The Cosmic Computer H. Beam Piper (reader novel txt) 📖

have no idea how bad things have gotten. Over on the east coast, the outlaws are looting whole towns. About four months ago, they sacked Waterville; burned the whole town and killed close to a hundred people. That was Blackie Perales’ gang.”

“Who is this Blackie Perales? I heard the name mentioned in connection with the Harriet Barne.”

“Blackie Perales is anybody the Planetary Government can’t catch, which means practically any outlaw,” Fred Karski said.

“No, Fred; there is a Blackie Perales,” Tom Brangwyn said. “He used to be a planter, down in the south. The banks foreclosed on him when he couldn’t pay his notes, and he turned outlaw. That’s the way it’s going, all around. Every time a planter loses his plantation or a farmer loses his farm, or a mechanic loses his job, he turns outlaw. Take Tramptown, here. We used to plant nothing but melons. Then, when the sale for wine and brandy dropped, the melon-planters began cutting their melon crops and raising produce, instead of buying it from up north, and turning land into pasture for cattle. The people we used to buy foodstuffs from couldn’t sell all they raised, and that threw a lot of farmhands out of work. So they got the idea there was work here, and they came flocking in, and when they couldn’t get jobs, they just stayed in Tramptown, stealing anything they could. We don’t even try to police Tramptown any more; we just see to it they don’t come up here.”

“Well, where do these outlaws and pirates who are looting whole towns come from?”

“Down in the Badlands, mostly. None of them have been bothering us, since we organized the Home Guard. They tried to, a couple of times, at first. There may have been a few survivors; they spread it around that Gordon Valley wasn’t any outlaws’ health resort.”

“Why don’t you join us, Conn?” Fred Karski asked. “All our old gang belong.”

“I’d like to, but I’m afraid I’m going to be kind of busy.”

Brangwyn nodded. “Yes. You will be, at that,” he agreed.

“So I hear,” Fred Karski said. “Do you really know where it is, Conn?”

“Well, no.” He went into the routine about Merlin being still classified triple-top secret. “But we’ll find it. It may take time, but we will.”

They talked for a while. He asked more questions about the Home Guard. His father, it seemed, had donated all the equipment. They had a hundred and seventy men on the active list, but they had a reserve of over eight hundred, and combat vehicles and weapons on all the plantations and in all the towns along the river. The reserve had only been turned out twice; both times, outlaw attacks had been stopped dead⁠—literally. The Home Guard, it appeared, was not given to making arrests or taking prisoners. Finally, he parted from them, strolling on along the row of stores and business places, many vacant, under the south edge of the Mall, until he saw a fluorolite sign, Wade Lucas, M.D. He entered.

Lucas wasn’t busy. They went into his consultation office, and Conn took off his gun-belt and hung it up; Lucas offered cigarettes, and they lighted and sat down.

“I see you’ve started carrying one,” he said, nodding to the pistol Conn had laid aside.

“Civic obligation. I’m going to be too busy for Home Guard duty, but if I can protect myself, it’ll save somebody else the job of protecting me.”

“Maybe if there weren’t so many guns around, there wouldn’t be so much trouble.”

He felt his good opinion of Wade Lucas start to slip. The Liberals on Terra had been full of that kind of talk, which was why only four out of ten of last year’s graduating class at Armed Forces Academy had been able to get active commissions. The last war had been a disaster, so don’t prepare for another one; when it comes, let it be a worse disaster.

“Guns don’t make trouble; people make trouble. If the troublemakers are armed, you have to be armed too. When did you last see an Air Patrol boat around here, or even a Constabulary trooper? All we have here is the Home Guard and Tom Brangwyn and three deputies, and his pay and theirs is always six months in arrears.”

Lucas nodded. “A bankrupt government, an unemployment rate that rises every year, currency that buys less every month. And do-it-yourself justice.” The doctor blew a smoke ring and watched it float toward the ventilator-intake. “You said you’re going to be busy. This company your father’s talking about organizing?”

“That’s right. You’re going to be at the meeting at the Academy this afternoon, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Just what are you going to do, after you get it organized?”

“Well, I brought back information on a great deal of undiscovered equipment and stores that the Third Force left behind⁠ ⁠…” He talked on for some time, keeping to safe generalities. “It’s too big for my father and me to handle alone, even if we didn’t feel morally obligated to take in the people who contributed toward sending me to school on Terra. You ought to be interested in it. I know of six fully supplied hospitals, intended to take care of the casualties in case of a System States space-attack. You can imagine, better than I can, what would be in them.”

“Yes. Medical supplies of all sorts are getting hard to find. But look here; you’re not going to let these people waste time looking for this alleged computer, this thing they call Merlin, are you?”

“We’re looking for any valuable war material. I don’t know the location of Merlin, but⁠—”

“I’ll bet you don’t!” Lucas said vehemently. That was the same thing Flora had said.

“⁠—but Merlin is undoubtedly the most valuable item of abandoned T.F. equipment on this planet. In the long run, I’d say, more valuable than everything else together. We certainly aren’t going to ignore it.”

“Good heavens, Conn! You aren’t like these people here; you were educated at the University of Montevideo.”

“So I