With much trouble and care she had mothered an enterprise that coped with all the difficulties. Now, suddenly, the sheeting Yatakangis had laid a long black shadow of disaster half around the world. They were not merely offering for free a chance hitherto denied to all but the richest families—they were intending to insist on it. The child born of any womb could be a genius, a Venus, an Adonis …
And if their further claim was true, who would want a run-of-the-mill child when there were going to be improved versions with unguessable new talents?
From her desk she picked up its only ornament, a conch-shell of exceptionally vivid colouring, and threw it at the window overlooking the busy city. It fell in pieces to the floor. The glass was unmarked, and the universe outside was still there.
continuity (14)
THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB
There was no longer a real world. It receded from him like the half-grasped images of a dream: epitome of the uncertainty principle, torn asunder by the effort of clutching them. It was already hazy when he committed himself to the East River acceleratube, and the last shreds dissipated behind the plane which arced him across the continent on the fringe of empty space, where the stars might be like white-hot needles if they could be seen.
They were, of course, not seen. Through radiation shielding and crash protection and layers of heat insulation that at re-entry glowed (by report) dull red, the stars could not penetrate to the eyes of Donald Hogan.
He thought of Chad Mulligan asking when last he saw the stars—asking when Norman last got wet in the rain—fading, illusory, spawn of a drug. A woman in the next seat spent the journey chuckling to herself, making a wholly personal trip, and he sometimes caught a sweetish whiff of something she had in a smelling-bottle with a foam wad closing the neck. He thought at one point she was going to offer it to him, but she changed her mind.
Why kill a man you’ve never seen before? The pilot of the shot-down copter, whose skull the crowd had smashed, seemed more real to him than Norman, than Chad, than anyone. The abstract truth of that death grew solid in his mind, making him think of Haldane’s argument that an intelligent bee would conceive ideas like “duty” to be concrete.
If they wished to, legally they could put a weapon in his hand and tell him to go across the Pacific Conflict Zone to kill strangers. They did it daily to hundreds of young men picked by an anonymous computer. The New York rioters had been armed, too, and that was called crime. Between that act and this ran only the tenuous dividing line called an order.
From whom? In these days, from a man? Probably not. His illusion on Fifth Avenue outside the library, therefore, was not illusion. First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then…?
Then you serve machines. It was obvious. It followed so logically it was almost comforting. And Guinevere was right after all to make the clients of her Beautiques into glossy factory products.
It was even clear why people, including Donald Hogan, were willing to accept the instructions of a machine. Many others besides himself must have discovered that serving human beings felt like treachery—like selling out to the enemy. Every man and woman was the enemy. Biding their time, perhaps, masking their intentions with fine polite words, but in the end clubbing to death you, a stranger on their own home street.
* * *
They opened the can-container of the plane and spilled the passengers like pilchards into the warm hesitant sun of early Californian summer. The expressport was featureless, like an aircraft carrier, its passenger terminal and service depots sheltered by a thickness of earth from the risk of a crash and an explosion. Accordingly what he saw of the sunlight was through armour-glass, and he did not smell the salt air off the ocean but the perfumed exhaust of the conditioning system. The burrow-like passages divided him from the last vestiges of the world he had left on the other coast, seeming to force his thinking into an analogue of their uncompromising square section with sharp right angles where they joined. Everything seemed new and improbable, as though he were under a drug that destroyed perceptual sets. The spectacle of so many men and women in uniform was a source of wonder: the olive-drab of Army, the dark blue of Navy, the light blue of Air, the black and white of Space. The PA system uttered cryptic orders full of numerical and lettered codes until in addition to visual confusion he began to lose control over his auditory faculties, imagining that he was in a country he had never heard of where they spoke the staccato language of machines: 01101000101 …
A clock told him what time it was and his watch assured him the clock was a liar. Posters warned him about danger from spies and he began to be afraid of himself because he was a spy. A rope fence hung on coloured metal poles isolating a branch corridor down which char-marks and bright scratches suggested an explosion. An unknown hand had chalked on the wall DREKY REDS. A man went by holding his head consciously high: eyes aslant, complexion marginally yellow, a Nisei badge pinned to his shirjack seeming like the flimsiest of armour. More uniforms, this time the blue and black of police, scrutinising everyone. On galleries there were zoom TV cameras and a team of four men were collecting all the fingerprints that accumulated on the escalator handrails and taking them to a computer readin to be checked against headquarters files. ASK THE MAN WHO’S MARRIED TO MARY JANE.
But STOMP THAT ROACH.
“Lieutenant Hogan?” a voice said. TUNE IN AND TURN ON TO THE WORLD IN A RADIO-DRESSLET.
But KEEP THE WORLD AT BAY THROUGH SAFE-T-GARD INC.
“Lieutenant Hogan!” HERE TODAY AND GONE TODAY IS THE PIDGIN WE PLUCK.
But SEE IT THROUGH THE EVERYWHERES’ EYES …
He wondered if Sergeant Schritt was supposed to have been on his plane; he wondered if the man had managed to get as drunk as he wanted; he wondered if oblivion had brought surcease. That was the last and final courtesy he paid to the dead alien world of the past decade. It was out of reach now, receding along the fourth dimension at the speed of light. It had been his, private, like the illusions of a hitripper, and as Chad had promised the real world had reserved its unique power to take him by surprise.
He said, listening with interest to the disbelief in his voice, “Yes, I’m Hogan. Were you sent to meet me and take me to Boat Camp?”
* * *
Among the dead-whale hulls of military craft soiling the once-fine beaches, the incongruously small, incongruously bright and incongruously noisy cockleshell of a cushioncraft ferried him and his anonymous companion over the rolling inshore surf towards the Devil’s Island bulk of Boat Camp on the skyline. Clambering among the struts supporting the vast main platform as though preparing to return to the simpler and less dangerous universe of the race’s monkey ancestors, recruits in full combat gear struggled to evade their sergeant’s wrath.
* * *
“I sent to Washington to have you re-evaluated,” said the colonel he was brought to see. “It’s something I’d have thought they’d make sure you appreciated before recruiting you, let alone activating you—that no individual has the whole picture, or even enough of it to make trustworthy judgments on his own initiative. However, I see your special aptitude is pattiducking, so you have a marginal chance of being right more often than most people. Don’t do it again, is all.”
“My special aptitude is what—sir?”
“Pattiducking! Pattern generation by deductive and inductive reasoning!” The colonel pushed his fingers through his hair in a combing movement.
Another barrier went up between Donald and the man he had believed himself to be. It made no real difference—the past was already out of reach. But he had always cherished that talent as something particularly his own, and in a ghostly fashion he was hurt to find it was well enough known to have a nickname.
“What is it I’m not supposed to do again, sir?” he demanded.
“Jump to conclusions, of course!” the colonel rapped. “I guess you decided it was a foregone conclusion that your mission was connected with this new genetics programme, but you sheeting we
ll shouldn’t have pre-guessed an official decision to shed the cover Delahanty gave you.”
Shed?… Oh. He means tell Norman and the others that I’d been instructed to leave New York.
Donald shrugged and remained silent.
“You have your sealed orders with you?” the colonel asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Give them here.”
Donald handed over the package. The colonel scanned the documents it contained and placed them in a chute alongside his desk labelled Destruct Secret Material. Pressing a button, he sighed.
“I don’t yet have the full details of your revised cover,” he said. “As I understand it, though, the official announcement from Yatakang means that more foreign visitors than usual can be fed into the country convincingly by the regular channels. You’ll find them a sight easier than the irregular ones.” His eyes wandered to the office’s single window, which overlooked a parade-floor where a group of raw draftees were doubling to and fro.
“Broadly, at all events, you’re to be sent in openly as a freelance scientific reporter accredited to SCANALYZER and Engrelay Satelserv. It’s perfectly authentic, and before you raise the point I’ll say that your lack of experience is of no consequence. You need only ask the kind of questions legitimate journalists will be asking about the eugenics programme. You’ll be given a certain amount of additional information, however. Most importantly, you will be the only foreign reporter in Yatakang with facilities for contacting Jogajong.”
Donald stiffened and his scalp began to crawl.
I didn’t know he was back there! If he’s what they claim him to be I’m liable to walk into a civil war!
Mistaking Donald’s dismay for incomprehension, the colonel rasped, “Don’t you know who I mean?”
“Yes, sir,” Donald muttered. Nobody who had had to learn contemporary idiomatic Yatakangi could have avoided mention of Jogajong. Jailed four times by the Solukarta government, banned titular head of the Yatakangi Freedom Party, leader of an abortive revolt after which he had had to flee the country, author of books and pamphlets which still circulated despite police seizures and public burnings …
“Any questions?” the colonel said suddenly, sounding bored.
“Yes, sir. Several.”
“Hah! Very well, let’s hear them. But I warn you, I’ve told you as much as you’re supposed to know at this stage.”
That disposed of about four questions immediately. Donald hesitated.
“Sir, if I’m going to be sent openly to Yatakang, why was I told to come to Boat Camp? Won’t they be suspicious if they find out I’ve been at a military establishment?”
The colonel thought that over. He said at length, “I believe that’s answerable on current terms of reference. It’s a question of security. Boat Camp is secure. Land-based installations often aren’t. Come to think of it, I’ll tell you an educational story which may drive home what you’re up against.
“A certain base on shore was overlooked from a hillside which was good for flying kites. One boy about fourteen or fifteen used to go up there to fly a specially fine box-kite he’d built himself, about five feet high. And he’d been doing this daily for two mortal months before one of the base officers wondered how come he never spent his vacation from school doing anything but play with a kite. He went up and on the end of that kite’s cord he found a recorder, and on the kite itself a miniature TV camera. And this kid—no more than fifteen, mind—threw a knife, took him in the thigh, and tried to strangle him. Point made?”
Donald agreed with a slight shudder.
“And there’s a further reason, of course. It’s the best place to eptify you for your mission.”
“Major Delahanty told me about that,” Donald said slowly. “It’s still not quite clear to me.”
“Eptification is derived from an acronym—EPT stands for ‘education for particular tasks’. Most softasses don’t take the idea seriously. To them it’s just one more among a horde of commercial panaceas which conmen are using to part the marks from their money. And that’s partly true, of course, because to use the technique properly you more or less have to have had it done to you, and we don’t turn many people we’ve done it to back into civilian life.”
“You mean that afterwards I’m not going to—?”
“I’m not talking about you specifically,” the colonel cut in. “I’m saying that in principle there’s not much application for it outside the service!”
“But if I’m going to be required to pose as a reporter—”
“What’s that got to do with it? You only need to feed back facts. They’ll be monitored and edited in this country. Engrelay Satelserv has a staff of experts to look after that end of the problem.”
Confused, Donald said, “I seem to have missed the point somewhere. When you said lack of experience as a reporter didn’t matter, I naturally assumed…”
He broke off. The colonel was regarding him with mingled amusement and contempt.
“Yes, you do make a lot of assumptions, don’t you? We’re not in business to provide the beam agencies with star talent, though—as you’d have figured out if you’d stopped to think! Anyhow, that’s not what you need eptification in.”
“What, then?”
“In four short days,” the colonel said, “you’re going to be eptified to kill.”
tracking with closeups (14)
LIGHT THE TOUCHPAPER AND RETIRE
There were still a few openings left for one-man businesses even in this age of automation, computers and the grand cartel. Jeff Young had found one.
Whistling, he limped down the narrow alley between two rows of tape-controlled machine-tools, a lean man in his early forties with receding dark hair and heavy rings under his eyes suggesting a slight, not socially reprehensible habit—possibly a stimulant like Procrozol with a strong insomniac side-effect. He did in fact get less sleep than most people; furthermore he acted as though he was always a trifle pepped. But it wasn’t due to any kind of drug.
He carried a small plastic sack. At one of the whining lathes he halted and set the neck of the sack against the swarf-hopper. From it he spilled half a pound of fine magnesium chips and curls.
Then he crossed to a sander which was buffing the grey surface of a piece of cast iron into mirror smoothness and added a dredging of iron filings.
Still whistling, he hobbled out of the machine-shop and closed the doors. The lighting went off automatically—tape-controls didn’t need to see what they were doing.
The only other member of his staff, a shiggy who sometimes struck customers as too stupid even to act as mouthpiece for a gang of lathes and mills, had already left the front office for home. Nonetheless he called her name and listened for a reply before approaching a row of shallow aquaria ranged along the room’s rear wall. Small bright fish gazed uncomprehendingly as he dipped a hook into the water of each in turn and withdrew from concealment in the fine white sand at the bottom a series of plastic globes half-full of something cloudy and brown.
Satisfied, he replaced the globes, set the burglar alarms, and turned on the lumino sign identifying this as the home of Jeff Young Custom Metalwork—Functional and Artistic Designs Executed.
The sack dangling from his fingers, he locked up and headed for the rapitrans.
* * *
Having eaten a leisurely meal watching his new but not ostentatiously expensive holographic TV, he left home again at eleven-ten poppa-momma, carrying the sack in a small black satchel. He took the rapitrans to a station where very few people stopped after sunset, a beach stop favoured by sunners and surfers, isolated between the sprawling tentacles of the city because here the ground was too weak to bear the weight of buildings of economic height. He had established the habit of a nightly constitutional along the beach over several years. It was one of the things that kept his sleeping-time down.
He wandered at a leisurely pace until he was out of sight of the rapitrans. Then, with sudden swift purpose, he
dodged into the total shadow of some ornamental bushes and opened the satchel. From it he withdrew a mesh mask and put it on. Then he sprayed the plastic sack with an aerosol which would destroy both the greasy trace of fingerprints and the giveaway epidermal cells which might have rubbed off on it.
Finally he took out a bolt-gun—legitimately owned, licensed by the fuzzy-wuzzies as suitable for a man owning a valuable machine-shop—and moved on along the beach.
He came to the prearranged rendezvous and stopped, checking his watch. He was two minutes early. Shrugging, he stood in silence, and waited.
Shortly a voice addressed him out of the darkness. It said, “Over here—this way.”
He turned towards the sound. The voice had been male, but beyond that he could tell nothing about the owner. Dealing with partisans, that was the way he preferred things to be. Almost certainly he was in the field of a black-light projector, so he acted as though the invisible speaker could watch every movement he made.
With his gun he indicated a point on the sand near his feet. A small package arced through the air and landed with a thud. Dropping on one knee, putting down the satchel but not the gun, he felt its contents and gave a nod. He exchanged the package for the plastic sack, rose, and took a couple of paces backward. By now his vision had adjusted fully to the dimness, and he could see that the person who emerged from shadow to collect the sack was not the one who had spoken, but a shiggy, probably young, certainly with a good figure.
Bending—slowly, so as not to alarm the man waiting in the background—he selected a stick and with it wrote upside-down words on the sand.
WHAT FOR?
A muted chuckle. The man said, “It’ll be in the news tomorrow.”
THINK I’D SELL YOU OUT?
“I’ve stayed free for eighteen months,” the man said. “It wasn’t by advertising my movements.”