The Skynappers

by John Brunner

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

When Ivan Wright stepped out of his mountain cabin, rifle in hand, to investigate the sound of a strange helicopter, he stepped right into the middle of a galactic crisis. For the crew of that odd aircraft were not men such as he'd ever seen before - and when he tried to oppose them, he found himself hurled uncontrollably into oblivion. He awoke to find himself considered as a kidnapped barbarian from a backward planet in a galaxy of advanced civilizations - yet one who somehow held in his own hands the key to all their futures!

Release date: July 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 115

Sample

QUENNY HAD STOOD on many worlds, but Laik was one of the most beautiful of all. Its capital, Surlaik, was a huge pale-blue metropolis on the shores of a lazy blue sea. Today, moreover, it was decorated. From every window hung garlands or banners, and bright carnival floats paraded the streets. The harbor was full of lean white hydrofoil yachts with flags fluttering on their masts; the parks had bloomed with a polychrome array of tents that had sprung up like fungi to accommodate the floods of out-of-town visitors brought by boat, by hoverplane, by rail or road, to join the celebration.

To the easy-going Laikers, any excuse was sufficient for a celebration, and Declaration Day was a better excuse than most.

It was growing dusk. In the main square before Government House—where the people were packed shoulder to shoulder, laughing, drinking and singing—they were already passing torches over the heads of the crowd. Later, the city would look as though it had been invaded by a swarm of monstrous fireflies, and there would be processions along the edge of Surlaik Bay to the crater of the extinct volcano at Hexagon Point.

By then, of course, it would be impossible to cross the city except in a hoverplane. Quenny had to travel on foot; accordingly, he set out early.

His route took him past Government House Square. He saw as he passed that there were already two or three crews of newsmen on the rostrum under the balcony where later on they would go through the mockery of presenting Endew to the people. They would cheer him, of course—that was part of the game.

But the game was a foul one, and none of the tactics were honest. That was why the presentation was a mockery.

The newsmen present now would be representatives of the on-planet services, and possibly of the facsimile agency that served the worlds of the local system. There were miners on the next planet in towards the sun, and various scientific expeditions on the four satellites of one of the gas giants. There would be no one from any agency with galactic connections. Why should elections on a rather backward world rate space in the news? Perhaps space would be found in the more serious journals for an announcement of Endew’s success—it would amount to one line, and his name would be misspelled.

Quenny repressed a desire to spit in the gutter with disgust.

Determinedly, he thrust his way forward through the close-packed mass of humanity barring the streets. Noise battered his ears; wind-organs like hurricanes blasted out the tunes on which Endew had been swept to success in the election, and at every corner the tune was different.

It seemed like an age before he stood at last in the quiet walled garden before Fewett’s house. He had known approximately what to expect. Nonetheless, the vastness and luxury of the dwelling impressed him profoundly. Of course, Fewett was wealthy—one of the richest men on Laik—but this!

Quenny forced himself back to the business in hand, and approached the door. By the time he had covered the distance across the garden, he knew, he would have been scrutinized and studied until everything that a visual inspection could reveal about him was known. He halted within a few paces of the door and waited.

His patience was rewarded. After another moment, the door dissolved and he found himself facing a woman of indeterminate age in a plain yellow gown. She was Laiker; her flat, pale face and reddish hair stamped her unmistakably. Quenny’s assessment of Fewett’s wealth grew another two zeros on the end; to have human servants was not altogether unknown on Laik, but to have Laiker servants was another matter entirely.

“I wish to see Fewett,” Quenny told her, and she shook her head. “Tell him that I … wish to congratulate him.”

A flicker of puzzlement came and went in the woman’s eyes. Quenny seized his advantage and pressed it home.

“If you tell him that, he will see me. Please do so.”

The door solidified again. Quenny turned away, affecting nonchalance, and wandered a few paces through the garden. A bush of gorgeous golden flowers attracted him, and he bent his head to sniff one. No scent.

That was long enough, he judged. He went back to the door without hurrying, and was pleased to find his guessed-at timing correct. Almost as he halted, the door vanished again and the woman was there, indicating he should come in. He did so, and stood looking around the hall.

There was no doubt about it. Fewett had funds. If he could be persuaded to part with some of them …

“Accompany me,” she said, and led him across the hall to the elevator columns.

This was the first column on Laik which Quenny had used that did not upset his stomach because the antigrav was minutely maladjusted. It gave out on to the roof of the house, where Fewett himself was sitting in a capacious armchair, a large jug of liquor and an array of mugs on the table at his side.

As soon as she had seen Quenny safely out of the column and with his feet on solidity, the woman who had brought him up-crossed to the down column and disappeared. Quenny did not glance after her. He was aware that Fewett was studying him intently, and took advantage of the long silent pause to do the same to his unwilling host.

He saw a man of typical Laiker stock; broad-faced, aging slightly in a manner that was betrayed by the thinning of his red hair at the sides and nape, although on the crown of his head the hair still rose in a brilliant cock’s-comb. His eyes were sharp and his lips were full. He wore a black lounging robe encrusted with metal embroidery, and two rings glittered on the fingers of the hand with which he lifted his mug of liquor to swig it.

When he spoke, his voice was acid.

“So you want to congratulate me. What for?”

“I am from the Movement,” said Quenny, and watched the remark sink into Fewett’s consciousness like a pebble falling into very deep, very clear water.

“You’re young,” said Fewett at last. “Still, sit down and speak your mind.”

He gestured into air, and a chair sprouted from behind a low ornamental wall. Quenny sat down with a murmur of polite thanks, and nodded acceptance as Fewett offered him liquor.

“We have been interested in your activities on Laik for a long time. I was sent here to watch the course of the election, and the effect of your work upon the result. Naturally, we didn’t expect your candidate to win, but I do truly have to congratulate you. Such effective opposition to Endew was hardly to be looked for, when there was no organized campaign against him—only what one man could arrange.”

For a moment Fewett seemed to preen himself, then his mask of sourness fell anew over his face. “I wish you’d come and given me a hand, then,” he snapped. “If you could have done.”

“We could have. But we preferred not to make our presence known. Besides, the return or defeat of Endew is quite unimportant.”

“Unimportant!” echoed Fewett, and leaned forward in his chair, glaring at Quenny. “How in space can you say that? Is it not important that the—the ‘duly elected representative of the Laiker people’”—he managed to make quotation marks audible around the sarcastic phrase—“should be sent to speak for Laik in the highest councils of the galaxy on no sounder basis than a pile of subliminal propaganda and a few catchy sonohypnotic songs?”

Stonily, Quenny shook his head. “Our rulers have had too much experience of ruling,” he said. “What can we—even the Movement as a whole—hope to do against their centuries of proven technique? They could bring the whole resources of the galaxy to bear on any single world, if it suited them. Endew, by the way, isn’t Laiker, of course.”

“Not Laiker? Not even a native to Laik?” Fewett’s voice broke with amazement as he uttered the last word.

“No, he’s a Trigian, trained for this by a course in demagogy and rabble-rousing. But that’s by the way.”

“If you knew this,” snapped Fewett, slapping his open hand on his thigh, “then why didn’t you tell me? That would have been the final insult to the dignity of Laikers; to have a fake passed off on them! That would have—”

“You fought well,” said Quenny dispassionately. “But you can take it from me that once our rulers had set their minds on making Endew the Galactic Councillor for Laik, nothing in the whole galaxy could have stopped them. There is only one way to stop them with their whole structure of lies and deceit and chicanery and bribery which passes for honest government today. There is only one way.”

Fewett was still muttering. Now he cut himself short and gave Quenny a penetrating stare.

“All right. What’s that?”

For a moment, as he shaped the answer, Quenny felt the weight of the stars pressing on his mind. He had had this argument with himself a thousand times, he had always been driven to the same conclusion, and he had never reconciled himself to the crying necessity for it. Once more he stilled the qualms in his mind, reminding himself that Fewett was a rich man and could bring the realization of their common aim a stage nearer if he did nothing more than donate money.

“We must cut them down,” he said, and shrugged. “We must bring down the government by violence.”

UP HERE on the roof of Fewett’s house, the noise of the wind-organs blasting their silly little tunes was far away, like music half-heard in a dream. From where they sat, the edge of the roof cut off the city, leaving a flat local horizon marked only by the peak of the extinct volcano at Hexagon Point, and otherwise a dome of clear sky.

Nonetheless, when Fewett heard Quenny’s level statement, he started, and glanced all around as though looking for someone who might overhear, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and conspiratorial.

“So that’s what your Movement stands for!”

Quenny shook his head. “Not at all. We stand for honest government, for the voice of free men to be heard in the high councils of the galaxy. But we have exhausted ourselves trying to fight our rulers as you have fought them here on Laik by out-bribing, out-advertising, out-hypnotising the populace. You know yourself how true that is. That’s why I came here as an observer, only to watch your attempt to beat the entrenched powers at their own dirty game, and not to help in it. Your fight should have convinced you that it is hopeless.”

Fewett gave a disgusted snort and filled Quenny’s mug and then his own. “Too true!” he growled. “The trouble is people are too damned contented to worry about anything as abstract as honesty! Tell them their government is corrupt and venal, and they yawn politely and turn away. Prove it to them, and they nod with affected interest, and then go off and vote happily for the official nominee. What else can one expect? Their every desire is pandered to; they grow fat and lazy. What does it matter to them who speaks in their name in the High Council? They don’t bother to listen!”

“That’s half the story,” said Quenny. “The other half is worse yet. You’ve studied the loaded propaganda, the sonohypnotics on which Endew was swept into office. You’ve heard about the bribes offered to returning officers to falsify the votes in the primaries and thus to ensure that people get on the bandw. . .