Free Meeting at Infinity by John Brunner Page A

Someone we took in for questioning says he heard rumors of our having imported a new strain of the White Death. He said he didn’t believe it. I think he half did.”
    “I wondered how long they’d wait before turning that one loose. Damn that grain fungus! It’s given them just the opening they needed.”
    Malco said nothing, but waited for instructions.
    “Give it half an hour,” said Lyken suddenly. “If the police haven’t cleared the streets by then, kidnap ’em. I’m going to get my twelve thousand through before midnight come hell or high bailiff!”
    “You think Clostrides is behind it?” Malco prompted.
    “Who else?”
    Lyken turned one more time to stare through the window-wall. While he had been talking to Malco, the lights had come on all over the tangle of buildings. Scarcely aware that he spoke aloud, he said under his breath.
“Twice
as big!”
    “What?” Malco looked confused.
    Lyken laughed again, this time without sounding bitter. He said, “Nothing, Shane. Can you handle things on the lines I indicated—for say two or three hours?”
    “Well, I
could,
I guess, but—!”
    “Carry on, then.” Lyken moved towards the door. “I have things to straighten out in the franchise itself.”
    “Are you going to Akkilmar, perhaps?” Malco asked after a pause.
    “That’s right.”
    “I hope you know what you’re doing, Ahmed. That’s all I can possibly say. I just hope you
know.”
    So do I.
    The thought kept wriggling, naggingly, through Lyken’s mind, like a worm. For a long time he had expected a showdown with the Directors; he knew well enough that he was not liked, that his franchise was too successful, that he had taken a larger slice of the available market than any other concessionary except the Directors themselves. Fair enough. It was in the rules, the unwritten rules. And he had banked on two things to protect him.
    One was implicit in the fact that he had his office low down in the main tower of his base, and the portals through to the franchise on floors high above. You could never predict the geography—or the geology—of a Tacket franchise, and although you would go through and see the sun or the stars unchanged, at the same angle above the horizon as they were when you set out, you could not be sure of the ground underfoot.
    In Lyken’s franchise, a naked pillar of rock almost a thousand feet high and two hundred feet thick coexisted with hishome base. His trading station perched on this pillar like the eyrie of an eagle, and it was invulnerable. The Directors would not be satisfied with simply closing his franchise. They wanted it—operating. And to save them from having to re-explore it expensively, bit by bit, they would also want the precious data stored in the trading post.
    That was one kind of insurance he had. And Akkilmar was the second.
    He was not absolutely sure, because you could never be sure about what some other franchise might hold, but he was almost sure that nothing like Akkilmar existed in any other franchise but his own.
    The first time he had seen the place, he had been misled by appearances. It was a sizeable small town, a long way south of his base, in a subtropical area and close to the sea on which it largely depended for food. It had been reported numerous times by scouts, and accurately described: a town of wooden buildings, with streets as smooth and green as good lawns, well populated by tall people whose complexions ranged from copper to gold, apparently without mechanical aptitude—even without the wheel. There were few civilizations in the franchise at all, on this continent; the Old World, as usual, had a near monopoly.
    Therefore it had gone long uninvestigated. Lyken had to repress a shudder when he thought how nearly he had overlooked the place altogether.
    Once, however, a scout had been lost while exploring natural resources—his heli had been struck by lightning during a storm, and his locators were out, so they had to search for