Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [14]
The kidnapping had been beautifully organized, there was no doubt of that. Stormgren might be anywhere on Earth, and there seemed little hope of tracing him. Yet something must be done, decided Van Ryberg, and done quickly. Despite the jest. he had so often made, his real feeling towards Karellen was one of overwhelming awe. The thought of approaching the Supervisor directly filled him with dismay, but there seemed no alternative.
The Communications Section occupied the entire top floor of the great building. Lines of facsimile machines, some silent, some clicking busily, stretched away into the distance. Through them poured endless streams of statistics-production figures, census returns, and all the book-keeping of a world economic system. Somewhere up in Karellen's ship must lie the equivalent of this great room-and Van Ryberg wondered, with a tingling of the spine, what shapes moved to and fro collecting the messages that Earth was sending to the Overlords.
But today he was not interested in these machines and the routine business they handled. He walked to the little private room that only Stormgren was supposed to enter. At his instructions, the lock had been forced and the Chief Communications Officer was waiting there for him.
"It's an ordinary teleprinter-standard typewriter keyboard," he was told. "There's a facsimile machine as well if you want to send any pictures or tabular information, but you said you wouldn't be needing that."
Van Ryberg nodded absently. "That's all. Thanks," he said. "I don't expect to be here very long. Then get the place locked up again and give me all the keys."
He waited until the Communications Officer had left, and then sat down at the machine. It was, he knew, very seldom used, since nearly all business between Karellen and Stormgren was dealt with at their weekly meetings. Since this was something of an emergency circuit, he expected a reply fairly quickly.
After a moment's hesitation, he began to tap out his message with unpractised fingers. The machine purred away quietly and the words gleamed for a few seconds on the darkened screen.
Then he leaned back and waited for the answer.
Scarcely a minute later the machine started to whirr again. Not for the first time, Van Ryberg wondered if the Supervisor ever slept.
The message was as brief as it was unhelpful.
NO INFORMATION. LEAVE MATTERS ENTIRELY TO YOUR DISCRETION. K.
Rather bitterly, and without any satisfaction at all, Van Ryberg realized how much greatness had been thrust upon him.
***
During the past three days Stormgren had analysed his captors with some thoroughness. Joe was the only one of any Importance; the others were nonentities-the riff-raff one would expect any illegal movement to gather round itself The ideals of the Freedom League meant nothing to them; their only concern was earning a living with the minimum of work.
Joe was an altogether more complex individual, though sometimes he reminded Stormgren of an overgrown baby. Their interminable poker games were punctuated with violent political arguments, and it soon became obvious to Stormgren that the big Pole had never thought seriously about the causes for which he was fighting. Emotion and extreme conservatism clouded all his judgments. His country's long struggle for Independence had conditioned him so completely that he still lived in the past. He was a picturesque survival, one of those who had no use for an ordered way of life. When his type vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.
There was now little doubt, as far as Stormgren was concerned, that Karellen had failed to locate him. He had tried to bluff, but his captors were unconvinced. He was fairly certain that they had been holding him here to see if Karellen would act, and now That nothing had happened they could proceed with their plans.
Stormgren was not surprised when, four days after his capture, Joe told him to expect visitors. For some time the little group had shown increasing nervousness, and the prisoner