V
The meeting was at the Academy; when Conn and his father arrived, theyfound the central hall under the topside landing stage crowded. KurtFawzi and Professor Kellton had constituted themselves a receptioncommittee. Franz Veltrin was in evidence with his audiovisualrecorder, and Colonel Zareff was leaning on his silver-headed swordcane. Tom Brangwyn, in an unaccustomed best-suit. Wade Lucas, among agroup of merchants, arguing heatedly. Lorenzo Menardes, thedistiller, and Lester Dawes, the banker, and Morgan Gatworth, thelawyer, talking to Judge Ledue. About four times as many as had beenin Fawzi's office the afternoon before.
Finally, everybody was shepherded into a faculty conference room;there was a long table, and a shorter one T-wise at one end. Fawzi andKellton conducted them to this. Both of them were trying to preside,Kellton because it was his Academy, and Fawzi ex officio as mayor andprofessional leading citizen, and because he had come to regard Merlinas his own private project. After everybody else was seated, the tworival chairmen-presumptive remained on their feet. Fawzi was saying,"Let's come to order; we must conduct this meeting regularly," andKellton was saying, "Gentlemen, please; let me have your attention."
If either of them took the chair, the other would resent it. Conn gotto his feet again.
"Somebody will have to preside," he said, loudly enough to cut throughthe babble at the long table. "Would you take the chair, Judge Ledue?"
That stopped it. Neither of them wanted to contest the honor with thepresident-judge of the Gordon Valley court.
"Excellent suggestion, Conn. Judge, will you preside?" ProfessorKellton, who had seen himself losing out to Fawzi, asked. Fawzi threwone quick look around, estimated the situation, and got with it. "Ofcourse, Judge. You're the logical chairman. Here, will you sit here?"
Judge Ledue took the chair, looked around for something to use as agavel, and rapped sharply with a paperweight.
"Young Mr. Conn Maxwell, who has just returned from Terra, needs nointroduction to any of you," he began. Then, having established that,he took the next ten minutes to introduce Conn. When people beganfidgeting, he wound up with: "Now, only about a dozen of us were atthe informal meeting in Mr. Fawzi's office, yesterday. Conn, would youplease repeat what you told us? Elaborate as you see fit."
Conn rose. He talked briefly about his studies on Terra to qualifyhimself as an expert. Then he began describing the wealth of abandonedand still undiscovered Federation war material and the manyinstallations of which he had learned, careful to avoid giving cluesto exact locations. The spaceport; the underground duplicate ForceCommand Headquarters; the vast underground arsenals and shops andsupply depots. Everybody was awed, even his father; he hadn't had timeto tell him more than a fraction of it.
Finally, somebody from the long table interrupted:
"Well, Conn; how about Merlin? That's what we're interested in."
Wade Lucas snorted indignantly.
"He's telling you about real things, things worth millions of sols,and you want him to talk about that idiotic fantasy!"
There was an angry outcry. Nobody actually shouted "_To the stake withthe blasphemer!_" but that was the general idea. Judge Ledue wasrapping loudly for order.
"I don't know the exact location of Merlin." Conn strove to makehimself heard. "The whole subject's classified top secret. But I amcertain that Merlin exists, if not on Poictesme then somewhere in theAlpha System, and I am equally certain that we can find it."
Cheers. He waited for the hubbub to subside. Lucas was trying to yellabove it.
"You admit you couldn't learn anything about this so-called Merlin,but you're still certain it exists?"
"Why are you certain it doesn't?"
"Why, the whole thing's absurdly fantastic!"
"Maybe it is, to a layman like you. I studied computers, and it isn'tto me."
"Well, take all these elaborate preparations against space attack youwere telling us about. I think Colonel Zareff, here, who served in theAlliance Army, will bear me out that such an attack was plainlyimpossible."
Zareff started to agree, then realized that he was aiding andcomforting the enemy. "Intelligence lag," he said. "What do youexpect, with General Headquarters thirty parsecs from the fighting?"
"Yes. A computer can only process the data that's been taped into it,"Conn said. That was a point he wanted to ram home, as forcibly and asoften as possible. "I suppose Merlin classified an Alliance attack onPoictesme as a low-order probability, but war is the province ofchance; Clausewitz said that a thousand years ago. Foxx Travis wasn'tthe sort of commander to let himself get caught, even by a verylow-order probability."
"Well how do you explain the absence, after forty years, of anymention, in any history of the War, of Merlin? How do you get aroundthat?"
"I don't have to. How do you get around it?"
"_Huh?_" Lucas was startled.
"Yes. Stories about Merlin were all over Poictesme, all through theThird Force, even to the enemy. Say the stories were unfounded; sayMerlin never existed. Yet the belief in Merlin was an importanthistorical fact, and no history of the War gives it so much as afootnote." He paused for effect, then continued: "That can mean onlyone thing. Systematic suppression, backed by the whole force of theTerran Federation. A gigantic conspiracy of silence!"
Brother! If they swallow that, I have it made; they'll swallowanything!
They did, all but Lucas. He banged his fist on the table.
"Now I've heard everything!" he shouted in disgust.
"Not quite everything, Doctor," Morgan Gatworth said. "You will hear,one of these days, that we have found Merlin."
"Yes, that'll be the day!" Lucas sprang to his feet, his chairtoppling behind him. He shoved it aside with his foot. "I'm not goingto argue with you. Conn Maxwell gave you a thousand-year-oldquotation; I'll give you another, from Thomas Paine: 'To argue withthose who have renounced the use and authority of reason is as futileas to administer medicine to the dead.' I'll add this. Conn Maxwellknows better than this balderdash he's been spouting to you. I don'tknow what his racket is, and I'm not staying to find out. You will,though--to your regret."
He turned and strode from the room. There was a moment's silence,after the door slammed behind him. Too bad, Conn thought. He wouldhave made a good friend. Now he was going to make a very nasty enemy.
"Well, let's get to business," his father said. "We don't have toargue about the existence of Merlin; we know that. Let's discuss thequestion of finding it."
"I still think it's somewhere off-planet," Lorenzo Menardes said. "Themoons of Pantagruel...."
Evidently he'd read something, or seen an old film, about the moons ofPantagruel.
"No, that's too far; they'd keep it where they could use it."
"The old GHQ," Lester Dawes suggested. "Suppose it's down under that,like the place Rodney found under Tenth Army."
"I hope not," Gathworth said. "The Planetary Government took thatover."
"Well, wherever it is, finding it is going to be expensive," RodneyMaxwell said. "Now, to finance the search, I propose we use thisinformation my son brought back from Terra. Doctor Lucas was rightabout one thing; that's worth millions of sols. Well, I propose, also,that we set up a company and get it chartered; a prospecting company,to operate under the Abandoned Property Act of 867. My son and I willcontribute this information as our share in the capitalization of thecompany. The work of opening these Federation installations can go onconcurrently with the search for Merlin, and the profits can financeit."
Silence for a moment, then a bedlam of cheering.
"Well, let's get organized," Gatworth said. "What will we call thiscompany?"
A number of voices shouted suggestions. Rodney Maxwell managed to getrecognition and partial silence.
"It is of the first importance," he said, "that we keep our realobjective--Merlin--as close a secret as possible. The PlanetaryGovernment would like to get hold of it--and I leave you to askyourselves how far Jake Vyckhoven and his cronies are to be trustedwit
h anything like that--and I have no doubt the Federation might tryto take it away from us."
"Couldn't do it, Rodney," Judge Ledue objected. "Everything theFederation abandoned in the Trisystem is public domain now. We have aFederation Supreme Court ruling--"
"What's legality to the Federation?" Klem Zareff demanded. "Theyfought a criminally illegal war of aggression against my people."
Down the table, somebody started singing "Rally Round the Banner, theBanner Black and Green."
"Well, I think it's a good idea to keep quiet about it, myself," KurtFawzi said.
"All right," Rodney Maxwell said. "Then we don't want this company tosound like anything but another salvage company. I suggest we call itLitchfield Exploration & Salvage."
"Good name, Rodney," Dawes approved. "That a motion? I second it."
Unanimously carried. They had a name, now, anyhow. Everybody begansuggesting other topics for consideration--capitalization, applicationfor charter, election of officers, stock issues. Conn paid less andless attention. Industrial finance and organization wasn't hissubject, either. His father was plunging happily into it as though hehad been promoting companies all his life. Conn sat and doodled withhis six-color pen, mostly spherical hyperspace ships.
"We can't get all this cleared up now," Lester Dawes was protesting."Your Honor, I mean, Mr. Chairman; I suggest that committees beappointed...."
More hassling; everybody wanted to be on all the committees. Finally,they appointed enough committees to include everybody.
"Well, that seems to be cleared up," Judge Ledue said, "I suggest ameeting day after tomorrow evening; the committees should haveeverything set up, and we should be able to organize ourselves andelect permanent officers. Is there anything else to discuss, or do Ihear a motion to adjourn?"
Somebody thought they ought to have some idea of what the firstoperation would be.
"You heard me mention a spaceport," Conn said. "I can tell you, now,that it's over on Barathrum, inside the crater of an extinct volcano.I think we ought to have a look at that, first of all."
"I know you seemed to think yesterday that Merlin is off-planet,"Fawzi said, "I'm inclined to disagree, Conn. I think it's right hereon Poictesme."
"We ought to nail that spaceport down first," Conn argued.
"Conn, you mentioned an underground duplicate of Travis's generalheadquarters," Zareff said. "They thought we'd possibly send a fleethere to blitz Poictesme, or they wouldn't have built that. And thisunderground headquarters would be the safest place on the planet;they'd make sure of that. Staff brass don't like to get caught out inthe rain, not when it's raining hellburners and planetbusters. Merlinwould be too big to take there along with them, so they'd put it therein the first place."
That made sense. If he'd been Foxx Travis, and if there had been aMerlin, that was exactly where he'd have put it himself. But there wasno Merlin, and he wanted a ship. He argued mulishly for a little, thensaw that it was hopeless and gave in.
"I want to find Merlin as much as any of you," he said. "More. Merlinwas the only thing I was trained for. We'll look there first."
Somebody asked where, approximately, this underground Force Commandheadquarters was.
"Why, it's in the Badlands, over between the Blaubergs and the eastcoast."
"Great Ghu! We'll need an army to go in there!" Tom Brangwyn said."That's where all these outlaws have been coming from, Blackie Peralesand all."
"Then we'll get an army together," Klem Zareff said happily. "Mightmake a little of that reward money that's been offered."
"We'll need more than that. Well need excavation equipment, and labor.Lots of labor," Conn said. "It's a couple of hundred feet below thesurface; from the plans, I'd say they just dug a big pit, built theheadquarters in it, and filled it in. There are two entrances, avertical shaft and a horizontal tunnel."
"When they pulled out, they probably filled the shaft and vitrifiedthe rock at the outer ends," his father added. "That was what they didat Tenth Army."
Another idea hit him. "Mr. Mayor, do you think you could set up somekind of a public-works program here in Litchfield? We can't start thistill after the wine-pressing's over, and we'll need a lot of labor, asI pointed out. Now, it's important that we keep all our projects asecret until we can get our claims filed. If we start this municipalfix-up-and-clean-up program, we can give work to a lot of thesedrifters who haven't been able to get jobs on the plantations, getthem organized into gangs, and keep them together till we're ready forthe Force Command job."
Lorenzo Menardes supported the idea. "And while they were boondogglingaround in Litchfield, we could pick out the best workers, get rid ofthe incompetents, and train a few supervisors. That's going to be oneof our worst headaches; getting capable supervisors."
"You telling me?" Rodney Maxwell asked. "That was what I was wonderingabout: where we'd get gang-bosses. And another thing; this municipalhousecleaning would mask our real preparations."
"Well, we need something like that," Fawzi said. "We've needed it fora long time. I guess it took Conn, coming home from Terra, to see howbadly we've let the town get run down. Franz, suppose you and TomBrangwyn and Lorenzo form a committee on that. Look around, see whatneeds fixing up worst, and set up a project. Who's city engineer now?"
"Abe O'Leary; he died six years ago," Dawes said. "You never appointedhis successor."
"Well, I guess I never got around to that," the mayor of Litchfieldadmitted.
When the meeting finally adjourned, they went up and got in the car;his father lifted it straight up to thirty thousand feet and startedcircling. An aircar was one place where they could talk safely.
"Conn, I was kind of worried, down there. You were being a little toopositive. You know, you're only twenty-three. As long as you agreewith those people, you're a brilliant young man; you start gettingideas of your own, and you're just a half-baked kid. You let the olderand wiser heads run things. You can't begin to hope to foul things upthe way they can. Look at all the experience they've had."
"But we've got to have a ship. Everything depends on that."
"I know it does. We'll get a ship. Let Kurt Fawzi and Klem Zareff andthe rest of them have this duplicate Force Command thing first,though. Keep them happy. As soon as we have that opened, you can takea gang and run over to Barathrum and grab your spaceport. Wait tillthey find out that Merlin isn't at Force Command Duplicate. Then youcan convince them it's really on Koshchei."