“That’s what?” Rachmael demanded. “You mean we give up? We just orbit Terra forever and die when we run out of oxygen?” Was this the fight that Lies, Incorporated put up when faced by Trails of Hoffman? He, alone, had held out better; now he was disgusted, astonished and completely perplexed, and he watched without comprehension as Dosker inspected his bank of bug chasers at his chest. At the moment the Lies, Incorporated pilot seemed interested only in whether or not monitors were picking them up—as well as controlling, externally, the trajectory of their ship.
Dosker said, “No monitors. Look, friend ben Applebaum.” He spoke swiftly. “They cut my transmission on aud by micro-relay to Matson’s satellite, but of course—” His dark eyes glinted with amusement. “I have on me a dead man’s throttle; if a continuous signal from me is interrupted it automatically sets off an alarm at Lies, Incorporated, at its main offices in New New York and also at Matson’s satellite. So by now they know something’s happened.” He lowered his voice, speaking almost to himself alone. “We’ll have to wait to find out if they can get to us before it doesn’t matter.”
The ship, without power, in orbit, glided silently.
And then, jarringly, something nosed it; Rachmael fell; sliding along the floor to the far wall he saw Dosker tumble, too, and knew that this had been the locking of another ship or similar device against them—knew and then all at once realized that at least it hadn’t detonated. At least it had not been a missile. Because if it had—
“They could,” Dosker said, as he got unsteadily to his feet, “have taken us out permanently.” By that he, too, meant a detonating weapon. He turned toward the tri-stage entrance hatch, used for null-atmosphere penetration.
The hatch, its circular seal-controls spun from impulses emanating outside, swung open.
Three men, two of them riffraff with lasers, with the decayed eyes of those who had been bought, hamstrung, lost long ago, came first. And then a clear-faced elegant man who would never be bought because he was a great buyer in the market of men; he was a dealer, not produce for sale.
It was Theodoric Ferry, chairman of the board of Trails of Hoffman Limited. Ahead of him his two employees swung a vacuum-cleaner-like mechanism; it searched, buzzing and nosing, probing until its operators were satisfied; they nodded to Theodoric, who then addressed Rachmael.
“May I seat myself?”
After a startled pause Rachmael said, “Sure.”
“Sorry, Mr. Ferry,” Dosker said. “The only seat is taken.” He sat at the control console in such a way that his small body had expanded at its base to fill both bucket seats; his face was hard and hating.
Shrugging, the large, white-haired man said, “All right.” He eyed Dosker. “You’re Lies’ top pilot, aren’t you? Al Dosker . . . yes, I recognize you from the clips we’ve made of you. On your way to the Omphalos. But you don’t need Applebaum here to tell you where she is; we can tell you.” Theodoric Ferry dug into his cloak, brought out a small packet which he tossed to Al Dosker. “The locus of the dry-docks where Applebaum has got her.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ferry,” Dosker said with sarcasm so great that his voice was almost forged into incomprehensibility.
Theodoric said, “Now look, Dosker; you sit quietly and mind your own business. While I talk to Applebaum. I’ve never met him personally, but I knew his very-much-missed late father.” He extended his hand.
Dosker said, “If you shake with him, Rachmael, he’ll deposit a virus contamination that’ll produce liver toxicity within your system inside an hour.”
Glowering, Theodoric said to the Negro, “I asked you to stay in your place. A pun.” He then removed the membrane-like, up-to-now invisible glove of plastic which covered his hand. So Dosker had been right, Rachmael realized as he watched Theodoric carefully deposit the glove in the ship’s incinerating disposal-chute. “Anyhow, ” Theodoric said, almost plaintively, “we could have squirted feral airborne bacteria around by now.”
“And taken out yourselves,” Dosker pointed out.
Theodoric shrugged. Then, speaking carefully to Rachmael, he said, “I respect what you’re trying to do. Don’t laugh.”
“I was not,” Rachmael said, “laughing. Just surprised.”
“You want to keep functioning, after the economic collapse; you want to keep your legitimate creditors from attaching the few— actually sole—asset that Applebaum Enterprise still possesses— good for you, Rachmael. I’d have done the same. And you impressed Matson; that’s why he’s supplying you his only decent pilot.”
With a mild grin, Dosker reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarillos; at once the two decayed-eyed men accompanying Theodoric caught his arm, expertly manipulated it—the harmless pack of cigarillos fell to the floor of the ship.
One after another, the cigarillos were cut open by Theodoric’s men, inspected . . . the fifth one turned out to be hard; it did not yield to the sharp-bladed pocket knife, and, a moment later, a more complex analytical device showed the cigarillo to be a homeostatic cephalotropic dart.
“Whose Alpha-wave pattern?” Theodoric Ferry asked Dosker.
“Yours,” Dosker said tonelessly. He watched without affect as the two decayed-eyed but very expert employees of THL crushed the dart under heel, rendering it useless.
“Then you expected me,” Ferry said, looking a little nonplussed.
Dosker said, “Mr. Ferry, I always expect you.”
Returning once more to Rachmael, Theodoric Ferry said, “I admire you and I want to terminate this conflict between you and THL. We have an inventory of your assets. Here.” He extended a sheet toward Rachmael; at that, Rachmael turned toward Dosker for advice.
“Take it,” Dosker said.
Accepting the sheet, Rachmael scanned it. The inventory was accurate; these did constitute the slight totality of the remaining assets of Applebaum Enterprise. And—glaringly, as Ferry had said, the only item of any authentic value was the Omphalos herself, the great liner plus the repair and maintenance facilities of Luna which now, hive-like, surrounded and checked her as she waited futilely . . . he returned the inventory to Ferry, who, seeing his expression, nodded.
“We agree, then,” Theodoric Ferry said. “Okay. Here’s what I propose, Applebaum. You can keep the Omphalos. I’ll instruct my legal staff to withdraw the writ to the UN courts demanding that the Omphalos be placed under a state of attachment.”
Dosker, startled, grunted; Rachmael stared at Ferry.
“What,” Rachmael said, then, “in return?”
“This. That the Omphalos never leave the Sol system. You can very readily develop a profitable operation transporting passengers and cargo between the nine planets and to Luna. Despite the fact—”
“Despite the fact,” Rachmael said, “that the Omphalos was built as an inter-stellar carrier, not inter-plan. It’s like using—”
“It’s that,” Ferry said, “or lose the Omphalos to us.”
“So Rachmael agrees”—Dosker spoke up—“not to take the Omphalos to Fomalhaut. The written agreement won’t mention any one particular star system, but it’s not Prox and not Alpha. Right, Ferry?”
After a pause Theodoric Ferry said, “Take it or leave it.”
Rachmael said, “Why, Mr. Ferry? What’s wrong at Whale’s Mouth? This deal—it proves I’m right.” That was obvious; he saw it, Dosker saw it—and Ferry must have known that in making it he was ratifying their intimations. Limit the Omphalos to the nine planets of the Sol system? And yet—the corporation Applebaum Enterprise, as Ferry said, would continue; it would live on as a legal, economic entity. And Ferry would see that the UN turned a certain amount, an acceptable quantity, of commerce its way. Rachmael would wave goodbye to Lies, Incorporated, to first this small dark superior space pilot, and then, by extension, to Freya Holm, to Matson Glazer-Holliday, cut in effect himself off from the sole power which had chosen to back him.
“Go ahead,” Dosker said. “Accept the idea. After all, the deep-sleep components w
on’t arrive, but it won’t matter, because you’re not going into ’tween system space anyhow.” He looked tired.
Theodoric Ferry said, “Your father, Rachmael; Maury would have done anything to keep the Omphalos. You know in two days we’ll have her—and once we do, there’s no chance you’ll ever get her back. Think about it.”
“I—know right now,” Rachmael said. Lord, if he and Dosker had managed to get the Omphalos out tonight, lost her in space where THL couldn’t find her . . . and yet that was already over; it had ended when the field had overcome the enormous futile thrust of the twin engines of Dosker’s Lies, Incorporated ship: Trails of Hoffman had stepped in too soon. In time.
All along, Theodoric Ferry had pre-thought them; it was not a moral issue: it was a pragmatic one.
“I have legal forms drawn up,” Ferry said. “If you’ll come with me.” He nodded toward the hatch. “The law requires three witnesses. On the part of THL, we have those witnesses.” He smiled, because it was over and he knew it. Turning, he walked leisurely toward the hatch. The two decayed-eyed employees followed, both men relaxed . . . they passed into the open circularity of the hatch—
And then convulsed throughout, from scalp to foot, internally destroyed; as Rachmael, shocked and terrified, watched, he saw their neurological, musculature systems give out; he saw them, both men penetrated entirely so that each became, horrifying him, flopping, quivering, malfunctioning—more than malfunctioning: each unit of their bodies fought with all other portions, so that the two heaps on the floor became warring subsyndromes within themselves, as muscle strained against muscle, visceral apparatus against diaphragmatic strength, auricular and ventricular fibrillation; both men, unable to breathe, deprived even of blood-circulation, staring, fighting within their bodies which were no longer true bodies . . .
Rachmael looked away.
“Cholinesterase-destroying gas,” Dosker said, behind him, and at that instant Rachmael became aware of the tube pressed to his own neck, a medical artifact which had injected into his blood stream its freight of atropine, the antidote to the vicious nerve gas of the notorious FMC Corporation, the original contractors for this, the most destructive of all anti-personnel weapons of the previous war.
“Thanks,” Rachmael said to Dosker, as he saw, now, the hatch swing shut; the Trails of Hoffman satellite, with its inert field, was being detached—within it persons who were not THL employees pried it loose from Dosker’s flapple.
The dead man’s throttle signaling device—or rather null-signaling device—had done its job; Lies, Incorporated experts had arrived and at this moment were systematically dismantling the THL equipment.
Philosophically, Theodoric Ferry stood with his hands in the pockets of his cloak, saying nothing, not even noticing the spasms of his two employees on the floor near him, as if, by deteriorating in response to the gas, they had somehow proved unworthy.
“It was nice,” Rachmael managed to say to Dosker, as the hatch once more swung open, this time admitting several employees of Lies Incorporated, “that your co-workers administered the atropine to Ferry as well as to me.” Generally, in this business, no one was spared.
Dosker, studying Ferry, said, “He was given no atropine.”
Reaching, he withdrew the empty tube with its injecting needle from his own neck, then the counterpart item from Rachmael’s. “How come, Ferry?” Dosker said.
There was, from Ferry, no answer.
“Impossible,” Dosker said. “Every living organism is—” Suddenly he grabbed Ferry’s arm; grunting, he swung brusquely the arm back, against its normal span—and yanked.
Theodoric Ferry’s arm, at the shoulder-joint, came off. Revealing trailing conduits and minned components, those of the shoulder still functioning, those of the arm, deprived of power, now inert.
“A sim,” Dosker said. Seeing that Rachmael did not comprehend he said, “A simulacrum of Ferry that of course has no neurological system. So Ferry was never here.” He tossed the arm away. “Naturally; why should a man of his stature risk himself? He’s probably sitting in his demesne satellite orbiting Mars, viewing this through the sense-extensors of the sim.” To the one-armed Ferry-construct he said harshly, “ Are we in genuine contact with you, Ferry, through this? Or is it on homeo? I’m just curious.”
The mouth of the Ferry simulacrum opened and it said, “I hear you, Dosker. Would you, as an act of humanitarian kindness, administer atropine to my two THL employees?”
“It’s being done,” Dosker said. He walked over to Rachmael, then. “Well, our humble ship, on acute examination, seems never to have been graced by the presence of the chairman of the board of THL.” He grinned shakily. “I feel cheated.”
But the offer made by Ferry via the simulacrum, Rachmael realized. That had been genuine.
Dosker said, “Let’s go to Luna, now. As your advisor I’m telling you—” He put his hand, gripped harshly, on Rachmael’s wrist. “Wake up. Those two gnugs will be all right, once the atropine is administered; they won’t be killed and we’ll release them in their THL vehicle—minus its field, of course. You and I will go on to Luna, to the Omphalos, as if nothing happened. Or if you won’t I’ll use the map the sim gave me; I’m taking the Omphalos out into ’tween space where THL can’t tail her, even if you don’t want me to.”
“But,” Rachmael said woodenly, “something did happen. An offer was made.”
“That offer,” Dosker said, “proves that THL is willing to sacrifice a great deal to keep you from your eighteen-year trip to Fomalhaut for a look at Whale’s Mouth. And—” He eyed Rachmael. “Yet that makes you less interested in getting the Omphalos out into uncharted space between planets where Ferry’s trackers can’t—”
I could save the Omphalos, Rachmael thought. But the man beside him was correct; this meant of course that he had to go on: Ferry had removed the block, had proved the need of the eighteen-year flight.
“But the deep-sleep components,” he said.
“Just get me to her,” Dosker said quietly, patiently. “Okay, Rachmael ben Applebaum? Will you do that?” The controlled and very professional voice penetrated; Rachmael nodded. “I want the locus from you, not from the chart that sim gave me; I’ve decided I’m not touching that. I’m waiting for you, Rachmael, for you to decide.”
“Yes,” Rachmael said, then, and walked stiffly to the ship’s 3-D Lunar map with its trailing arm; he seated himself and began to fix the locus for the hard-eyed, dark, Lies, Incorporated ultra-experienced pilot.
FIVE
At the Fox’s Lair, the minute French restaurant in downtown San Diego, the maitre d’ glanced at the name which Rachmael ben Applebaum had jotted down on the sheet with its fancy, undulating, pseudo-living letterhead and said, “Yes. Mr. Applebaum. It is—” He examined his wristwatch. “Now eight o’clock.” A line of well-cloaked people waited; it was always this way on crowded Terra: all restaurants, even the bad ones, were overfilled each night from five o’clock on, and this was hardly a mediocre restaurant, let alone an outright bad one. “Genet,” the maitre d’ called to a waitress wearing the lace stockings and partial jacket-vest combination now popular; it left one breast, the right, exposed, and its nipple was elegantly capped by a Swiss ornament with many minned parts; the ornament, shaped like a large gold pencil eraser, played semi-classical music and lit up in a series of attractive shifting light-patterns which focused on the floor ahead of her, lighting her way so that she could pass among the closely placed tiny tables of the restaurant.
“Yes, Gaspar,” the girl said, with a toss of her blonde, high-piled hair.
“Escort Mr. Applebaum to table twenty-two,” the maitre d’ told her, and ignored, with stoic, glacial indifference, the outrage among those customers lined up wearily ahead of Rachmael.
“I don’t want to—” Rachmael began, but the maitre d’ cut him off.
“All arranged. She is waiting at twenty-two.” And, in the maitre d’s voice, everything was conveyed: full knowle
dge of an intricate erotic relationship which—alas—did not, at least as yet, exist.
Rachmael followed Genet, with her light-emanating useful Swiss-made nipple-assist, through the darkness, the noise of people eating in jammed proximity, bolting their meals with the weight of guilt hunching them, getting done and aside so that those waiting could be served before the Fox’s Lair, at two a.m., closed its kitchens . . . we are really pressed tight to one another, he thought, and then, all at once, Genet halted, turned; the nipple cap now radiated a soft, delightful and warm pale red aura which revealed, seated at table twenty-two, Freya Holm.
Seating himself opposite her, Rachmael said, “You don’t light up.”
“I could. And play the Blue Danube simultaneously.” She smiled; in the darkness—the waitress had gone on, now—the dark-haired girl’s eyes glowed. Before her rested a split of Buena Vista chablis, vintage 2002, one of the great, rare treats of the restaurant, and exceeding expensive; Rachmael wondered who would pick up the tab for this twelve-year-old California wine; lord knew he would have liked to, but—he reflexively touched his wallet. Freya noticed.
“Don’t worry. Matson Glazer-Holliday owns this restaurant. There will be a tab for a mere six poscreds. For one peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich.” She laughed, her dark eyes dancing in the reflected light from barely illuminated overhead Japanese lanterns. “Does this place intimidate you?” she asked him, then.
“No. I’m just generally tense.” For six days now the Omphalos had been lost—and even to him. Perhaps even to Matson. It could well be—necessary for security purposes—that only Al Dosker, at the multi-stage console of the ship’s controls, knew where she had gone. For Rachmael, however, it had been psychologically devastating to watch the Omphalos blast out into the limitless darkness: Ferry had been right—the Omphalos had been the sine qua non of Applebaum Enterprise; without her nothing remained.