Horst had found, via Dr. von Einem’s Telpor teleportation construct, a habitable planet in a star system too far from Sol to be reached by the quondam drayage enterprise of Maury Applebaum. Whale’s Mouth, and the Telpor mechanisms at Trails of Hoffman’s retail outlets, were the answer.
To all appearances it was duck soup, feathers, scut included. But—
“See?” Matson said to Freya. “Here’s the written transcript of Horst Bertold’s speech before he was elected and before von Einem showed up with the Telpor gadget. The promise was made before teleportation to the Fomalhaut system was technologically possible— in fact, before the existence of Fomalhaut IX was even known to unmanned elderly relay-monitors.”
“So?”
Matson said grimly, “So our UN Secretary General had a mandate before he had a solution. And to the German mind that means one thing and one thing only. The cat and rat farm solution.” Or, as he now suspected, the dog food factory solution.
It had been suggested, ironically, in imitation of Swift by a fiction writer of the 1950s, that the “Negro Question” in the US be solved by the building of giant factories which made Negroes into canned dog food. Satire, of course, like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, that the problem of starvation among the Irish be solved by the eating of the children . . . Swift himself lamenting, as a final irony, that he had no children of his own to offer to the market for consumption. Grisly. But—
This all pointed to the seriousness—not merely of the problem of overpopulation and insufficient food production—but to the insane, schizoid solutions seriously being considered. The brief World War Three—never officially called that; called instead a Pacifying Action, just as the Korean War had been a “Police Action”— had taken care of a few millions of people, but—not quite enough. As a solution it had worked to a partial extent; and was, in many influential quarters, viewed exactly as that; as a partial solution. Not as a catastrophe but as a half-answer.
And Horst Bertold had promised the balance of the answer.
Whale’s Mouth was it.
“So in my opinion,” Matson murmured, to himself mostly, “I’ve always been suspicious of Whale’s Mouth. If I hadn’t read Swift and C. Wright Mills and the Herman Kahn Report for Rand Corporation . . .” He glanced at Freya. “There have,” he said, “always been people who would solve the problem that way.” And I think, he thought, as he listened to the aud tape of the crowd noises, a tape which pretended to consist of a transcript from the launching, at Whale’s Mouth, of the ritualistic, celebration-inspired time capsule back through hyper-space—or in some such ultra-high-velocity fashion—to Terra, that we have those people and that solution with us again.
We have, in other words, UN Secretary General Horst Bertold and Trails of Hoffman Limited and its economic multi-pseudopodia empire. And dear Dr. Sepp von Einem and his many Telpor outlets, his curiously one way teleporting machine.
“That land,” Matson murmured, vaguely quoting, lord knew who, what sage of the past, “which all of us must visit one day . . . that land beyond the grave. But no one had returned to report on’t. And until they do—”
Freya said perceptively, “Until they do, you’re going to stay suspicious. Of the whole Newcolonizedland settlement. Aud and vid signals are not good enough to convince you—because you know how easily they can be faked.” She gestured at the deck running the tape at this very moment.
“A client,” Matson corrected her. “Who on a nonverbal level, what our Reich friends call thinking with the blood, suspects that if he takes his one remaining inter-stellar worthy flagship, the—” What was it called? “The Navel,” he said. “The Omphalos; that’s what that lofty Greek word means, by the way. Takes the Navel direct to Fomalhaut, that after eighteen years of weary deep-sleep which is not quite sleep, more a hypnagogic, restless tossing and turning at low temp, slowed-down metabolism, he will arrive at Whale’s Mouth, and oddly it will not be beer and skittles. It will not be happy conapt dwellers, smiling children in autonomic schools, tame, exotic, native life forms. But—”
But just what would he find?
If, as he suspected, the aud and vid tracks passing from Whale’s Mouth to Terra via von Einem’s Telpor mechanisms were covers— what reality lay beneath?
He simply could not guess, not when forty million people were involved. The dog food factory? Are, god forbid, those forty million men, women and children dead? Is it a bone-yard, with no one there, no one even to extract the gold from their teeth—because now we use stainless steel?
He did not know, but—someone knew. Perhaps entire New Whole Germany, which, having cornered the lion’s share of power in the UN, hence ruled throughout the nine planets of the Sol system; perhaps as a totality it, on a subrational, instinctive level, knew. As, in the 1940s, it had intuited the existence of the gas chambers beyond the cages of twittering birds and those high walls that kept out all sight and sound . . . and except for that oddly acrid smoke from chimneys all day long—
“They know,” Matson said aloud. Horst Bertold knew, and so did Theodoric Ferry, the owner of THL, and so did doddering but still crafty old Dr. von Einem. And the one hundred and thirty-five million inhabitants of Neues Einige Deutschland, to some degree; not verbally—you couldn’t put an expert psych rep of Lies, Incorporated in a small room with a Munich cobbler, run a few routine drug-injections, make the standard quasi-Psionic transcripts, EEGs of his para-psychological reactions, and learn, know, the literal, exact truth.
The whole matter was, damn it, still obscured. And this time it was not cages of twittering birds or shower baths but something else—something, however, equally effective. Trails of Hoffman published 3-D, multi-color, brilliantly artistic, exciting brochures displaying the ecstatic life beyond the Telpor nexus; the TV ran ceaseless, drive-you-mad ads all day and night, of the underpopulated veldt landscape of Whale’s Mouth, the balmy climate (via olfactory track), the warm the-answer-is-yes two-moon-filled nights . . . it was a land of romance, freedom, experimentation, kibbutzim without the desert: cooperative living where oranges grew naturally, and as large as grapefruits, which themselves resembled melons or the breasts of the women there. But.
Matson decided carefully, “I am sending a veteran field rep across, via normal Telpor, posing as an unmarried businessman who hopes to open a watch repair retail shop at Whale’s Mouth. He will have grafted subderm a high-gain transmitter; it will—”
“I know,” Freya said patiently; this was evening and she obviously wished for a relaxation of the grim reality of their mutual business. “It will regularly release a signal at ultra-high-frequency on a nonused band, which will ultimately be picked up here. But that’ll take weeks.”
“Okay.” He had it now. The Lies, Incorporated field rep would send back a letter, via Telpor, in the customary manner encoded. It was that simple. If the letter arrived: fine. If not—
“You will wait,” Freya said, “and wait. And no encoded letter will come. And then you will really begin to think that our client, Mr. ben Applebaum, has tripped over something ominous and huge in the long darkness which is our collective life. And then what will you do? Go across yourself?”
“Then I’m sending you,” Matson said. “As the field rep there.”
“No,” she said, instantly.
“So Whale’s Mouth frightens you. Despite all the glossy, expensive literature available free.”
“I know Rachmael is right. I knew it when he walked in the door; I knew it from your memo. I’m not going; that’s that.” She faced her employer-paramour calmly.
“Then I’ll draw at random from the field-personnel pool.” He had not been serious; why should he offer his mistress as a pawn in this? But he had proved what he wished to prove: their joint fears were not merely intellectual. At this point in their thinking neither Freya nor he would risk the crossing via Telpor to Whale’s Mouth, as thousands of guileless citizens of Terra, lugging their belongings and with innocent high hopes, did daily.
I hate, he thought, to turn anyone into the goat. But—
“Pete Burnside. Rep in Detroit. We’ll tell him we wish to set up a Lies Incorporated branch at Whale’s Mouth under a cover name. Hardware store. Or TV fixit shop. Get his folio; see what talents he has.” We’ll make one of our own people, Matson thought, the victim—and it hurt, made him sick. And yet it should have been done months ago.
But it had taken bankrupt Rachmael ben Applebaum to goose them into acting, he realized. A man pursued by those monster creditor balloons that bellow all your personal defects and secrets. A man willing to undergo a thirty-six-year trip to prove that something is foul in the land of milk and protein on the far side of those Telpor gates through which, on receipt of five poscreds, any adult Terran can avail himself for the purpose of—
God knew.
God—and the German hierarchy dominating the UN plus THL; he had no illusions about that: they did not need to analyze the crowd-noise track of the time capsule ceremony at Whale’s Mouth to know.
As he had. And his job was investigations; he was, he realized with spurting, burgeoning horror, possibly the only individual on Terra really in a position to push through and obtain an authentic glimpse of this.
Short of eighteen years of space flight . . . a time-period which would allow infinite millions, even a billion if the extrapolations were correct, to pass by way of Telpor constructs on that—to him— terrifying one-way trip to the colony world.
If you are wise, Matson said to himself grimly, you never take one-way trips. Anywhere. Even to Boise, Idaho . . . even across the street. Be certain, when you start, that you can scramble back.
FOUR
At one in the morning, Rachmael ben Applebaum was yanked from his sleep—this was usual, because the assorted creditor-mechanisms had been getting to him on a round-the-clock basis, now. However, this time it was no robot raptor-like creditor mechanism. This was a man. Dark, a Negro; small and shrewd-looking. Standing at Rachmael’s door with i.d. papers extended.
“From Listening Instructional Educational Services,” the Negro said. He added, “I hold a Class-A inter-plan vehicle pilot-license.”
That woke Rachmael. “You’re going to take the Omphalos off Luna?”
“If I can find her.” The dark, small man smiled briefly. “May I come in? I’d like you to accompany me to your maintenance yard on Luna so there’s no mistake: I know your employees there are armed; otherwise—” He followed Rachmael into the conapt living room— the sole room, in fact: living-conditions on Terra being what they were. “Otherwise Trails of Hoffman would be ferrying equipment to their domes on Mars with the Omphalos as of last month—right?”
“Right,” Rachmael said as he blearily dressed.
“My name’s Al Dosker. And I did you a small side-favor, Mr. ben Applebaum. I took out a creditor-construct waiting in the hall.” He displayed, then, a side arm. “I suppose, if it got into litigation, it’d be called ‘property destruct.’ Anyhow, when you and I leave, no THL device is going to monitor our path.” He added, half to himself, “That I could detect, anyhow.” At his chest he patted a variety of bug chasers; minned electronic instruments that recorded the presence of vid and aud receptors in the vicinity.
Shortly the two men were on their way to the roof field— And then Rachmael was back at the settlement.
“It’s my food,” Fred said.
Oh God, Rachmael thought. Here I am again.
“The thing is,” Fred said amiably, as he dragged the turkey leg across the weed-pocked ground, “that a SubInfo computer screwed up. Subliminal information, right? They’re repairing it, but meanwhile it’s transmitted a lot to the right hemisphere hebesphere—I forget.” He gave up trying to drag the turkey leg and extended his hand to Rachmael. “Name’s Stine,” he said. “Lewis Stine. I’ve damn near got it fixed.”
Numbly, Rachmael shook hands. He wondered what had become of Dosker.
“Want to know how I’m fixing it?” Fred said.
“I’d rather know—”
“With this,” Fred said, indicating the turkey leg. “It’s a highly specialized piece of technogonically sophisticated—”
“You’re just a goddamn rat,” Rachmael said, “and you’ve got about four words scrambled up together. I’m living in a rat heap with other rats.”
“No, I’m a highly skilled computer repairman,” Fred—or Lewis Stine—said, looking nettled. “Or am I?” He contemplated the turkey leg. “You’re right. It doesn’t look like something you’d fix a computer with. Maybe I should lay back for a while and think this over. The problem is, I intended to eat that turkey leg. If that’s what it is. See, while I’m working on the computer—which is what I’m doing right now, although you’d never know it—my thoughts are being transmitted to you because I haven’t been able to shut the computer down. I mean I can shut it down, but that’s contravindicated.”
“Indicated,” Rachmael corrected him.
“Yeah; contraindicated. Thank you.” Fred eyed him. “You a computer repairman, too?”
“God no,” Rachmael said.
“Rats are highly telepathic,” Fred said. “This was proved back in 1978 by the Russians. They took these rats, see, and shut them inside a lead enclosure which screened out all thoughts. Then they hooked up the rats to an encephalograph. And then—” Fred grinned. “Get this. They killed the rats. You know what the encephalogram showed?”
“Flat line,” Rachmael said.
“Right. And then they quickly brought in a psychic. The psychic thought at the dead rats, and the encephalograph showed brain-wave activity. See? Isn’t that clever?”
“Fascist Russians,” Rachmael said hotly. He was not amused.
“You have to admit it’s a clever way to prove that rats are telepathic,” Fred said.
“No,” Rachmael said, “it proves that psychics are telepathic. It just showed—”
“I’ll mash in your head with this crescent wrench,” Fred said, grabbing up the turkey leg as best he could. “All the great scientific discoveries were made by rats—are made by rats.”
“Made by the use of rats,” Rachmael corrected. He could see that Fred would never get the turkey leg off the ground.
“Rats keep the human population down,” Fred said, abandoning his attempts to pick up the turkey leg. “Abba explained that to us before he died. He also explained where we go when we die.”
“I know,” Rachmael said. “I was there. I heard him.”
The roof field faded back in, replacing the weed-pocked settlement; Fred and his turkey leg vanished.
Dosker had parked his taxi-marked flapple off to one side. “Get in,” Dosker said to him.
“Have I been here all this time?” Rachmael said.
Glancing at him, Dosker said, “I don’t get you.”
“Never mind,” Rachmael said.
How ordinary the flapple looked. But as it arced into the night sky Rachmael blinked at its velocity; he had to accept the obvious: this was not the usual thrust which now impelled them. They had hit 3.5 Machs within nanoseconds.
As Dosker piloted the flapple he reached into the glove compartment, brought out a turkey leg and began gnawing on it. Rachmael gazed at him fixedly, stricken. “What’s the matter?” Dosker said. “Haven’t you ever seen a turkey leg before?”
“It’s fine,” Rachmael said. “Fine looking turkey leg. Damn fine.” He lapsed into silence.
A computer foul-up. But being repaired. To have to be clued in by a rat . . . another rat, he realized. And the tender and wise Abba had passed on to his celestial reward. But he would be reborn; always, Abba was reborn. Every year or so. He was their—eternal leader.
“You’ll direct me,” Dosker was saying as he gnawed on the turkey leg. “Since even we at Lies, Incorporated don’t know where you’ve got the Omphalos. You did a good job of berthing her, or perhaps we’re beginning to slip . . . or both.”
“Okay.” At the 3-D Lunar map he took hold of the locati
ng trailing-arm, linked the pivot in position, then swept out a route until the terminus of the arm touched the recessed locus where his technicians worked busily at . . .
I wish he’d stop gnawing on that turkey leg, Rachmael said to himself.
. . . at the Omphalos. Worked, while waiting for parts which would never come.
“We’re off course,” Dosker said abruptly. Speaking not to Rachmael but into his console mike. Shit; we’ve been phooed.”
Phooed—a trade term. Rachmael felt fear, because the word was a condensation of PU—picked up. Picked up by a field, and this one was moving Dosker’s small flapple out of its trajectory. At once Dosker fired the huge Whetstone-Milton rockets, tried to reassert with their enormous strength homeo-course . . . but the field continued to tug, even against the millions of pounds of thrust of the twin engines, as both fired in unison, acting as retro-jets against the field exerting its presence unseen. But, on a variety of console instruments, registering.
Rachmael, after an interval of strained, wordless silence, said to Dosker, “Where’s it taking us?”
“From a Three to L course,” Dosker said laconically. He set down his turkey leg, now.
“Not to Luna, then.” They would not, the two of them, reach the Omphalos’ place of berth; that was now clear. But—
Where instead?
“We’re in T-orb,” Dosker said. Orbit around the Earth, despite the push of the two W-M engines. Dosker, now, reluctantly, in a motion of admitted defeat, cut them. Fuel for them had no doubt dropped to a dangerously low level: if the field let go they would orbit anyhow, orbit without the possibility of being capable of creating a trajectory that would lead to an ultimate landing either on Luna or on Terra. “They’ve got us,” Dosker said, then, half to Rachmael and half into the mike that projected from the ship’s console. He recited a series of encoded instructions into the mike, listened, then cursed, said to Rachmael, “We’re cut off aud and vid, all signal-contact; I’m not getting through to Matson. So that’s it.”