmen, and they all have or can get
something to shoot with," another man said.
I looked around, and saw that it was Casmir
Oughourlian, of Rodriguez & Oughourlian
Shipyards. "They'll follow me, but I'm not too well known uptown."
"Hey, Professor Hartzenbosch," Mohandas
Feinberg said. "You're a respectable-looking duck; you ever have any
experience leading a lynch mob?"
Everybody laughed. So, to his credit, did the professor.
"I've had a lot of experience with children,"
the" professor said. "Children are all savages. So are lynch mobs. Things that
are equal to the same tiling are equal to one another. Yes, I'd say so." 'All
right," Dad said. "Say I'm Chief of Staff, or something.
Oscar, you and Joe and Corkscrew and the rest of you decide who's going to
Page 66
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
take over-all command of the hunters. Casmir, you'll command your workmen, and
anybody else from the shipyards and engine works and repair shops and so on.
Sigurd, you and the Reverend, here, and Professor
Hartzenbosch gather up all the uptown people you can. Now, we'll have to
decide on how much force we need to scare Mort
Hallstock, and how we're going to place the main force that will attack
Hunters' Hall."
"I think we ought to wait till we see what
Bish Ware can do," Oscar said. "Get our gangs together, and find out where
we're going to put who, but hold off the attack for a while. If he can get
inside Hunters' Hall, we may not even need this demonstration at the Municipal
Building."
Joe Kivelson started to say something. The rest of his fellow ship captains
looked at him severely, and he shut up. Dad kept on jotting down figures of
men and 50-mm guns and vehicles and auto weapons we had available.
He was still doing it when the fire alarm started.
Sixteen CIVIL WAR POSTPONED
THE MOANER WENT on for thirty seconds, like a banshee mourning its nearest and
dearest. It was everywhere, Main City Level and the four levels below. What we
have in
Port Sandor is a volunteer fire organization or disorganization, rather of six
independent companies, each of which cherishes enmity for all the rest. It's
the best we can do, though; if we depended on the city government, we'd have
no fire protection at all. They do have a central alarm system, though, and
the Times is
connected with that.
Then the moaner stopped, and there were four deep whistle blasts for Fourth
Ward, and four more shrill ones for Bottom Level.
There was an instant's silence, and then a bedlam of shouts from the
hunter-boat captains. That was where the tallow-wax that was being held out
from the
Cooperative was stored.
"Shut up!" Dad roared, the loudest I'd ever heard him speak. "Shut up and
listen!"
"Fourth Ward, Bottom Level," a voice from the fire-alarm speaker said. "This
is a tallow-wax fire. It is not the Co-op wax; it is wax stored in an
otherwise disused area. It is dangerously close to stored 50-mm cannon
ammunition, and it is directly under the pulpwood lumber plant, on the Third
Level Down, and if the fire spreads up to that, it will endanger some of the
growing vats at the carniculture plant on the Second
Level Down. I repeat, this is a tallow-wax fire. Do not use water or chemical
extinguishers."
About half of the Vigilantes, businessmen who belonged to one or another of
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]