Talents, Incorporated

by Murray Leinster

At the spaceport, carefully selected persons filed onto the space-liner Vestis. It was not officially believed that the other three great chartered ships would arrive before the Mekinese fleet. It was, in fact, rather likely that none of the information given by Talents, Incorporated was ever believed until the event confirmed the prediction. In the case of the first liner, those who went on board had been chosen by a strict principle of priority. Men who would merely be imprisoned when Mekin took over had no privilege of escape. Not yet. Those who were destined for execution as soon as a quisling government was formed, were also not entitled to depart on the liner. But those who had conspicuously supported King Humphrey in his resistance to intimidation; those who had encouraged others to object to concessions which could only be forerunners of other concessions; those who had spoken and written and labored to spread information about the facts of life under Mekin, would not merely be imprisoned or executed. They would be tortured. So they were entitled to first chance at escape.

The space-liner blasted off some six hours after its arrival. It vanished blessedly into overdrive where it could not be intercepted. It headed for the far-away world of Trent, where its passengers would be allowed to land as refugees and where, doubtless, they would speak bitterly about Mekin for all the rest of their lives. But the government of Mekin would not care.

Mekin was a phenomenon so improbable that only those who were students of past civilizations could really believe it. There were innumerable references to such régimes in the histories of ancient Earth. There was, for example, Napoleon, said people informed about such matters. With a fraction of a fraction of one per cent of the French people actively cooperating, he overawed the rest and then took over a nation which was not even his own. Then he took over other nations where less than a fraction of a fraction of one per cent concurred. Then he took soldiers from those second-order conquests to make third-order conquests, and then soldiers from the third to make fourth.

There was Mussolini, said the learned men. He had organized a group of rowdies and gangsters, and began by levying protection-money on gambling-houses and even less reputable resorts, and with the money increased his following. He had murdered those who opposed him and presently he collected protection money from even the great business corporations of his country, financing more political gangsterism until he ruled his nation for himself and his confederates.

And there was Hitler, said the historically-minded. In the beginning his followers never dared show themselves in the uniforms they adopted, because their fellow-countrymen hated everything they stood for. But before the end came they worshipped him. They murdered millions at his command, but they died because of him, too.

There was Lenin, and there was Stalin. Specialists in history could talk very learnedly about the developments on Mekin which paralleled the cabals headed by Lenin, and later, Stalin. Theirs was a much more durable organization than those of Napoleon and Mussolini and Hitler.

The ruling clique on Mekin had begun in this manner.

Mekin had once had a cause to which all its officials paid lip-service and some possibly believed in. Because of this cause it was the organization and not the individual who was apotheosized. Therefore, there could be fierce battles among members of the ruling class. There could be conspiracies. The last three dictators of Mekin had been murdered in palace revolutions, and the current dictator was more elaborately protected from his confreres than any mere hereditary tyrant ever needed to be. But Mekin remained a strong and dynamic world, engaged in the endless subjugation of other worlds for a purpose nobody really remembered any more.

Against such a society, a planet like Kandar was helpless. Mekin could not be placated nor satisfied with less than the subjugation and the ruin of its neighbors. For a time, Kandar had tried to arm for its own defense. It had a space-fleet which in quality was probably equal to Mekin's, but in quantity was hopelessly less. Also it had a defensive policy. It did not dream of any but a defensive war. And no war was ever won by mere defense. There could be no defense against the building-up of tensions, the contriving of incidents, the invention of insults. It had been proved often enough. Eventually there was an ultimatum, and there was surrender, and then the installation of a puppet government and the ruthless bleeding of another captured planet for the benefit of the rulers of Mekin.

The process was implacable. There was nothing to be done but submit, flee or die. Various parts of Kandar's population chose one or another course. Four great liners would carry away those who could be helped to flee. The mass of the people must submit, the fighting forces savagely made ready to die.