‘You don’t happen to have any pain pills on you?’ a youth next to him asked. ‘I’ve got a broken leg and it’s causing me one hell of a lot of fucking pain.’
‘Sorry, no,’ Nick said. He returned to his thoughts.
‘Don’t sound pessimistic,’ the youth said. ‘Don’t let the pissers get to you, inside.’ He tapped his head.
‘The knowledge that I may spend the rest of my life in a relocation camp on Luna or in southwestern Utah keeps me from smiling,’ Nick said caustically.
‘But,’ the youth said, with a blissful, radiant smile, ‘you heard the news Provoni’s back, and with help.’ His eyes shone, despite the pain of his leg. ‘There will be no more relocation camps. “The veil of the tent is rent, and the heavens shall roll up like a scroll.”’
‘We’ve waited over two thousand years since that was written,’ Nick said. ‘And it hasn’t happened yet.’ He thought, Not one full day as an Under Man and behold! What has become of me.
A tall, lean man, squatting nearby, a deep and untreated gash about his right eye, said, ‘Do either of you know if they got the message from Provoni to any of the other printing plants?’
‘Oh, sure.’ The golden-haired youth’s eyes flamed up with trust and belief. ‘They knew at once; all our communications operator had to do was click a switch on.’ He beamed at Nick and the tall, lean man. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he asked. ‘This; even this.’ He indicated the others in the badly-lit, badly-ventilated cell. ‘It’s magnificent. It’s beautiful!’
‘It turns you on?’ Nick asked.
‘I’m not familiar with the literature from previous centuries,’ the youth said, dismissing with scorn Nick’s anachronism. ‘I can live with it! All this – it’s mine. Until Thors Provoni lands. He will land soon and the heavens will—’
An ununiformed police official came up to them, consulted a clipboard. ‘You’re the visitor to 3XX24J?’ he asked Nick.
‘I’m Nick Appleton,’ Nick said.
‘To us you’re a man who visited an apartment number at a certain time on a certain day. Hence you are 3XX24J, are you not?’ Nick nodded. ‘Get up and come with me,’ the police minion said, and started briskly away. Nick, with difficulty, managed to rise to a disfigured standing position; gradually he followed after the cop, wondering – with fear – what was happening.
As the cop unlocked the door of the cell – using a complex electronic wheel system, a spinning at great velocity of numbers – one of the men seated on the floor, his back against the wall, said to Nick, ‘Good luck, brother.’
The man beside that man lifted a transistor tab from his ear and said, ‘The news just came over the media. They’ve killed Cordon. They did it, they actually did it. “He died of a chronic liver ailment,” they say, but it’s not that – Cordon didn’t have no liver complaint. They shot him.’
‘Come on,’ the cop said, and with surprising strength propelled him boldly through the aperture and outside the cell, which instantly relocked itself.
‘Is it true about Cordon?’ Nick asked the cop, the green pisser.
‘Dunno.’ The cop added, ‘But if they did, it was a good idea. I don’t know why they’ve kept him at Brightforth all this time; why couldn’t they make up their minds? Well, that’s what you get when you have an Unusual as Council Chairman.’ He continued on up the hall, Nick following.
‘You know Thors Provoni is back?’ Nick asked. ‘And with the help he promised?’
‘We can handle them,’ the cop said.
‘Why do you think so?’
‘Shut up and keep walking,’ the cop said, his large head, his New Man expanded cranium, bobbing venomously. He looked angry and aggressive, looking for an opportunity to use his metal stick on someone, and Nick thought, he’d snuff me right here and now if he could. But he has orders to fulfill.
Nonetheless, the cop frightened him: the concentration of hate on the man’s face when Nick had mentioned Provoni. They may put up a hell of a fight, he realized. If this is representative of their collective feelings.
The cop stepped through a doorway; Nick followed… and saw, in a single glimpse, the nerve-center of the police apparatus. TV screens, small, hundreds and hundreds of them, with a cop monitoring each cluster of four screens. A cacophony of noise hummed and clicked and buzzed through the big chamber; people, both men and women, hurried here and there… performing little errands such as the one handed to this hate-ridden New Man cop escorting him. How damn busy it was. But the PSS was in the process of rounding up every Under Man they knew of; that alone would put a burden on their electronic-neurological equipment, and those operating it.
Just in that brief moment, he saw their fatigue. They did not look triumphant or happy. Well, he thought, doesn’t the murder of Eric Cordon cheer you up? But they were looking ahead, as were the Under Men. The internal part, the bombing and raiding of the plants, the rounding up of Under Men – it had to be done in a matter of, probably, three days.
Why three days? he asked himself. The two messages hadn’t permitted a fix on the ship – evidently – and yet it seemed to be everyone’s assumption: they had a few days and that was all. But suppose he’s a year out, Nick thought. Or five years.
‘3XX24J,’ his escort cop said, ‘I am turning you over to a representative of the Council Chairman. He will be armed, so don’t be heroic.’
‘Okay, friend,’ Nick said, feeling sheep-like at the rapid processes evolving all around him. A man in an ordinary business suit – purple sleeves, rings, turned-up-toes shoes – approached him. Nick scrutinized him. Tricky, devoted to his job – and a New Man. Above his body his great head wobbled; he was not using the customary neck support bracket in vogue among many New Men.
‘You are 3XX24J?’ the man asked; he examined a Xerox copy of some sort of document.
‘I am Nick Appleton,’ Nick said stonily.
‘Yes, these number indent systems really don’t work,’ the rep of the Council Chairman said. ‘You work – or worked – as a—’ He frowned, then lifted his massive head. ‘A what? A “tire regroover”? Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And today you joined the Under Men via your employer, Earl Zeta, whom the police have been watching, I believe, for several months. This is you I’m talking about, isn’t it? I want to be sure I get the right man passed through. I have your fingerprints, here; we’ll shoot them on to the print archives. By the time the Council Chairman sees you, the prints will be – or will not be – verified.’ He folded up the document and carefully placed it in his purse. ‘Come along.’
Once more, Nick gazed into the huge grotto-like chamber of the ten thousand TV screens. Like fish, he thought, the people gliding about; purple fish, both male and female, bumping together from time to time, like molecules of a liquid.
He had, then, a vision of hell. He saw them as ectoplasmic spirits, without real bodies. These police coming and going on their errands; they had given up life a long time ago, and now, instead of living, they absorbed vitality from the screens which they monitored – or, more precisely, from the people on the screens. The primitive natives in South America may be right, he thought, to believe that when someone takes a photograph of a person he steals the person’s soul. What is this, if not a million, billion, endless, procession of such pictures? Eerie, he thought. I’m demoralized; I’m thinking in superstitious terms, out of fear.
‘That room,’ the rep of the Council Chairman said, ‘is the data-source for the PSS all over the planet. Fascinating, isn’t it? All those monitoring screens… and you’re seeing just a fraction of it; strictly speaking, you’re seeing the Annex, established two years ago. The central nerve-complex is not visible from here, but take my word for it, it’s appallingly large.’
‘“Appallingly”?’ Nick asked, wondering at the choice of words. He sensed, weakly, a sort of sympathy for him on the part of the Council Chairman rep.
‘Almost one million police employees are maintained
at the peep-peep screens. A huge bureaucracy.’
‘But did it help them?’ Nick asked. ‘Today? When they made their initial roundup?’
‘Oh yes; the system works. But it’s ironically funny that it ties up so many men and man-hours, when you consider that the whole original idea was that—’
A uniformed police occifer appeared beside the two of them. ‘Get out of here and get this man to the Council Chairman.’ His tone was nasty.
‘Yes sir,’ the rep said, and led Nick down a corridor to a wide, transparent plastic front door. ‘Barnes,’ the rep said, half to himself; he frowned with disarrayed dignity. ‘Barnes is the closest man to the Council Chairman,’ he said. ‘Willis Gram has a council of ten men and women, and who does he consult? Always Barnes. Does that indicate adequate cerebral processes to you?’
Another case of a New Man putting down an Unusual, Nick realized; he made no comment as they got into a shiny red squib, which had been decorated with the official government seal.
SIXTEEN
In a small, modern office, with one of the new spider mobiles dangling above him, Nick Appleton listened listlessly to piped in music. Right now the damn thing was playing selections from Victor Herbert. Oh, Christ, Nick thought wearily; he sat hunched over, his head in his hands. Charley, he thought. Are you alive? Are you hurt, or are you okay?
He decided that she was okay. Charley wouldn’t get snuffed by anyone. She would live to a full life span: to well over one hundred and twelve years, the population average.
I wonder if I can get out of here, he thought. He found himself faced by two doors, one through which they had come, the other leading to inner, more esoteric offices. Cautiously, he tried the knob of the first door. Locked. So, with utter stealth, he approached the door leading to the inner offices; he turned the knob, held his breath, and found it locked, too.
And it set off an alarm. He could hear it clanging. Damn, he said savagely to himself.
The inner door opened; there stood Police Director Barnes, impressive in his well-decorated green uniform, the lighter green variation worn by top police circles only.
They stood staring at each other.
‘3XX24J?’ Director Barnes asked.
‘Nick Appleton. “3XX24J” is an apartment address, and not even my own. Or it was. Your men have probably looted it by now, looking for Cordonite material.’ He thought, then, for the first time, about Kleo. ‘Where is my wife?’ he demanded. ‘Was she hurt or killed? Can I see her?’ And my son, he thought. Him especially.
Barnes twisted his head, called back over his shoulder, ‘Check 7Y3ZRR and see if the woman’s in good condition. The boy, too. Let me know at once.’ He turned back to confront Nick. ‘You don’t mean that girl you had with you in that room at the 16th Avenue printing plant? You mean your legal wife.’
‘I want to know about both of them,’ Nick said.
‘The girl with you at the plant is just fine.’ He did not elaborate, but there it was, Charley had survived. He thanked God for that. ‘Do you have any more questions you want to ask me before we meet with the Council Chairman?’
Nick said, ‘I want an attorney.’
‘You can’t have one because of the enabling legislation passed last year forbidding legal representation to anyone already arrested. An attorney couldn’t have helped you anyhow, even if you had seen him before your arrest, because your crime is political in nature.’
‘What’s my crime?’ Nick said.
‘Carrying Cordonite literature. That’s ten years in a relocation camp. Being in the presence of other – known – Cordonites. Five years. Found in a building where illegal written material—’
‘I’ve heard enough,’ Nick said. ‘About forty years in all.’
‘As it stands in the books. But, if you’re helpful to me and the Council Chairman, perhaps we could run your sentences simultaneously. Let’s go in.’ He pointed at the open door and Nick, wordlessly, passed on through, into a gloriously decorated office… or was it an office? A huge bed filled half the room, and in the bed, propped up on pillows, lay Willis Gram, supreme ruler of the planet, his lunch on a tray resting on his middle. Scattered over the bed was every kind of written material possible; he made out the color-codes of a dozen government departments. It did not appear that they had been read — they were too perfect in condition: mint.
‘Miss Knight,’ Willis Gram said into the face microphone adhering to one flabby jowl, ‘come take these chicken a la king type dishes away, I’m not hungry.’
A slender, almost bosomless woman entered and whisked the tray away. ‘Would you like some—’ she began, but Gram cut her off with a chopping motion of his hand. She became instantly silent and continued on out of the room with the tray.
‘Do you know where my food comes from?’ Willis Gram asked Nick. ‘The building cafeteria, that’s where. Why the hell—’ He was speaking now to Barnes. ‘Why the hell didn’t I set up a special kitchen for myself alone? I must be insane. I think I’ll resign. You New Men are right — we’re just freaks, we Unusuals. We’re not forged from the right material to rule.’
Nick said, ‘I could take a cab over to a good restaurant like Flores’ and pick you up—’
‘No, no,’ Barnes said sharply.
Gram turned to glance at him with curiosity.
‘This man is here for an important reason,’ Barnes said hotly. ‘He is not a domestic servant. If you want a better lunch, send out one of your staff. This is the man I told you about.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Gram said, nodding. ‘Go ahead; interrogate him.’
Barnes seated himself in a stiffly-upright chair of the mid-eighteen twenties period, probably French. He brought forth a tape recorder, touched the on button.
‘Your identity,’ Barnes said.
Nick, seating himself on an overstuffed chair facing Barnes, said, ‘I thought I was brought here to see the Council Chairman.’
‘You were,’ Barnes said. ‘Chairman Gram will intervene from time to time to inquire further about the matter at hand… am I correct, Council Chairman?’
‘Yeah,’ Gram said, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. They’re all exhausted, Nick thought. Even Gram. Especially Gram. It’s been the waiting; it’s undermined them. Now that the ‘enemy’ is here, they are too enervated to respond. Except, he thought, they did do a good job on the 16th Avenue press. Perhaps the ennui did not extend down to the lower levels in the police hierarchy, perhaps only those at the top, who knew the real situation… he stopped his thoughts abruptly.
‘Interesting material circulating in your mind,’ Gram, the telepath, said.
‘That’s right,’ Nick said. ‘I forgot.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Gram said. ‘I’m exhausted. But I can be exhausted most of the time; the work is carried on by department heads who I have complete trust in.’
‘Your identity,’ Barnes said.
‘7Y3ZRR, but more recently 3XX24J,’ Nick said, capitulating at last.
‘Earlier today you were arrested at a Cordonite printing plant. Are you an Under Man?’
‘Yes,’ Nicholas Appleton said.
A moment of silence passed.
‘When,’ Barnes said, ‘did you become an Under Man, a follower of the demagogue Cordon and his vicious publications that—’
‘I became an Under Man,’ Nick said, ‘when we got back the results of our son’s Civil Service test. When I saw how they had managed to test him on the basis of questions he could never possibly know or understand; when I realized that all my years of trust in the government had been wasted. When I recalled how many people had tried to wake me up, and had not so done. Until the test results came in, and, in reading over the Xerox copy of the test, realized Bobby had never had a chance. “What are the components, predicted by Black’s formula, which will result in a network seizure on a single molecule-deep surface if the original entities at work are still operating, or if the original entities are operating, either alive or
as if alive, in Eigenwelts that overlap only one—“’
Black’s Formula. Comprehensible only to New Men. And they required a child to formulate a resultant pari passu based on the postulates of the unfathomable system.
‘Your thoughts are still of interest,’ Gram said. ‘Can you tell me who administered your son’s test?’
‘Norbert Weiss,’ Nick said. It would be a long time before he forgot that name. ‘And another man’s name was on the document. Jerome something. Pike. Pikeman.’
‘So,’ Barnes said, ‘Earl Zeta’s effect on you made its appearance only after this episode with your son. Up until then what Zeta pontificated had no—’
‘Zeta never said anything,’ Nick said. ‘It was the news of Cordon’s impending execution; I saw the effect on Zeta, and then I realized that—’ He lapsed into silence. ‘I had to protest,’ he said, ‘in some way. Earl Zeta opened the door to that way. We had a drink—’ Breaking off, he shook his head, trying to clear it; the tranquilizer was still active in his system.
‘Alcohol?’ Barnes asked. He made a holographic note of that, using a small plastic notebook and a ballpoint pen which he held nearsightedly up to his face.
‘Well,’ Gram said, ‘as the Romans said, “In vino veritas.” Do you know what that means, Mr. Appleton?’
‘“There is truth in wine.”’
Barnes said caustically, ‘There is also the saying, “That’s the bottle talking.”’
‘I believe in “In vino veritas”,’ Gram said, and belched. ‘I’ve got to eat,’ he said plaintively. ‘Miss Knight,’ he said into his face microphone, ‘send out to — where did you say, Appleton? That restaurant?’