“Why? Because they increase circulation? Don’t you appreciate profit?”
“I don’t appreciate the tone of your editorials! How dare you let Ade Stuart criticize my business interests?”
“Ahhh, the piece last week about the Hanson Industries solar power monopoly.”
“A son of mine should be more sensitive to economic realities and family interests.”
“A living, breathing newspaper must have editorial freedom. Are you threatening to cut off my funds?”
“You’d only go out with a swan song editorial about me. I know you, Lutt.”
Lutt grinned and was surprised to see a matching grin on his father’s face. Emboldened by this, Lutt said: “The Enquirer can be far more than a writeoff. It could be the base for my Spiral communications system, an almost instantaneous—”
“This so-called vorspiral development you keep pouring money into?”
“I’ve already sent hyperlight messages to Earth from a ship in space. I believe the entire universe is connected by Spiral passages that will allow us to—”
“—to wreck more expensive ships in space!”
“I now know how to prevent such accidents.”
“Look, boy, I’m an inventor myself . . . a proven inventor. This little toy of yours has cute aspects but—” Again, L.H. fell into a fit of coughing.
Lutt took advantage of the break to say: “There’s a potential for big profits here.”
“Your fancy idea will never be profitable,” L.H. said.
“How can you say that? My system works. And even without rapid transport of matter I think it follows from—”
“You think!”
“Father, there are major wars on three planets. The potential for news breaks there alone—”
“Hanson Industries is not involved in those wars except as a munitions supplier and that amounts to small potatoes on our total balance sheet.”
“But faster communications could also prevent damage to our assets in deep space. We could take quick action when problems are seen.”
“Our assets out there already have fail-safe systems handled by equipment and personnel on the spot. You’ve seen what we did on Uranus. Knock over the competition when they get rough. That’s the way to handle these things.”
“But with just a little more investment . . . ”
“You’re looking at big start-up costs. There might be a small profit in a couple of years, but that’d vanish once the competition climbed on our wagon.”
“But we could monopolize this, I tell you!”
“Profit is the bottom line, son! Believe me, the profit from this harebrained scheme would be nothing compared with what you’d see if you stepped into this office.”
Morey cleared his throat loudly.
“Well, whatta you want?” L.H. demanded.
“Father, perhaps I could—”
“You let me decide about you, Morey. Show some real responsibility and things might change for you.”
Once more, L.H. confronted his eldest, “You’re wasting time and money and taking unnecessary chances.”
Morey was not to be silenced. “You took big chances to get where you are, Father.”
“Are you siding with Lutt?” L.H. demanded. He sounded pleased.
“I think he deserves a chance.”
“So he can make a pratfall and you can pick up the pieces, that it?”
When Morey did not respond, L.H. sighed and looked once more at Lutt. “I don’t know why one of my boys has to have all the guts and no sense while the other has the sense and no guts.” He teetered on one stick, lifting the other to point at Lutt. “Now, you look here, boy. You should leapfrog from what I’ve built—use my back and jump ahead. Take advantage of the situation, boy. Can’t you see what I’m offering you?”
“Stop calling me boy! Hanson Industries is your work.”
“And it could be yours.”
“I want something that’s really mine. If the universe is connected by Spiral passages, Hanson Industries would be a tiny part of what we could gain.”
“You’re talking crazy. That ship you built almost got you killed.”
“But I survived and learned something.”
“I learned something, too. I’ve had your project under close watch and if I thought your hyperlight system had potential I’d put one of my divisions to work on it right away.”
“Does that mean you won’t give me any more funds for my project?” Lutt asked, noting how carefully Morey watched their father to learn his response.
L.H. shook his head in exasperation. “Pie in space!”
“And maybe it’s a bigger pie than you think!”
L.H. suppressed a smile at the way Lutt had gone on the attack. I called him in to chew ass about spending money on unauthorized experiments and he’s swinging it around against me! He’s a stubborn cuss and that’s for sure. Let’s see how stubborn.
“Tell you what, son. Maybe we can strike a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“The Enquirer’s policies and editorials are totally at odds with my position, young man. How important is this freedom of editorial policy?”
Lutt smiled, seeing where the old man was about to take them, and saw the beginning twitches of a smile on L.H.’s face.
“You always say everything has relative value,” Lutt said.
“Then come with me.” L.H. spoke gruffly and motioned with his stick as Morey started to rise. “Not you, Morey. You wait here. And I’d advise you to stay seated. That way you’ll be in one piece when we get back.”
Leaving Morey, the old man turned and led the way down the steps, lurching on his sticks. They crossed to the computer center where L.H. pointed a stick at the bare wall beside a terminal and pressed one of the stick’s buttons.
Lutt prayed L.H. was using the right button and was relieved to hear machinery grinding behind the wall.
“I’m getting old and my vision’s pretty bad,” L.H. said. “Every system in my body seems to be failing and even my best robodocs aren’t much help. I’ve sure been hoping you’d come around before now.”
The sympathy ploy, Lutt thought. He hasn’t used that for quite a while.
“You have Morey,” Lutt said. “And I know there are other capable people in the company.”
“Not family.” L.H. spoke as a wall panel slid aside, exposing the steps of a motionless escalator leading upward to the secret rooms in the peak of the tower. Each step was marked on its vertical face:
PREPARE TO DIE
SURVIVAL ODDS NIL
Father’s peculiar warning to unauthorized intruders should any get this far,
When Lutt remained silent, L.H, said: “You’re potentially more capable, son. I sensed that when you were born. That’s why I gave you my own first name. Doesn’t that weigh on you?”
“It weighs on me.”
L.H. waved his lefthand stick in a circle and the escalator began humming. He lurched forward and gripped a handrail, and the weight of his body set the system in motion. Lutt followed two steps behind, speaking as he went.
“Have you noticed, Father, how little our conversations vary? Always the same old arguments.”
“Just like these escalator steps, eh? Around and around we go.”
Lutt shook his head. “Let’s bring recordings next time and save our energy—you with your standard lectures and me with a stock appeal for your approval and financial support.”
The old man’s quick laughter broke into wheezing coughs.
At the top of the escalator, they went down a narrow corridor and took a small elevator to the very peak—a small room packed with esoteric electronic gear—the Listening Post.
Atop a plastic table at the entrance lay two white envelopes, one labeled “Lutt Junior” and the other “Morey.”
At a nod from L.H., Lutt stuffed his envelope into a pocket of his tunic.
“Aren’t you curious about your allowance?” L.H. asked.
/> “I’ll learn soon enough.”
“So you will, so you will. Take the other one to Morey.”
“Why didn’t you bring him up here?”
“Wanted to talk to you privately. I’m worried about Morey. He’s taken up with some bad people.”
“What can I do about it?”
“You can remember he’s your brother and try to steer him right!” L.H. nudged the other envelope toward Lutt, who took it in one hand.
A weighted silence descended between father and son.
Lutt felt the crinkling envelope in his tunic pocket, an allowance ostensibly generated from earnings of this most secret Hanson facility. An odd way to handle an allowance, considering the financial resources available, but this was Father’s way and not to be questioned.
L.H. seemed to be waiting for something. For me to tell him how I’m squeezing Morey? Is it possible he knows? Yes . . . it’s possible.
Lutt sent a worried glance around the Listening Post, hub of Father’s most secret invention—a scrambler-compression system that could piggyback on any electronic communications, radio wavelengths or hard rays. Here was where spydots hidden in Hanson products transmitted their clandestine information, everything recorded, checked for voiceprint identification, then read and sorted automatically.
Father often referred to this place as his ‘‘bank.’’
“I sell some of it to law enforcement agencies through middlemen,” L.H. had explained, leaving any other uses of the place to Lutt’s imagination.
Lutt recalled his childhood awe at this place. Father bragged that no one could duplicate it, that no scanners except those of his own invention could detect the room or the spydots that funneled data into it. When Lutt had questioned this, the old man had said:
“I think differently from any person who’s ever lived or ever will live. My equipment is exceedingly intricate. Still, I’m cautious by nature. The secret might be stolen and used against me. That’s why I take certain precautions.”
What those precautions were, L.H. did not share, but two transparent domes on pedestals in the room each held a folder—one marked “Lutt Junior” and the other “Morey.”
Lutt’s silence continued while he ruminated. At L.H.’s death, the sons were instructed to enter the Listening Post, using the coded signals hidden in the old man’s canes, and each son was to remove his own folder.
“Take your own only. Touch the other one and it’ll kill you.”
Each tape came with connectors to be hooked to the recipient’s head. The remaining family secrets would then be fed directly into the son’s mind, “including the way you can pass our secrets along to your male offspring.”
Egotistical male chauvinist, Lutt thought, his attention returning to the present.
When Lutt continued silent, the old man looked disappointed. He found a plastic container of nonferrous tools and began fussing with one of the microrecorders, replacing a chip and testing it. L.H. coughed as he worked.
“Would you really kill us if we revealed anything about this room?” Lutt asked.
“Like I warned you when I first told you about this place, son: Don’t put it to the test.”
“You’re afraid Morey might be compromised by his criminal friends?”
“That’s only one of my worries.” L.H. stepped back and admired his work—a tiny component in a glittering wall of them, all looking similar (fingernail-sized rectangles of silver and gold) but each displaying a unique face when studied closely.
Lutt entertained many theories about how these devices worked. He often played a game with his father, attempting to discover the Listening Post’s secret—doing this despite the elder’s insistence that no other mind could follow the convoluted path of this creation. As L.H. finished his handiwork, Lutt asked:
“Is it a molecular transmitting system?”
A chuckle shook the old man’s chest, but his face remained deadpan.
“There’s invariably some unsealed place in every building where air escapes to the outside,” Lutt said.
Was that a flicker of interest on the old man’s face?
“Messages imprinted on atmospheric molecules—”
Lutt waited out one of L.H.’s coughing spells, then continued: “Those loaded molecules could be read outside a building once the air had escaped to—”
L.H. snorted. “What difference would it make whether your mythological molecules were inside or outside? Any receiver worth a damn wouldn’t have to wait for a stupid molecule to go outside. As for that, some homes and many vehicles are airtight.”
Lutt stared back at his father’s unreadable eyes.
“So you wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on spydot messages from airtight—”
“Bushwah! Loaded molecules! Inside, outside!”
“Then I’m on the wrong track?”
“I didn’t say that.”
This was a new twist on their game and Lutt considered it. Was the old man leading him down a dead-end street? Could be. Time wasted on a useless project of this kind would amuse him.
“You haven’t looked at your allowance,” L.H. said.
“It’ll be something under eighty thousand and I need a lot more.”
“Something under eighty thousand, eh? That’s still quite a bit of money for one month.”
“You’re putting ninety percent of my allowance into a pension plan but I need the cash now, not when I’m too old to do anything with it.”
“When you’re my age, you mean?”
“It’s something to think about.”
L.H. sighed. “How much do you need this time?”
“Six million.”
“Six million! For what?”
“I’ve built my Spiral communications system and even my experimental ships with second-rate parts. This time I want to do it right—broadcast from war zones on another planet, demonstrate what my system can really do.”
“For six million?”
“Two million would go for the news service—equipment, travel expenses and sales promotion. The rest would go into a new ship.”
“Which war zone interests you?”
“Venus.”
“I’ve seen Venus. A frightful, red-hot place. What about the war on Mars? At least it’s cooler there.”
Lutt was astonished. Was he to get the full amount? It was an extraordinary request, six times greater than he had ever dared ask for in the past. The old pattern would be for them to start dickering now, back and forth like street vendors on one of the have-not planets.
“Venus has more news value because it’s the Legion against the Mao Guards and there’s greater danger there,” Lutt said. He recalled the strange, whispering suggestion that had come to him while Ryll slept: ‘Come to Venus, Lutt. For the vorcamera, for love and more. Touch your past and your future.’
“And you’d go there yourself?” L.H. asked.
“Yes.” Lutt held his breath. What was the old man’s decision?
“Two million now; more if it looks promising,” L.H. said.
Lutt did not know what to say. This was ten times the old man’s usual “two hundred thousand for special purposes.” What game was L.H. playing? Lutt experienced a complex reaction, a mixture of love, admiration, envy and hatred. Two million was only a third of what he really needed!
A coughing spasm once more shook L.H. He leaned over, pressing a cane to his chest. When the spell passed, Lutt said: “Don’t tell Mother where I’ve gone.”
L.H. wiped phlegm from his mouth and nodded. The prosthetic lenses glittered with reflected light as they moved. Without another word, he led the way out of the Listening Post. No thanks expected, none given.
Through all of this familial exchange, Ryll had observed without interfering, focusing as much analytical attention as he could on the complex emotional substance, wishing he had paid more attention to classes in alien psychology.
Once in the outer corridor, Ryll ventured a probe: Why is the mother not to be
told?
She would worry too much.
Your father agreed without argument.
Despite our differences, he knows I have to go my own way.
I fail to understand.
The old man really respects my independence and my drive.
But not your creativity?
I think so but I always have to hear it secondhand from someone else, never from him.
Ryll lapsed into private thoughts. What strange creatures, these Earthers. The family was at war within itself. No filial devotion. The father was a cold-blooded person. Kill his own offspring?
For the first time since linking flesh with the Earther, Ryll felt truly alone, cast adrift in a dangerous environment where no reassuring familiarity could be seen. Was it even possible to introduce real bonds of affection and love into such a society? Ryll was filled with doubts.
***
When I was young we still could be our own selves—individuals. And that’s what I’ve always fought to be.
—Lutt Hanson, Sr.
From the penthouse atop his shop building near Seattle, Lutt saw the wreckage of his Vortraveler on the concrete pad ten stories below: a charred and twisted carcass. Workers scurried around it like carrion insects. The shop’s early-afternoon shadow touched the far edge of the wreck, cutting across the demolished drive section in a wavy line.
Here in the privacy of his own quarters, Lutt dared speak aloud to the partner of his flesh. “So they didn’t return any of your Dreen ship?”
I could identify nothing familiar.
“Zone Patrol bastards! What are they doing?”
They’re watching, and the slightest mistake could land us in jail. . . permanently.
“I have to assume you’re right.”
Why else do you think I haven’t resumed control of our body? I’m still not sure I could mimic all normal human responses.
“So you say.”
I say the truth. Tell me, Lutt, why do you treat your own brother in such abominable fashion?
“Did you see how quick he forked over the first payment?”