offices and at thetop, high enough to escape the smog and feel the warmth of the sun,were the fabulous casino resorts, the mansions built by the familydynasts who controlled the cartels, and the modest, limestone buildinghousing the mockery which passed as government.
IV
Captain Hunter left the lift at Level Nineteen. An automatic entryprobe accepted his blue-tinted executive card, and he walked the shortdistance to the hotel which specialized in catering to spacemen. Itwas traditionally neutral ground, where the mercenaries ofConsolidated or United Research met as friends, although a week beforethey might have been firing radiation fire at each other in the outerreaches of space. The frontier conflict was a business to thespaceman. Hunter was too well-adjusted to become emotionally involvedin it himself.
The spacemen called their hotel the Roost, a contraction lifted fromthe public micropic code. The full name was the _Roosevelt_, letteredon the entry. The hotel was popularly supposed to have been builtclose to the site of a twentieth century Los Angeles hotel of thesame name, destroyed in the last convulsive war that had shattered theearth.
By micropic Hunter had made his customary reservation. His room washigh in an upper floor overlooking Level Twenty-three. Through thevisipanel he could see the walk-ways thronged by the variousclassifications of executives who worked in the central offices of thecartels--lawyers, engineers, administrators, directors,astrogeographers, designers, statisticians, researchers.
Somewhere in the crowd, perhaps, were the two men who ruled thecartels and directed the struggle for the Galactic empire. GlennFarren of Consolidated Solar and Werner von Rausch of UnitedResearchers. Max Hunter had never seen either of the men or any oftheir dynastic families. He knew little about them. Their pictureswere never published.
Yet Farren and Von Rausch held in their hands more despotic power,more real wealth and military might, than any ancient Khan or Caesarhad ever dreamed of.
Did they now want Ann Saymer's patent? The answer, Hunter realized,was obvious. With Ann's Exorciser, they could enslave the centers ofcivilization as they had enslaved the frontier. In itself that was aminor factor, already accomplished by man's acceptance of the jungleethics of the cartels. Far more important, if one of the cartelscontrolled the patent, it had a weapon that would ultimately destroythe other.
With trembling fingers, Hunter took Ann's last micropic from his bagand rolled the tiny film into a wall-scanner. He could have recited itby heart; yet, by reading it again, he somehow expected to extract anew meaning. The code he and Ann used, contrived for economy ratherthan secrecy, was merely a telescoping of common phrases into singleword symbols.
IHTKN, at the beginning, was easily interpreted as "I have taken," andCOMJB became "commission-job." The micropic transmission monopolyarbitrarily limited all code words to five letters or less, countingadditional letters as whole words. But because of the simplicity ofthe technique, some of Ann's symbols were open to a number ofinterpretations.
Hunter was sure of one thing. Ann had not specifically named theclinic where she was working. She said she had gone to work for thebiggest--or possibly the symbol meant best--of the private clinics.Either term could apply to the clinics run by the two cartels; or, forthat matter, to the largest of them all, operated by Eric Young'sunion.
But Ann, having invented the Exorciser, would know all its possiblemisuses--a factor which had not occurred to Hunter until Dawn spelledit out for him. Would Ann, then, have been fool enough to let herselffall into the hands of the cartels?
That line of reasoning gave Hunter new hope. If one of the cartelstried to trap her, Ann would simply go into hiding. It wouldcomplicate the problem of finding her, but at least he could assurehimself she was safe. Ann had brains to match her ambition. Shecouldn't otherwise have earned a First in Psychiatry. No, Hunter wascertain the cartels didn't have her.
The telescreen buzzer gave a plaintive bleep. Hunter jerked down theresponse toggle. Surprisingly, the screen remained dark, but Hunterheard a man's voice say clearly, "You are anxious to find Ann Saymer,Captain Hunter?"
Apparently the transmission from Hunter's screen was unimpaired, forthe speaker seemed to recognize him.
"Who is this?" Hunter asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
"A friend. We have your interest at heart, Captain. We suggest thatyou investigate United Researchers' clinic when you start looking forMiss Saymer."
The contact snapped off. Hunter sat down slowly, his mind reeling.Since only his screen had been neutralized, the machine was not atfault. Only a top-ranking cartel executive could arrange for adeliberate interruption of service. The rest followed logically. Noone in United would have given him the information.
So Ann had fallen into their hands after all! Someone inConsolidated--perhaps Glenn Farren himself--was setting him on Ann'strail, on the chance that Hunter could find her when Consolidated'soperatives had failed.
Hunter was used to the risk of long odds. He had a ten-yearapprenticeship in the treachery and in-fighting of the frontier. Therewas a good chance that he could play one cartel against the other, andin the process get Ann away from both of them.
One more thing he wanted before he planned his opening attack againstUnited Researchers--the note Ann had sent to Mrs. Ames. It might givehim a clue as to where United had taken her. Hunter wasn't naiveenough to suppose they had kept her in center-city. But perhaps shewas not even in Sector West.
* * * * *
Each of the eleven sectors into which the Earth was divided wascontrolled by one of the two cartels, as an agricultural or industrialappendage of the western metropolis. It was a paternal relationship,although no comparable city had been permitted to develop and companymercenaries policed the sectors.
Children who exhibited any spark of initiative or ability were skimmedoff from the hinterland to Sector West and thrown into the competitivestruggle of the general school. If they fought to the top there, theywere integrated as adults into the hierarchy of the cartels.
The rest became the labor force of Sector West, enrolled in EricYoung's union and crowded into the minimum housing. The teemingmillions left in the hinterland were a plodding, uninspired masscontent with trivialities. They felt neither ambition nor frustration.While the number of the mentally ill continued to multiply in SectorWest, only a fraction of the hinterland population suffered the mentaldecay.
Hunter fervently hoped United had taken Ann to one of the othersectors. Rescue would be easy. An experienced spaceman could out-talk,out-maneuver, and out-fight an entire hinterland battalion.
Max Hunter took an autojet from the Roost to Mrs. Ames' residentialapartment. Conservation of his capital no longer counted, but timedid. If United had Ann's patent, Ann herself was expendable. Hunterhad to make his move to save her before they knew what he was up to.It would be a difficult deal to pull off in the capital city, whereoperatives of both cartels swarmed everywhere.
He left his blaster in his hotel room, to avoid an interrogation atany other metro-entry. Mrs. Ames' apartment residence was one place inthe city where he had no need to go armed.
Just outside center-city a single street of twentieth century houses,sheltered by the Palos Verdes Hills, had survived the devastation ofthe last war. In the beginning the street had been preserved as amuseum piece while the cartel city had grown up around it. But witheach passing generation, popular interest had waned. Eventually thehouses had been sold.
One was now operated by a religious cult. Two were enormouslyprofitable party houses, where clients masqueraded in the amusingtwentieth century costumes and passed a few short hours living withthe quaint inconveniences of the past. The game had become soattractive that reservations were booked months in advance. The fourthrelic remained unsold, slowly falling into ruin. The fifth belonged toMrs. Ames.
To satisfy a whim--originally it was no more than that, Mrs. Ames hadassured Hunter many times--she had asked her husband to buy it for hersome fifty years ago. After a space-liner accident left her a
widow atthirty-five, she had moved into the house as a means ofpsychologically withdrawing from her grief.
She never left it again. She found the old house an island in time, amagic escape from the chaos of her world.
She took in four residents because she needed their credits to augmentthe income from her husband's estate, and the house was thenofficially listed as an apartment. Chance worked her a miracle--orperhaps the house did possess a magic of its own--for the residentswere as charmed by its inconveniences as Mrs. Ames had been. Annwouldn't consider living anywhere else, although the house was morethan a mile from her university. Even Hunter felt the indefinablespell, when he was in from a flight and went to see Ann.
It was a house that invited relaxation. It was a house where timeseemed to be stated in a value that could not be measured withcredits. It was a house that whispered, "I saw one world fall intodust; yours is no more eternal"--and, for a moment,