Presently he said tightly, “Yes. We could do that. They may have THL psychologists armed and ready for individuals. But not for two thousand trained police. We’d have control in half an hour— probably. Unless, unknown to us, Horst Bertold has been sending troops across.” And, he pondered, why should he? All they face— up to now—is bewildered citizens, expatriates who want jobs, homes, new roots . . . in a world they can’t leave.
“And remember this, too,” Freya said. She lifted the strap of her nightgown once more, then, covering her faintly freckled shoulder. “The receiving portion of the teleportation rig has to be spacially installed; every one of those over there had to be sent originally by inter-stellar hyper-see ship, and that took years. So you can stop the UN and Bertold just by rendering the receiving stations of the Telpors inoperative—if they suspect.”
“And if I can move quickly enough.”
“But you,” she said calmly, “can. Taking your best men, with their equipment . . . unless—” She paused, licked her lip, as if puzzling out a purely academic problem.
Maddened, he said, “Unless what, goddamn it?”
“They may identify your reps as they cross. And you. They may be ready. I can see it now.” She laughed merrily. “You pay your poscreds, smile at the nice THL bald-headed, gargoyle-like New Whole Germany technicians who run those Telpors, you stand there while they subject your body to the field of the equipment . . . keep standing there innocently, fade away, reappear twenty-four light-years away at Whale’s Mouth . . . and are lasered dead before you’re even fully formed. It takes fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes, Mat, you would be helpless, half materialized both here and there. And all your field reps. And all their gear.”
He glared at her.
“Thus,” she said, “goes hubris.”
“What’s that?”
“The Greek word for ‘pride.’ For trying to rise above the station the gods have allocated you. Maybe the gods don’t want you to seize control of Whale’s Mouth, Matty darling. Maybe the gods don’t want you to overreach yourself.”
“Hell,” he said, “as long as I have to go across anyhow—”
“Sure; then why not take control? Push jovial, insipid Omar Jones aside? After all . . .” She stubbed out her cigarillo. “You’d be doomed to stay there anyhow; why live the ordinary life with the ordinary hoi polloi? Here, you’re strong . . . but Horst Bertold and the UN, with Trails of Hoffman as their economic support, are stronger. Over there—” She shrugged, as if made weary by human aspirations—or human vanity. Over there it was simply a different situation.
No one, he realized, could compete if he managed to move, in one sudden swoop, his entire entourage and weaponry across . . . using, ironically, von Einem’s own official retail stations themselves. He grinned at that; it amused him to think that THL would personally see to it that he and his veteran reps reached Newcolonizedland.
“And then in 2032,” Freya said, “when Rachmael ben Applebaum, probably an unwashed, bearded, mumbling hebephrenic schizophrenic by then, shows up in his great and good ship the Omphalos, he’ll discover it’s a hell, there, exactly as he anticipated . . . but it’ll be you who’ll be running it. And I’ll bet that will surprise him more than a little.”
Nettled, he said, “I can’t think about it any more. I’m going back to sleep.” He removed his robe and slippers, got wearily into the bed, aware of his years; he felt old. Wasn’t he too decrepit for something like this? Not getting into bed; lord, he wasn’t too old to clamber in beside Freya Holm, not yet, anyhow. But too old for what Freya had proposed—what she had correctly, possibly even telepathically, ascertained from his unconscious mind. Yes, it was actually true.
He had, from Rachmael’s initial vidphone call, at the back levels of his cognition-processes, pondered this, from the very beginning.
And this was his reason for assisting—or rather trying to assist— the morose, creditor-balloon-hounded Rachmael ben Applebaum.
He thought, according to published info there is a home army, so-called, at Whale’s Mouth, of three hundred volunteer citizens. For use as a sort of national guard in case of a riot. Three hundred! And none of them professionals, with experience. It was a pastoral land, the ads explained. A G. of E. lacking a snake; since there was a super-abundance of everything for everyone, what was an army needed for? What have-not existed to envy what have? And what reason to try, by force, to seize his holdings?
I’ll tell you, Matson Glazer-Holliday thought. The have-nots are here on this side. Myself and those who work for me; we’re gradually, over the years, being ground down and overpowered by the true titans, by the UN and THL and—
The haves are across twenty-four light-years in the Fomalhaut system, at its ninth planet.
Mr. ben Applebaum, he thought to himself as he lay supine, drew, from reflex, Freya Holm against him, you will have quite a surprise when you get to Whale’s Mouth.
It was a pity that he himself—and he intuited this with certitude—would not be alive at that date.
As to why not, however, his near-Psionic intuition told him nothing.
Beside him Freya moaned in her half-sleep, settled close to him, relaxed.
He, however, lay awake, staring into the nothingness. Deep in a new, hard thought. The like of which he had never experienced before.
SEVEN
The monitoring and recording-transmitting satellite, Prince Albert B-y, creaked out its first video signal, a transcript of the first video telescopic records which it had taken of the surface beneath it in over a decade. Portions of the long-inert network of minned parts failed; backup systems, however, took over, and some of these failed, too. But the signal, directed toward the Sol system twenty-four light-years away, was sent out.
And, on the surface of Fomalhaut IX, an eye winked. And from it a ground-to-air missile rose and in a period so slight that only the finest measuring-devices could have detected a lapse-period at all, arrived at its target, the groaning carrot-shaped monitoring satellite which had, inoperative, silently existed—and hence harmlessly. Up to now.
The warhead of the missile detonated. And the Prince Albert B-y ceased to exist, soundlessly, because at its altitude there was no atmosphere to transmit the event in the dimension of noise.
And, at the same time on the surface below, a powerful transmitter accepted a tape run at enormous velocity; the signal, amplified by a row of cold, superbly built surgegates, reached transmission level and was released; oddly, its frequency coincided with that of the signal just emitted by the now nonexistent satellite.
What would radiate from the two separate transmitters would blend in a cacaphony of meaningless garble. Satisfied, the technicians operating the ground transmitter switched to more customary channels—and tasks.
The deliberately deranged combined signal sped across space toward the Sol system, beamed, in its mad confusion, at a planet which, when it received this, would possess nothing but a catfight of noise.
And the satellite, reduced to its molecular level by the warhead, would emit no more signals; its life was over.
The event, the first transmission by the satellite up into the final scramble by the far more powerful surface transmitter, had consumed five minutes, including the flight—and demolition—of the missile: the missile and its priceless, elaborate, never-to-be-duplicated target.
—A target which, certain circles had long ago agreed in formal session, could be readily sacrificed, were the need to arise.
That need had arisen.
And the satellite was duly gone.
At the site of the missile-launching a helmeted soldier leisurely fitted a second g.-to-a. missile into the barn, attached both its anode and cathode terminals, made sure that the activating board was relocked—by the same key through which he had obtained official entry—and then he, too, returned to his customary chores.
Time lapse: perhaps six minutes in all.
And the planet, Fomalhaut IX, revolved on.
Deep in thought as she sat in the comfortable leather, padded seat of the luxury taxi flapple, Freya Holm was startled by the sudden mechanical voice of the vehicle’s articulation-circuit. “Sir or madam, I request your pardon, but a deterioration of my meta-battery forces me without choice to land for a quick-charge without delay. Please give me oral permission as an acknowledgment of your willingness otherwise we will glide to destruct.”
Looking down she saw the high-rise spires of New New York, the ring of city outside the inner, old kremlin of New York itself. Late for work, she said to herself, damn it. But—the flapple was correct; if its meta-battery, its sole power supply, were failing, to get out of the sky and on the surface at a repair station was mandatory; a long powerless glide would mean death in the form of collision with one of the tall commercial buildings below. “Yes,” she agreed, resignedly, and groaned. And today was the day.
“Thank you, sir or madam.” With sputtering power the flapple spiraled down until at last, under adequate control, it coasted to a rather rough but at least not dangerous halt at one of New New York’s infinite flapple service stations.
A moment later uniformed service station men swarmed over the parked flapple, searching for—as one explained courteously to her—for the short which had depleted the meta-battery, good normally, the attendant told her cheerfully, for twenty years.
Opening the flapple door the attendant said, “May I check under the passenger’s console, please? The wiring there; those circuits take a lot of hard use—the insulation may be rubbed off.” He, a Negro, seemed to her pleasant and alert and without hesitation she moved to the far side of the cab.
The Negro attendant slid in, closed, then, the flapple door. “Moon and cow,” he said, the current—and highly temporary—ident-code phrase of members of the police organization Lies, Incorporated.
Taken by surprise Freya murmured, “Jack Horner. Who are you? I never ran into you before.” He did not look like a field rep to her.
“A ’tween space pilot. I’m Al Dosker; I know you—you’re Freya Holm.” He was not smiling now; he was quiet, serious, and, as he sat beside her, perfunctorily running his fingers over the wiring of the passenger’s control console he said, half chantingly, “I have no time, Freya, for small talk; I have five minutes at the most; I know where the short is because I sent this particular flapple taxi to pick you up. See?”
“I see,” she said, and, within her mouth, bit on a false tooth; the tooth split and she tasted the bitter out-layer of a plastic pill: a container of Prussic acid, enough to kill her if this man proved to be from their antagonists. And, at her wrist, she wound her watch— actually winding a low-velocity homeostatic, cyanide-tipped dart which she would control by the “watch” controls; it could either take out this man or, if others showed up, herself, in case of a failure of the oral poison. In any case she sat back rigid, waiting.
“You,” the Negro said, “are Matson’s mistress; you have access to him at any time; this I know—this is why I’ve approached you. Tonight, at six p.m. New New York time, Matson Glazer-Holliday will arrive at an outlet of Trails of Hoffman; carrying two heavy suitcases he will request permission to emigrate. He will pay his six poscreds, or seven, if his luggage is overweight, and then be teleported to Whale’s Mouth. And at the same time, at every Telpor outlet throughout Terra, a total aggregate of roughly two thousand of his toughest veteran field reps will do the same.”
She said nothing; she stared straight ahead. Within her purse an aud recorder captured all this, but heaven only knew for what.
The Negro said, “On the far side he, by deploying his veterans and the wep-equipment which they will assemble from components carried in their suitcases as ‘personal articles,’ will attempt a coup. Will halt emigration, make at once inoperative the Telpors, toss President Omar Jones—”
“So?” she said. “If I know this, why tell me?”
“Because,” Dosker said, “I am going to Horst Bertold two hours before six. I believe that is usually considered four o’clock.” His voice was icy, harsh. “I am an employee of Lies, Incorporated but I did not join the organization to participate in a power play like this. On Terra, Matson G.-H. stands about where he ought to be: third in the pecking order. On Whale’s Mouth—”
“And you want me,” Freya said, “to do exactly what between now and four o’clock? Seven hours.”
“Inform Matson that when he and the two thousand LI field reps arrive at the retail outlets of THL they will not be teleported but will be arrested and undoubtedly painlessly murdered. In the German manner.”
“This,” she said, “is what you want? Matson dead and them, those—” She gestured, gripping, clawing the air. “Bertold and Ferry and von Einem to run the corporate Terran–Whale’s Mouth political-economic entity with no one to—”
“I don’t want him to try.”
“Listen,” Freya said bitingly. “The coup that Matson expects to carry out at Whale’s Mouth is based on his assumption that a home army of three hundred ignorant volunteers exists over there. I don’t think you have to worry; the problem is that Mat actually believes the lies he sees on TV; he’s actually incredibly primitive and naive. Do you think it’s a Promised Land over there, with a tiny volunteer army, waiting for someone to come along with real force, aided by modern wep-technology, such as Mat possesses, to harvest for the asking? If this were so, do you honestly believe Bertold and Ferry would not have done it already?”
Dosker, disconcerted, eyed her hesitantly.
“I think,” she said, “that Mat is making a mistake. Not because it’s immoral but because he’s going to discover that, once he’s over there, he and his two thousand veterans, he’ll be facing—” She broke off. “I don’t know. But he won’t succeed in any coup d’etat . Whoever runs Newcolonizedland will handle Mat; that’s what terrifies me. Sure, I’d like him to stop; I’d be glad to tell him that one of his top employees who knows all the inside details about the coup is going to, at four p.m., tip off the authorities. I’ll do everything in my power, Dosker, to get him to abandon the idea, to face the fact that he’s wandering idiotically into a terminal trap. My reasons and yours may not—”
“What do you think,” Dosker said, “is over there, Freya?”
“Death.”
“For—everybody?” He stared at her. “Forty million? Why?”
“The days,” she said, “of Gilbert and Sullivan and Jerome Kern are over. We’re on a planet of seven billion. Whale’s Mouth could do the job, but slowly, and there’s a more efficient way, and every one of those in key posts in the UN, put in by Herr Horst Bertold, knows that way.”
“No,” Dosker said, his face an ugly, putty-colored gray. “That went out in 1945.”
“Are you sure? Would you want to emigrate?”
He was silent. And then, stunning her, he said, “Yes.”
“What? Why?”
Dosker said, “I will emigrate. Tonight at six, New New York time. With laser pistol in my left hand, and I’ll kick them in the groin; I want to get at them, if that’s what they’re doing; I can’t wait.”
“You won’t be able to do a thing. As soon as you emerge—”
“With my bare hands. I’ll get one of them. Any one will do.”
“Start here. Start with Horst Bertold.”
He stared at her, then.
“We have the wep-techs,” Freya said, and then ceased speaking as the flapple door was opened by another—cheerful—attendant.
“Found the short, Al?” he asked.
“Yes,” Al Dosker said. He fooled, fumbled, under the dashboard, his face concealed. “Should be okay now. Recharge the meta-bat, stick it back in, and she can take off.”
The other attendant, satisfied, departed. Freya and Al Dosker were alone once more, briefly, with the flapple door hanging open.
“You—may be wrong,” Dosker said.
Freya said, “It’s got to be something like that. It can’t be three hundred ass
orted-shape volunteer army privates, because Ferry and Bertold or at least one of them would have moved in, and that’s the one fact we know: we know what they’re like. There just cannot, Dosker, be a power vacuum at Whale’s Mouth.”
“All ready to go, miss,” one of the other attendants called.
The flapple’s articulation-circuit asserted, “I feel a million times better; I’m now prepared to depart for your original destination, sir or madam, as soon as the superfluous individual has disemflappled.”
Dosker, trembling said, “I—don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t go to Ferry or Bertold. Begin at that.”
He nodded. Evidently she had reached him; that part was over.
“Mat will need all the help he can get,” she said, “from six o’clock on. From the moment his first field rep hits Whale’s Mouth. Dosker, why don’t you go? Even if you’re a pilot, not a rep. Maybe you can help him.”
The flapple started its motor up irritably. “Please, sir or madam, if you will request—”
“Are you teleporting?” Dosker asked her. “With them?”
Freya said, “I’m scheduled to cross at five. To rent living quarters for Mat and me. I’ll be—remember this so you can find us— Mrs. Silvia Trent. And Mat will be Stuart Trent. Okay?”
“Okay,” Dosker mumbled, backed out, shut the flapple door.
The flapple began to ascend, at once.
And she relaxed. And spat out the capsule of Prussic acid, dropped it into the disposal chute of the flapple, then reset her “watch.”
What she had said to Dosker, god knew, was the truth. She knew it—knew it and could do nothing to dissuade Matson. On the far side professionals would be in wait, and even if they didn’t anticipate the coup, even if there had been no leak and they saw no connection between the two thousand male individuals scattered all over the world, applying at every Telpor outlet on Terra . . . even so, she knew they would be able to handle Mat. He was just not that big and they could handle him.
But he did not believe it. Because Mat saw the possibility of power; it was a gaff that had hooked deep in his side and the wound spilled with the blood of yearning. Suppose it was true; suppose only a three-hundred-man army existed. Suppose. The hope and possibility enflamed him.