The Knights of the Limits by Barrington Bayley

Author:Barrington Bayley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473201941
Publisher: Fontana/Collins
Published: 1978-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Next morning I motored to Surrey to visit the first of the ten factories the King had mentioned.

The managers were waiting for me. I was led to a prepared suite of offices where I listened sleepily to a lecture on the layout and scope of the factory. I wasn’t very interested; one of the King’s kinsmen (referred to as the King’s men) would arrive shortly with full details of the proposed conversion, and the managers would have to go through it all again. I was only here as a representative, so to speak. The real job would be carried out by the alien.

We all wandered round the works for a few hours before I got thoroughly bored and returned to my office. A visitor was waiting.

Hotch.

‘What do you want now?’ I asked. ‘I thought I’d got rid of you.’

He grinned. ‘I found out what’s going on.’ He waved his arms to indicate the factory.

‘What of it?’

‘Well, wouldn’t you say the King’s policy is … ill-advised?’

‘You know as well as I do that the King’s policy is certain to be laughably clumsy.’ I motioned him to a seat. ‘What exactly do you mean? I’m afraid I don’t know the purpose of this myself.’

I was apologetic about the last statement, and Hotch laughed. ‘It’s easy enough to guess. Don’t you know what they’re building in Glasgow? Ships – warships of the King’s personal design.’

‘Brazil,’ I murmured.

‘Sure. The King chooses this delicate moment to launch a transatlantic war. Old Rex is such a blockhead he almost votes himself out of power.’

‘How?’

‘Why, he gives us the weapons to fight him with. He’s organising an armed native force which I will turn against him.’

‘You jump ahead of yourself. To go by the plans I have, no extraterrestrial weapons will be used.’

Hotch looked more sober. ‘That’s where you come in. We can’t risk another contest with the King’s men using ordinary arms. It would kill millions and devastate the country. Because it won’t be the skirmish-and-capitulate of last time. This time we’ll be in earnest. So I want you to soften things up for us. Persuade the King to hand over more than he intends: help us to chuck him out easily. Give us new weapons and you’ll save a lot of carnage.’

I saw his stratagem at once. ‘Quit that! Don’t try to lay blood responsibility on my shoulders. That’s a dirty trick.’

‘For a dirty man – and that’s what you are, Smith, if you continue to stand by, too apathetic even to think about it. Anyhow, the responsibility’s already laid, whatever you say. It depends on you.’

‘No.’

‘You won’t help?’

‘That’s right.’

Hotch sighed, and stared at the carpet for some seconds. Then he stared through the glass panels and down on to the floor of the workshops. ‘Then what will you do? Betray me?’

‘No.’

Sighing again, he told me: ‘One day, Smith, you’ll fade away through sheer lack of interest.’

‘I’m interested,’ I said. ‘I just don’t seem to have the kind of mind that can make a decision. I can’t find any place to lay blame, or anyone to turn against.

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