boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

258 Anthony Boucher
S.B. smiled his satisfaction. “So? You find that you had underestimated my
abilities?”
“Not under. Over. I thought you were too clever to make such a fool of yourself.
It smelled more like, say, Hartle’s work to me.”
“Hartle!” S.B. snorted. “That mercenary! That jackal! A man of action, yes, even
of a certain contemptible ingenuity. But what creative power does he have? Do you
think for a minute that he could conceive and carry out such a colossal undertaking
as this?”
Garrett smiled. “You’re doomed, S.B. You’re damned. What can you accomplish
with this devilish violence? Kill off a few hundred people—say even a few thousand.
And then the millions of mankind will swallow up your little terrorists as though
they had never been.”
A trace of anger contorted S.B.’s face, then faded into a laugh. “Poor idealistic
idiot! My dear Astra, before I dispatch you and your fumbling confederates to appropriate
destinations, I should like to borrow your boudoir for a lecture hall. Sit
down. Sit down, all of you. And you boys, keep your trigger fingers steady. Now
Garrett, Uranov, Miss Furness, you are to have the privilege of hearing the functioning
of a great creative mind.”
Garrett sat down comfortably enough. He did not need the added illogical reassurance
of Maureen’s handclasp. Get S.B. talking, induce him to reveal of his own
accord all they needed to know, and keep him talking until the opportune break
presented itself. That had been his hastily contrived strategy, and it seemed to be
working. The man was a frustrated creator; Uranov had told him that, and it was
the key to the whole set-up. And the mediocre, the self-insufficient creator can never
resist an audience which must perforce admire him.
“All Sollywood,” Sacherverell Breakstone begain, “ackowledged my creativeexecutive
supremacy. The Little Hitler, they called me. And I remember reading in
a biography of that great man how he could have been a magnificent painter had he
chosen to follow that line instead of creating in terms of maters and men. Even so, I
could have been a great musician, but I instinctively turned away from the sterility of
such purely artistic creation. I found my metier in Sollywood; but even there I was
cramped, strangled by the limitations of peace. The man who would create with men
needs weapons. The man who would create life must be able to mete out death.
“I had my plans for lethalizing the period weapons of Sollywood—filing the daggers,
clearing the barrels, finding ammunition somehow through armsleggers— But
it was a difficult project. You men of the W.B.I and the powers of the Department of
Allocation— I could have done it. I should have created the means of frustrating you.
But then, Hartle came to me with the inspired discovery of Emigdio Valentinez.”
“You—” Astra Ardless’ voice was harsh and toneless, hardly recognizable as human.
“You did kill him—”
“Not quite. Hartle had forestalled me there. Valentinez was already dead, although
I should surely have ordered his death if he had not been. But why are you
so concerned, my dear? You were willing to accept a share in an empire founded
on a thousand other deaths, and yet you boggle at that one as though you were the
idiot Devarupa himself.”
Astra Ardless said nothing. She looked as though only her own death interested