‘Then it really was your order, as the barracks commander at the prison said.’
‘Yep,’ he said, stoically.
‘How does it feel?’
‘Look,’ Gram said. ‘A second message came through from Provoni. It specifically states that he is bringing an unTerran life form with him. This isn’t speculation, this is fact.’
‘You just don’t feel you can handle Cordon and Provoni at the same time,’ Barnes said with fury.
‘You bet your ass! That’s right!’ Gram said fiercely; he waggled a finger at Barnes. ‘In fact, that’s it in a nutshell. So don’t give me a hard time about it; it was necessary. Could you – all of you double-domed super-evolved New Men – have coped with the two of them here on Earth, working together? The answer is no.’
‘The answer,’ said Barnes, ‘would have been a dignified execution, with all the protocols observed.’
‘And while we’re giving him his last meal and all that, some irradiant fish-like gigantic entity lands in Cleveland and snatches up every Unusual and New and goes snuffffff. Right?’
After a pause Barnes said, ‘Do you plan to declare a planet-wide emergency?’
‘Mayday?’
‘Yes. In the most extreme sense.’
Gram pondered. ‘No. We’ll alert the military, the police, then key News and Unusuals – they have a right to know what the actual situation is. But nothing to the frigging rabble, all those Old Men and Under Men.’ But, he thought, the 16th Avenue printing plant will tell them anyway. No matter how quickly we attack it. All they have to do is flash the messages from Provoni to slave transmitters and lesser printing plants… which, hell, they’ve undoubtedly already done.
‘The commando team, Green A, backed by B and C, are on their way to the 16th Avenue printing plant,’ Barnes said. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’ He inspected his wristwatch. ‘In roughly half an hour they’ll assault the first line of defense of the plant. We’ve arranged closed-circuit TV coverage, so you can watch.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You mean that ironically?’
‘No, no,’ Gram said. ‘I mean what I say; I said thanks and I mean thanks.’ His voice rose. ‘Does everything have a hidden meaning? Are we a bunch of bomb-plotters sneaking about in the dark, using code words? Is that it? Or are we a government?’
Barnes said, ‘We’re a legal, functioning government. Faced by sedition within and invasion from without. We’re taking protective measures in both directions. For example, we can station ships of the line deep in space, where they can reach Provoni’s ship with their missiles as it re-enters the Sol System. We can—’
‘That’s the military’s decision, not yours. I’ll have the Ultimate Peace Council of Chiefs assemble in the Red Room’ – he checked his own watch, an Omega – ‘at three this afternoon.’ He pressed a button on his desk.
‘Yes sir.’
‘I want the Chiefs to assemble in the Red Room at three this afternoon,’ Gram said. ‘Class A priority.’ He turned his attention back to Barnes.
‘We’ll round up as many Under Men as we can,’ Barnes said.
‘Fine,’ Gram said.
‘Do I have permission to bomb their other printing plants? At least the ones that we know of?’
‘Fine,’ Gram said.
‘You still sound sardonic,’ Barnes said uncertainly.
‘I’m just terribly, terribly pissed off,’ Gram said. ‘How can a human being instigate a situation in which nonhuman life forms – aw, the hell with it.’ He lapsed into silence. Barnes waited for a time, then reached to turn on one of the TV screens facing Gram.
The screen showed weapons-police firing miniaturized missiles at a rexeroid door. Smoke, and armed police, were everywhere.
‘They’re not in yet,’ Gram said. ‘Rexeroid – that’s a tough substance.’
‘They just now started.’
The rexeroid door disintegrated into molten streams that burst into the air in the form of flaming pellets, like Martian sky birds. Clack-clack-clack came the sound of firing, by the police and by what now appeared to be uniformed soldiers within. The police, taken by surprise, scurried for cover, then tossed paralysis gas grenades and the like. The smoke tended to obscure everything, but gradually it became apparent that the police were moving ahead.
‘Get the bastards,’ Gram said, as a two-man bazooka team let go directly at the line of soldiers within. The bazooka shell zoomed past the soldiers and exploded within the great clot of printing machinery within. ‘There go the presses,’ Glam said, feeling glee. ‘Well, that’s that.’
The police had now infiltrated into the central chamber of the printing plant itself. The TV camera followed them, focusing on a battle in cameo between two green-clad police and three gray-clad soldiers.
The noise level dropped. Fewer weapons were being fired, and fewer people could be seen moving. The police were beginning to round up press personnel, meanwhile still trading pistol shots with the few Under Man soldiers alive and armed.
THIRTEEN
In the small, private room which the press personnel had given them, Nick Appleton and Charley sat rigidly, neither speaking; mute, they listened to the sounds of fighting, and to himself Nick thought, No seventy-two hour sanctuary after all. Not for us, not one bit. It’s all over now.
Charley rubbed her sensual lips, then, abruptly, bit the back of her hand. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Jesus!’ she shouted, on her feet in an animal-like stance. ‘We don’t have a chance!’
Nick said nothing.
‘Speak!’ Charley snarled, her face ugly with impotent rage. ‘Say something! Blame me because I brought you here, say anything – don’t just sit there staring at the frigging floor.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ he said, lying. But there was no point in blaming her; she had no way of knowing that the police would all at once attack the printing plant. After all, it had never happened before. She had merely extrapolated from known facts. The printing plant was a refuge; many people had come here and gone.
The authorities knew all the time, Nick thought. They’re doing this now because of the news about Provoni’s return. Cordon. God, he thought, God in heaven, they probably killed him right away. The signal of Provoni’s return has set off a carefully planned, complex blitz, planet-wide, by the establishment. They’re probably rounding up every New Man they’ve got a file on. And it all has to be done – the printing plants bombed, the Under Men rounded up, Eric Cordon killed – before Provoni gets here. It forced their hand; it brought out their actual physical heavy cannon.
‘Listen,’ he said, getting up to stand beside Charley; he put his arm around her and hugged her spare, hard body against him. ‘We’ll be in a relocation camp for a time but eventually, when this is resolved one way or another—’
The door of the room flew open. A cop, his uniform covered with gray particles like dust – which were incinerated human bone – stood there, aiming a B-14 Hopp’s rifle at them. Nick at once raised his hands, then grabbed Charley’s hands and lifted them up and out, opening her fingers to show that she had no weapon.
The cop fired his B-14 at Charley; she slumped, inert, against Nick. ‘Unconscious,’ the cop said. ‘Tranquiler depth.’ And fired his B-14 at Nick.
FOURTEEN
Peering at the TV screen, Police Director Barnes said, ‘So 3XX24J.’
‘What’s that?’ Gram said irritably.
‘In that room: that man with the girl. The two the greener just laid out. That was the sample person which the computer thought meant that—’
‘I’m trying to see some of my old buddies,’ Gram said, shaking him off. ‘Shut up and watch; just watch. Or is that asking too much?’
Barnes said curtly, ‘The Wyoming computer selected him as the prototype Old Man who, because of the announcement of Cordon’s impending execution would – and did – go over to the Under Men. Now we’ve caught him, although oddly, I don’t think that’s his wife. Now, what would the Wyo
ming computer say…’ He began to pace. ‘What would its response be to the fact that we’ve caught him? That we have taken possession of the representative Old Man who—’
‘Why do you say it’s not his wife?’ Gram asked. ‘Do you think he’s shacking up with that broad, that not only has he become an Under Man but he’s also left his wife and already found someone else? Ask the computer that; see what it makes of that.’ The girl, he thought, is pretty, in a tomboyish sort of way. Hm, he thought. ‘Can you see to it that the girl isn’t hurt?’ he asked Barnes. ‘Are you able to communicate with the commando teams there in the plant?’
Reaching for his belt, Police Director Barnes brought a microphone to his lips, said, ‘Captain Malliard, please.’
‘Yes, Malliard here, Director.’ A puff-puffing voice, showing great agitation and stress.
‘The Council Chairman asks me to ask you to see to it that the man and girl—’
‘Just the girl,’ Gram interrupted.
‘—that a girl in a side room who has just been put out by a greener with a B-14 Hopp’s tranquilizing rifle, be protected. Let’s see, I’ll try to establish the coordinates.’ Barnes peered owl-wise, sideways, at the screen. ‘Coordinates 34, 21, then either 9 or 10.’
‘That would be to my right and a little forward of my own position,’ Malliard said. ‘Yes, I’ll take charge at once. We have done a good job, Director – in twenty minutes we’ve taken virtual control of the plant, with a minimum loss of life on both sides.’
‘Just keep your eye on the girl,’ Barnes said, and returned the microphone to his belt.
‘You’re wired up with tools like a telefone linesman,’ Gram said to him.
Barnes said frostily, ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Doing what again?’
‘Mixing up your private life with your public life. That girl.’
‘She has a strange face. Pushed in, like an Irish mug.’
‘Council Chairman, we face an invasion by alien life forms; we face a mass insurrection which may—’
‘You see a girl like that once in twenty years,’ Gram said.
‘May I ask one favor?’ Barnes asked.
‘Sure.’ Willis Gram felt good, now; the efficiency of the police in taking over the 16th Avenue printing plant pleased him, and his libido had been clicked to the on position at seeing the odd girl. ‘What favor?’
‘I want to have you – with myself present – talk to the man, the man from 3XX24J… I want to know if his dominant feeling is positive, in that they’ve heard from Provoni, and Provoni is bringing help with him, or if his morale has been broken by being picked up in the police commando raid. In other words—’
‘An average sampling,’ Gram said.
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. I’ll take a look at him, but it better be soon; it better be before Provoni gets here. Everything has to be done before Provoni and his monsters arrive. Monsters.’ He shook his head. ‘What a renegade. What a dispiteous, low-class, self-serving, power-hungry, ambitious, unprincipled renegade. He ought to go down in the history books with that statement about him.’ He liked that description of Provoni. ‘Jot that down,’ he said to Barnes. ‘I’ll have that put in the next edition of the Britannica, just like I said it. Word for word.’
Sighing, Police Director Barnes got out his tablet of paper and painstakingly wrote the sentence down.
‘Add to that,’ Gram said, ‘mentally-disturbed, fanatically radical, a creature – note that: a creature, not a man – who believes any means whatsoever is justified by the end. And what is the end in this case? A destruction of a system by which authority is put and kept in the hands of those physically constructed so as to have the ability to rule. It is rule by the most competent, not the most popular. Which is better, the most competent or the most popular? Millard Fillmore was popular. So was Rutherford B. Hayes. So was Churchill. So was Lyons. But they were incompetent, which is the whole point. Do you see my point?’
‘In what way was Churchill incompetent?’
‘He advocated mass night-bombings of residential areas, of civilian populations, instead of hitting key targets. It prolonged World War Two an extra year.’
Director Barnes said, ‘Yes, I see the point.’ He thought, I don’t need a lesson in civics… a thought which Gram immediately picked up. That, and much else besides.
‘I’ll see this man from 3XX24J at six o’clock our time tonight,’ Gram said. ‘Bring him in. Bring them both in together – the girl, too.’ He caught more unpleasant dissenting thoughts from Barnes but ignored them. Like most telepaths, he had learned to ignore the great body of inchoate thoughts in people: hostility, boredom, outright disgust, envy. Thoughts, many of which the person himself was unaware of. A telepath had to learn to have a thick skin. In essence, he had to learn to relate to a person’s conscious, positive thoughts, not the vaguely-defined mixture of his unconscious processes. At that region, almost everything could be found… and in almost anyone. Every clerk-typist who passed through his office had fleeting thoughts of destroying his superior and taking his place… and some aimed much higher than that; there existed fantastic delusional systems of thought in some of the most meek-mannered men and women – and these were, for the most part, New Men.
Some, who harbored truly deranged thoughts, he had quietly hospitalized. For the good of everyone concerned… especially himself. For, several times, he had picked up thoughts of assassination, and from the most surprising sources, both big and little. Once, a New Man technician, installing a series of video links in his private office, had lengthily pondered shooting him – and had carried the gun by which to do it. Again and again it came up: an endless theme which had come into existence when the two new classes of men had manifested themselves fifty-eight years ago. He was used to it… or was he? Perhaps not. But he had lived with it all his life, and he did not foresee losing his ability to adapt now at this late point in the game – this point at which Provoni and his nonhuman friends were about to intersect his own life-line.
‘What’s the name of the man from apartment 3XX24J?’ he asked Barnes.
‘I’d have to research that,’ Barnes said.
‘And you’re sure the girl isn’t his wife?’
‘I briefly saw stills of his wife. Fat, nasty – a shrew, from what we got off the video tape from the deck installed in their apartment. The standard 243 deck that’s in all those quasi-modern apartments.’
‘What does he do for a living?’
Barnes peered up at the ceiling, licked his lower lip and said, ‘A tire regroover. At a used squib lot.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘Well, they take in a squib, let us say, and examination shows the tread almost worn off the tires. So he takes a hot iron and digs new, fake tread into what remains of the tire.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it is now,’ Gram said. ‘I just passed a law; make a note of that. Tire regrooving is a crime. It’s dangerous.’
‘Yes, Council Chairman.’ He scratched a note on his pad, thinking, We are about to be overwhelmed by alien beings and this is what Gram is thinking about: tire regrooving.
‘You can’t overlook the minor items in the welter of the major ones,’ Gram said, in answer to Barnes’ thought.
‘But at a time like this—’
‘Make it a posted misdemeanor without delay,’ Gram said. ‘See that every used squib lot gets printed – mark that: printed – word of it by Friday.’
‘Why don’t we induce the aliens to land,’ Barnes asked sardonically, ‘and then have this man dig into their tires so that when they try to roll along the ground-surface the tires pop and they’re killed in the resulting accident?’
‘That reminds me of a story about the English,’ Gram said. ‘During World War Two, the Italian government was terribly worried – and rightly so – about the English landing in Italy. So it was suggested that at each of the hotels where
the English were staying they should be terribly overcharged. The English, see, would be too polite to complain; instead they’d leave – leave Italy entirely. Have you heard that story.’
‘No,’ Barnes said.
‘We’re really in a hell of a mess,’ Gram said. ‘Even though we killed Cordon and knocked out that 16th Avenue printing plant.’
‘Correct, Council Chairman.’
‘We’re not going to be able even to get all the Under Men, and these aliens may be like the Martians in H. G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS; they’ll eat Switzerland in one big bite.’
‘Let’s reserve further speculation until we actually encounter them,’ Barnes said. From him, Gram picked up weary thoughts, thoughts of a long rest… and, at the same time, a realization that there was not going to be a rest, long or otherwise, for any of them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gram said, in answer to Barnes’ thoughts.
‘It’s not your fault.’
Moodily, Gram said, ‘I ought to resign.’
‘In favor of whom?’
‘Let you double-domes find someone. Of your type.’
‘This could be considered at a council.’
‘Nope,’ Gram said. ‘I’m not going to resign. There will be no council meeting to discuss it.’
He caught from Barnes a fleeting thought, quickly suppressed. Maybe there will be. If you can’t handle these aliens, plus the internal uprising.
Gram thought, They’ll have to kill me to get me out of office. Find some way to snuff me. And it’s hard to snuff telepaths.
But they’re probably looking for a way, he decided.
It was not a pleasant thought.
FIFTEEN
Consciousness returned, and Nick Appleton found himself sprawled on a green floor. Green: the color of the pissers, the state police. He was in a PSS detention camp, probably a temporary one.
Raising his head, he squinted around him. Thirty, forty men, many with bandages, many cut and bleeding. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, he decided. And Charley – she would be with the women, raising her voice to bitch shrilly at her captors. She will put up a good fight, he realized; she will kick them in the testicles when they come to carry her off to the permanent relocation camps. I, of course, will never see her again, he thought. She glowed like stars; I loved her. Even for that little while. It’s as if I had a glimpse, saw past the curtain of mundane life, saw how and what I needed to be happy.