The Man Who Played to Lose by Laurence M. Janifer (distant reading .TXT) 📗

That's always a bad sign; it means normal processes are beginning to break down and anarchy is creeping in.

I thought about it. Three months was an outside limit. If I couldn't finish the job in three months, it might as well never be finished.

It's always nice to have a deadline, I told myself.

The car stopped at a place in the road that looked like any other place in the road. I got out, adjusted my knapsack and started away from the road, into the jungle that bordered it. The hypno I'd taken had told me there were farms scattered through the jungle, but I didn't know exactly where, and I didn't even want to find out. The knapsack was heavy, but I decided I could stand the weight.

In five minutes I was surrounded by jungle, without any quick way to tell me where the road had been. There was a trail, and maybe human beings had used it, but it was no more than a scratch in the vegetation.

That was green, like Earth's, and mostly spiny. I managed to scratch myself twice and then I learned to duck. After that the time went by slowly. I just kept walking, without much of an idea where I was going. After a couple of hours I was good and lost, which was just what I wanted. It was starting to get dark, so I took the opportunity of building a fire. I dug in my knapsack and found some food and started to cook it. I was still watching it heat up when I heard the noise behind me.

Those boys were good. He'd sneaked up through the jungle and come within a foot of me without my hearing him. I jumped up just as if I hadn't expected him and whirled around to face him.

He had his heater out and was covering me with it. I didn't reach for anything; I just watched him. He was a big man, almost as tall as I was and solidly built, with a jaw like a bulldog's and tiny, sparkling eyes. His voice was like rusted iron. "Relax," he told me. "I'm not burning you down, Mister. Not yet."

I made myself stare him down. "Who are you?" I said.

"Name don't matter," he said without moving the heater an inch. "What's important is, who are you? And what are you doing here?"

"James Carson's my name," I said. "I'm from Ancarta." It was a small city halfway around the planet, a nice, anonymous place to be from. "And I'm minding my own business."

"Sure," the big man said. He jerked his head and whistled, one sudden sharp note. The clearing was full of men.

They were all sorts, big and small, thin and fat, dressed in uniforms, cast-offs, suits, rags, anything at all. Half of them were carrying heaters. The rest had knives, some good and some home-made. They watched me and they watched the big man. Nobody moved.

"Maybe you're a Government man," the big man said, "and have come out to catch some of Bill Sergeant's boys."

"No," I said.

He grinned at me as if he hadn't heard me. "Well," he said, "this ought to be a big enough batch for you, Mister. Want to capture us all right now and take us back to New Didymus with you?"

"You've got me wrong," I said.

Another man spoke up. He was older, in his late forties, I thought. His hair was thin and gray but his face was hard. He had a heater strapped to his side, and he wore a good uniform. "Government men don't come out one at a time, do they, Huey?" he said.

The big man shrugged. "No way to tell," he said. "Maybe Mr. Carson here's got a call-radio for the rest of his boys. Maybe they're all just waiting for us, some place nearby."

"If they're waiting," the other man said, "they'd be here by now. Besides, Huey, he don't look like a Government man."

"Think they all got tails?" Huey asked him.

I judged it was about time to put in a word. "I'm not Government," I said. "I'm from Ancarta. I'm here to help you—if you're the men I think you are."

That started some more discussion. Huey was all for labeling my offer a trick and getting rid of me then and there—after which, I suppose, he was going to clear out my mythical followers in the nearby jungle. But he was pretty well all alone; there's got to be a rotten apple in the best-picked barrel and these boys were smart. The only sensible thing to do was staring them in the face, and it didn't take them long to see it.

"We'll take you back with us," Huey's friend told me. "When we get to a safe place we can sit down and talk this out."

I wanted to insist on finishing my supper right where I was, but there's such a thing as playing a little too much for the grandstand. Instead, I was herded into the center of the group, and we marched off into the jungle.

Only it wasn't a march; there was no attempt at order. For a while we used the trail, and then straggled off it and went single-file through masses of trees and bushes and leaves. Being in the center of the line helped a little but not enough; the spines kept coming through and I got a few more nice scratches. The trip took about half an hour, and when we stopped we were in front of a cave-mouth.

The band went inside and I went with them. There was light, battery-powered, and what seemed to be all the comforts of a small, ill-kept town jail. But it was better than the naked jungle. I was still porting my knapsack, and when we got into the cave I unstrapped it and sat down and opened it. The men watched me without making any attempt to hide the fact.

The first thing I took out was an instant-heat food can. It didn't look like a bomb, so nobody did anything. They just kept watching while I came up with my call-radio.

Huey said: "What the hell!" and came for me.

I stood up, spilling the knapsack, and got ready to stand him off; but I didn't need to, not then. Three of the others piled on him, like dogs on a bear, and held him down. Huey's friend was at my side when I turned. "How come?" he said. "Who are you planning on calling?"

"I said I wanted to help you," I told him. "I meant it."

"Of course," he said smoothly. "Why should I believe it?"

"I know the spot you're in, and I—"

He didn't give me a chance to finish. "Now, you wait a minute," he said. "And don't touch that box. We've got some talking to do."

"Such as?"

"Such as how you managed to get here from Ancarta, and why," he said. "Such as what all this talk about helping us means, and what the radio's for. Lots of talking."

I decided it was time to show some more independence. "I don't talk to people I don't know," I said.

He looked me up and down, taking his time about it. Huey had quieted down some, and our conversation was the main attraction. In the end he shrugged. "I suppose you can't do any harm, not so long as we keep an eye on that box of yours," he said. He gave me his name as if it didn't matter. "I'm Hollerith," he said. "General Rawlinson Hollerith."

I gave him the prepared story automatically; it rolled out but I wasn't thinking about it. He'd given me my first real surprise; I'd thought Hollerith had been killed at Andrew's Farm, and, as far as I knew, so did the Government. Instead, here he was, alive and kicking, doing a pretty good job of working with a guerrilla gang. I wondered who Huey would turn out to be, but it didn't seem like the time to ask.

The story, of course, was a good one. Naturally it wasn't proof of anything, or even susceptible of proof right then and there; it wasn't meant to be. I didn't expect them to buy it sight unseen, but I'd planned it to give me some time until I could start the next step.

James Carson, I told Hollerith, was a reasonably big wheel around Ancarta. He wasn't in sympathy with the Government, but he hadn't fought in the revolutionary armies or been active in any overt way.

"Why not?" he snapped at me.

"I was more valuable where I stood," I said. "There's a lot that can be done with paper work in the way of sabotage."

He nodded. "I see," he said. "I see what you mean."

"I worked in one of the Government departments," I said. "That enabled me to pass information on to Sergeant's men in the vicinity. It also gave me a good spot for mixing up orders and shipments."

He nodded again. "That's one of the advantages of a guerrilla outfit," he said. "The administration end really doesn't exist; we can live off the country. I should think that, over an area as large as we can range on Wohlen, we can't be wiped out."

Of course, that was only his opinion; but I wasn't easy about it. The sight of him had shaken me quite a bit and I began to think I'd have to get rid of him. That would be unpleasant and dangerous, I told myself. But there didn't seem to be any help for it, at the moment.

"About information," he said. "You were closely watched—anyone working for the Government would have had to have been. How did you get your information out?"

I nodded toward the radio. "It's not a normal call-radio," I said, with perfect truth. "Its operation is indetectable by the normal methods. I'm not an expert, so I won't go into technical details; it's enough that the radio works."

"Then why come to us?" Hollerith said. "Aren't there guerrillas in the Ancarta vicinity for you to work with?"

I shook my head. "Only a few more or less ... ah ... disaffected minorities," I said. That was true, too. "They raised hell for a day or so, then walked in and surrendered. The guerrilla network on the entire planet, sir, is under your command."

He shook his head. "It's not my command," he said. "This is a democracy. You've met Huey ... my orderly, in the old days. But now he has as much voice as I have. Except for expert matters."

Crackpots. But I listened. Democracy was the basis of their group; every move was voted on by the entire band, wherever possible. "We're not a dictatorship," Hollerith said. "We don't intend to become one."

It was nice to hear that; it meant that, maybe, I wouldn't have to get rid of him after all. "Anyway," I said, "your men appear to be the only ones active on Sergeant's behalf."