Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell by Eric Frank Russell

distributed them about his person, put others into a canvas shoulder-bag of the kind favored by the Sirian peasantry. Impatience prevented him from waiting for the full light of day. Being now more familiar with the forest he felt sure he could fumble his way through it even in the dark. The going would be tougher, the journey would take longer, but he could not resist the urge to get back to the car as soon as possible.
    Before leaving his last act was to press the hidden button on Container-22 which had ceased to radiate the moment he’d entered the cave and remained dead ever since. After a one-minute delay it would again set up the invisible barrier that could not be passed without betrayal.
    He got out of the cave fast, the parcels heavy around him, and had made thirty yards into the trees when his finger-ring started its tingling. Slowly he moved on, feeling his way from time to time. The tingling gradually weakened with distance, faded out after eight hundred yards.
    From then on he consulted his luminous compass at least a hundred times. It led him back to the road at a point half a mile from the car, a pardonable margin of error in a twenty-mile journey two-thirds of which had been covered in darkness. At two hours after dawn he arrived with tired eyes and aching feet, clambered thankfully into the car, edged it unseen from the forest and purred along the highroad to the dump called home.
    The day of the appointment kicked off with a highly significant start. On the radio and video, through the public address system and in all the newspapers the government came out with the same announcement. Mowry heard the miserably muffled bellowings of a loudspeaker two streets away, the shrill cries of news vendors. He bought a paper, read it over his breakfast.
    “Under the War Emergency Powers Act, by order of the Jaimec Ministry of Defense: All organizations, societies, parties and other corporate bodies will be registered at the Central Bureau of Records, Pertane, not later than the twentieth of this month. Secretaries will state in full the objects and purposes of their respective organizations, societies, parties or other corporate bodies, give the address of habitual meeting places and provide a complete list of members.
    “Under the War Emergency Powers Act, by order of the Jaimec Ministry of Defense: After the twentieth of this month any organization, society, party or other corporate body will be deemed an illegal movement if not registered in accordance with the above order. Membership of an illegal movement or the giving of aid and comfort to any member of an illegal movement will constitute a treacherous offense punishable by death. ”
    So at last they’d made a countermove. Dirac Angestun Gesept must kneel at the confessional or at the strangling-post. By a simple, easy legislative trick they’d got D.A.G. where they wanted it, coming and going. It was a kill-or-cure tactic full of psychological menace and well calculated to scare all the weaklings right out of D.A.G.’s ranks.
    Weaklings are blabs.
    They talk. They betray their fellows, one by one, right through the chain of command to the top. They represent the rot that spreads through a system and brings it to total collapse. In theory, anyway.
    Mowry read it again, grinning to himself and enjoying every word. The government was going to have a tough time enticing informers from the D.A.G. Fat lot of talking can be done by a membership completely unaware of its status. There are no traitors in a phantom army.
    For instance, Butin Arhava was a fully paid up member in good standing— and didn’t know it. Nobody had bothered to tell him. The Kaitempi could trap him and draw out his bowels very, very slowly without gaining one worthwhile word about the Sirian Freedom Party.
    Around mid-day Mowry looked in at the Central Bureau of Records. Sure enough a line stretched from the door to the counter where a couple of disdainful officials were dishing out forms.