Tongues Of The Moon Part 11

"Did my idea to subst.i.tute me for one of your men work?"

Saavedra laughed and said, "So far. I sent my cousin and an electronic maintenance man to a remote sector with orders to repair some equipment there. Pablo knocked him out and locked him up in a room with food and water.

But he took off the poor fellow's uniform and identification tags and cards. They're waiting in another room right now.

Pablo will bandage your face."

They walked down several corridors, then Quiroga and Broward went into an empty barracks while Saavedra continued. Here, the Moonman took off his garments and replaced them with those of Juan Pedro Malory. Since the commandant had been thoughtful enough to pick a victim Broward's size, the uniform fitted him almost exactly.

"A little tight around the chest," said Broward. "But it'll do."

Quiroga picked up some bandages. Broward sat down in a chair and allowed the young man to wrap the windings around his face. When the job was done, Broward's face was entirely covered except for the eyes.

"You are supposed to have had an accident while repairing the equipment."

Broward grunted and said, "I know. It was my idea."

"Pardon me. I am talking from nervousness. It helps. But listen. The men going with us will be told beforehand about you, Malory, rather. During the trip, you lie down and pretend to be sick. If anyone asks you anything, just groan. Or mumble a little. Your Spanish is intelligible and fluent, but your accent would give you away as a foreigner."

"What about when we get to Osorno? Will we have any trouble contacting this General Mier you spoke of?"

"I hope not."

Saavedra entered the room. "You hope not what?"

Quiroga told him, and the colonel said, "He is the only man with enough power to help us."

"I hope so, too," said Broward, speaking in Spanish. "I may as well tell you that we have," and he glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch, "twenty-four hours. If we are not back here by then, we will all be dead within a short time after that."

Saavedra walked up to Broward and seized his wrist.

"What are you doing?" said Broward. He started to rise.

"I am not attacking you," answered Saavedra. "Give me your watch. There is none like it among us. You donot want anybody to question you about it, do you?"

"Thanks for noticing it. No, I do not. But didn't you hear what I said?"

"Yes. What do you mean?" answered Saavedra.

"At the end of that time, the ship will automatically leave its hiding place and start on its mission to deliver the bomb."

"Dios mio! Why did you arrange that?"

Broward smiled grimly. "I owe my people that much. Also, I wanted insurance that you would carry out your bargain. By the way, don't send men out to look for it while we're gone. Its receptors are active. If anybody but me approaches it, it will take off by itself. And even I will not then be able to find it."

Stiffly, Saavedra said, "I gave you my word"

Broward shrugged and said, "Ordinarily, that would be enough, I a.s.sure you. But there is too much at stake.

Shall we go?"

The colonel nodded, and they walked to his office. Here, the duffel bag of Malory was waiting. Broward picked it up, noticing the curious stares from a sergeant who accompanied them. The soldier, however, said nothing.

Their arrival at the exit port was timed by the colonel to coincide with the landing of the supply boat. He did not want the other men who were to accompany them to get too close a look at Broward. After all, some of those who knew Malory well might notice a difference in Broward's walk or stance. These identified a man as much as anything.

There was an unavoidable delay. The officer commanding the supply ship had to report to the colonel. The cargo had to be unloaded. Saavedra had to sign various reports that he had received all the goods listed. He did this quickly, so quickly that the supply officer made a joke about Saavedra's former thorough and time-consuming check of incoming materials.

"Perhaps you want to get rid of us swiftly so that you will not catch the fire of tears."

"That is not likely," replied the colonel coldly. "I am returning with you to the source of infection."

The officer's jaw dropped. He said, "Back there? I did not know you had orders to go back. Who relieves you?"

"That is none of your business, but I will tell you. I have appointed a lieutenant to take charge. I am needed at Osorno. That should be enough for you."

The officer reddened, but he said nothing more except in the line of duty.

On the supply ship, Broward followed Quiroga and Saavedra to a small cabin near the center of the ship. If anybody thought it was strange that an enlisted man should sit with officers, they said nothing. Thereafter, there was little chance for anything to be noticed. The flight officer came through to check that all pa.s.sengers were in the stasis areas. A few minutes later, the take-off buzzer sounded. The pilot gave a few instructions and warnings, and they were off towards Mars. Twenty minutes later, they were in the landing port of Osorno.

Saavedra said, "Follow me. I will handle everything." He looked at his wrist.w.a.tch and shook his bead. Like the other two, he could not keep his mind off the ship waiting for automatic instructions at a certain time. Every second was a step closer to doom's day.

Broward's heart was beating hard at this intimacy with so many of the enemy. At the same time, he was curious. He had always wanted to know what the great base of Osorno looked like. This admission port, for instance, was enormous. It had at least fifty separate entrances for ships. After one had entered, air and heat were pumped into the individual port. The men left the vessel and went up a wide ramp into a long stone corridor. This led to a room at least five hundred meters wide and fifty high. There were desks s.p.a.ced around it, but only a few were manned. At the nearest, the arrivees from Deimos reported in.

The sergeant on duty, a man who looked as if he had been very sick not too long ago, said, "This is Lieutenant Quiroga? He is the man who is the only survivor of the de Rosas? He is to report at once to Naval Intelligence."

"My cousin sent in a report," muttered Quiroga to Broward. "Evidently, they want to talk to me in person."

The sergeant gave Broward and his bandaged face a hard look, but Saavedra said, "He burned his face in an accident."

"Then, if I were he, I'd be careful," replied the -sergeant. "Those with burns are very susceptible to the sickness of tears. He should report to Hospital Unit No. 10 at once."

"I will see that Quiroga and Malory follow their orders," the colonel said.

He beckoned the two to follow him, and they fell in line. Saavedra walked very swiftly out of the large chamber and down a long high-ceilinged corridor until he came to an elevator. Broward was carrying both his bag and the colonel's suitcase, but, in Mars' weak gravity, they were not heavy burdens. Inside the elevator, the colonel ordered two enlisted men who had just preceded them to leave.

"Take the next elevator. We are on very important business."

The two soldiers left without protest. Saavedra punched the b.u.t.ton; the doors closed.

"Get those bandages off while we're going down," the colonel said. "Pablo, help him. It is unfortunate that you were to go to Intelligence, because they may wonder where you are and start investigating. On the other hand, they may not receive word that you are here for a long time or ever. It depends on our luck and on the intentions of G.o.d."

Broward stuffed the bandages into his bag just as the elevator stopped. He walked out behind the others intoan enormous square room-too big to be called a room, a cavern almost-cut out of granite. Luminescent panels, as on the moon, furnished lighting. Along the farther wall were several buildings composed of blocks of some red material.

"A school and the residences of the teachers," said Saavedra, pointing at some small children playing on swings.

The blocks are made of piedras de care."

"What we call foamstone," said Broward. "We've some on the Moon, too."

The colonel glanced again at his watch. "Normally, we could walk through the halls and plazas unnoticed. But so many are sick that anybody traveling around on his own two feet is conspicuous. Nevertheless, we'll have to approach General Mier's office as if we had business there."

Broward wondered if the only way to get anywhere was to use shank's mare. At that moment, a small vehicle rolled out of a corridor into the big chamber or plaza. It was only a lightweight frame on which were mounted the electric fuel-cell-powered motor and four bucket seats. The motor drove the two front wheels and also acted as braking power.

Saavedra hailed the driver, who was a public taxi operator. And, as the driver told them, chattering a Spanish so provincial that the two Argentineans, let alone Broward, had trouble understanding him, he was the only taximan left in Osorno. The others had either been drafted into the hospital services or were themselves too sick to work.

The colonel gave him an address, not correct but near their destination. After going down several different corridors and, once, down a winding ramp into a lower level, the taxi stopped. Saavedra signed a credit chit, and the taxi rolled silently away. The three walked by several barracks, all seemingly empty, and then halted before a three-story foam-stone building at the front of which hung the flag of Argentina.

"In case Intelligence is looking for three men," said Saavedra, "it is better that only one of us go in to make inquiries. Naturally, I will have to talk to the general, since I am the only one who can claim to be his friend. If all goes well, I will send for you."

He was gone for only a minute and returned looking worried.

"There was only one man on duty inside, a corporal. He told me that Mier is sick in his quarters. Mier's wife died, may G.o.d receive her soul. She was a gentle woman, a fine lady, the mother of three strong sons and one beautiful daughter."

Broward suggested that, rather than walk or wait for the taxi to come back this way, they commandeer one of the military jeeps parked nearby. No sooner said than done. There was no key problem, since these vehicles had none.

Apparently, it had not occurred to the authorities that anybody would steal them in this small and close-knit community. Or maybe the penalties for theft were so severe that crime was scarce.

Two minutes later, they had turned into the largest "plaza" yet and parked before one of the ubiquitous foamstone cubes. The colonel knocked on the door of the ground-floor apartment. n.o.body answered; he pushed open the door. The first room was luxuriously furnished by Moon standards; it was filled with furniture of the late nineteenth-century period that must have been imported from Mier's estate in Argentina.

"General! Are you home? It is Colonel Saavedra."

A weak voice bade them come into the bedroom. They went through a large dining-room and down a hallway to the room from which the voice had come.

Mier was lying in bed. He was a dark-skinned man of about fifty-five, bald, and with a craggy face and eagle's-beak nose. He would have been an impressive man at another time. Now, he was shaking and his teeth were chattering. Tears ran down his cheeks.

"General Mier!" Saavedra said. "Have you no one to take care of you? Where is your daughter, your sons?"

'Two of my sons are dead," the general said. "My daughter has gone where only G.o.d and the devil know.

Rather, the devil knows, for I think she has been made one of Howards' secretaries."

"Nombre de Dios! You mean... ?"

Mier nodded and then could not stop nodding. Finally, managing to control himself, he said, "When Carlota was ordered to report to that fiend, I knew what was in store for her. I phoned Howards, begged that she be allowed to remain with me, to nurse me. But he refused. He said the state needed her. The state! L'etat, c'est Howards! Carlota is a beautiful girl, and that beast saw her and desired her. He dared to take her only because I am sick and he thinks I will die soon.

"Oh, if only my son, the only left alive to me, my brave strong Ulises, were here! He would do what I am too weak to do. He would avenge our honor."

"We will avenge you," cried Saavedra. "But it would be senseless to try to storm Howards' building with only three of us. We would accomplish nothing but our own deaths."

"If I could walk, if I could hold a gun," Mier said, "I would go into that building alone. I would shoot until they killed me. At least, I would have shown them that the father of Carlota Mier is no coward nor a man to treat lightly."

"No one doubts your courage," the colonel said. "But we are here for something even more important-if you will forgive me for saying so-than removing the stain on your family honor. We are here to save Mars. To save humanity."

"I do not understand," Mier replied through clicking teeth.

Saavedra told him as swiftly as he could, touching only the most significant of the events that had brought them here,Mier said, "Holy Mother of Christ! My Ulises was with the fleet that was sent to the Moon! Young man, you yanqui, you say that two of our ships did escape? Destroyers?"

"That is right."

Mier raised himself a little from his pillows, but he fell back. "Then there is still a chance that my Ulises is alive. He was on a destroyer."

"Let us hope so," Broward answered. "And, if our plans work, your son may live to be a hundred or more.

And you may have many fine grandchildren."

Mier said, "There is only one thing to do. My friends, those who have been wronged by Howards, those who hate him only because of what he is, these must help us."

Saavedra suggested several names. At each one, Mier shook his head.

No. That one was dead. No. That one was on Phobos. No. This one was even sicker than he, Mier. That one was no man; he had been greatly wronged but he loved his worthless life more than his self-respect.

Again, Saavedra looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. "Is there no one to help us? Surely..."

"There is His Holiness," Mier said.

"But he is a priest," Saavedra replied. "What could he do?"

"Wait a minute," Broward said. "The Pope escaped? He is here?"

"Not the saintly Pelagio III," said Quiroga. "He was in Buenos Aires when the bombs struck. The present Holy Father was Father Vonheyder, the Bishop of Mars. He a.s.sumed the pontificate, as was his right, and the name of Siricio II. Saint Siricius, his namesake, was the 38th pope."

"We've no time for ecclesiastical history," the colonel said. "I will admit that the Holy Father has reason to wish that another than Howards was his secular chief. It is obvious by now to everyone that Howards would like for all of the remaining priests in the world to die. There are only thirty left. But he would not dare to make an overt move against them. He would have a revolt on his hands."

Broward said, suddenly, "There's your answer!"

Startled, they stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"Look, I know you aren't going to like what I'm about to propose. But a desperate situation requires swift and desperate measures. You can't afford to be scrupulous. What if one of you made an anonymous call to Howards? Told him that the Pope was plotting to lead a revolt against him because the Pope fears that the Church is in mortal danger of perishing forever?

"Then Howards will be forced to arrest Siricio. And when that happens, you can get some quick action and support from those who have hitherto held back. They won't dare not fight; their souls will be in danger if they do."

Saavedra exploded. "You are crazy, you atheist Soviet! We should betray the Holy Father to save our lives?

And lose our souls?"

"I would not think of it" Quiroga said. His face was white.

Mier's weakening voice seemed to originate at the bottom of his lungs and taper off before it reached his lips.

Broward bent over him.

"Do not try to force the Holy Father into such a situation. He will not be your tool. But go to him, talk to him.

Perhaps he can suggest something. He is a very wise and a very strong man. And there are many devout Catholics here. Originally, Howards sent high-ranking potential troublemakers here, many of whom were Catholics, to get rid of them. But that was before he thought of coming here himself. The Holy Father was one of those he got transferred to Mars. Talk to him. Perhaps..."

Saavedra said, "Is he all right?"

"I think he's dying," replied Broward. He moved away to allow the colonel to get closer to Mier. But Mier spoke loudly enough for all to hear.