"How'd he get out?" Max said, more baffled than angry.
"Art Heaviside, Hada's attorney, found a way; I don't know yet what it is – I have to see Circuit Court Judge Dale Winthrop, about it; he signed the release order an hour or so ago. I have an appointment with Winthrop… as soon as I've seen him, I'll call you back."
"I'll be darned," Max said slowly. "Well, we were too late." He hung up the phone reflexively and then stood deep in thought. What has Hada got going for him? he asked himself. Something I don't understand.
And now the thing to watch for, he realized, is Jim Briskin showing up on TV. On CULTURE's network.
With relief he saw on the screen – not Jim Briskin but a folksinger plucking away on a banjo.
And then he realized that the folksinger was singing about him.
"Bad Max Fischer, he saw the light,
Told Leon Lait, We got to do right.
Sent a message down to turn that key."
Listening, Max Fischer said aloud, "My God, that's exactly what happened! That's exactly what I did!" Eerie, he thought. What's it mean, this ballad singer on CULTURE who sings about what I'm doing – secret matters that he couldn't possibly know about!
Telepathic maybe, Max thought. That must be it.
Now the folksinger was narrating and plucking about Sebastian Hada, how Hada had been personally responsible for getting Jim-Jam Briskin out of jail. And it's true, Max said to himself. When Leon Lait got there to the federal pen, he found Briskin gone because of Art Heaviside's activity… I better listen pretty carefully to this singer, because for some reason he seems to know more than I do.
But the singer now had finished.
The CULTURE announcer was saying, "That was a brief interlude of political ballads by the world-renowned Ragland Park. Mr. Park, you'll be pleased to hear, will appear on this channel every hour for five minutes of new ballads, composed here in culture's studios for the occasion. Mr. Park will be watching the teletypers and will compose his ballads to -"
Max switched the set off then.
Like calypso, Max realized. New ballads. God, he thought dismally. Suppose Parks sings about Unicephalon 40-D coming back.
I have a feeling, he thought, that what Ragland Park sings turns out to be true. It's one of those psionic talents.
And they, the opposition, are making use of this.
On the other hand, he thought, I might have a few psionic talents of my own. Because if I didn't, I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have.
Seated before the TV set, he switched it on once again and waited, chewing his lower lip and pondering what he should do. As yet he could come up with nothing. But I will, sooner or later, he said to himself. And before they come up with the idea of bringing Unicephalon 40-D back…
Dr. Yasumi said, "I have solved what Ragland Park's psi talent is, Hada. You care to know?"
"I'm more interested in the fact that Jim-Jam is out of jail," Hada answered. He put down the receiver of the telephone, almost unable to believe the news. "He'll be here right away," he said to Dr. Yasumi. "He's on his way direct, by monorail. We'll see that he gets to Callisto, where Max has no jurisdiction, so they can't possibly rearrest him." His mind swirled with plans. Rubbing his hands together, he said rapidly, "Jim-Jam can broadcast from our transmitter on Callisto. And he can live at my demesne there – that'll be beer and skittles for him – I know he'll agree."
"He is out," Dr. Yasumi said dryly, "because of Rags's psi talent, so you had better listen. Because this psi talent is not understood even by Rags and, honestly to God, it could rebound on you any time."
Reluctantly, Hada said, "Okay, give me your opinion."
"Relationship between Rags's made-up ballads and reality is one of cause and effect. What Rags describes then takes place. The ballad precedes the event and not by much. You see? This could be dangerous, if Rags understood it and made use of it for own advantage."
"If this is true," Hada said, "then we want him to compose a ballad about Unicephalon 40-D returning to action." That was obvious to him instantly. Max Fischer would be merely the standby President once more, as he had originally been. Without authority of any kind.
"Correct," Dr. Yasumi said. "But problem is, now that he is making up these political-type ballads, Ragland Park is apt to discover this fact, too. For if he makes up song about Unicephalon and then it actually -"
"You're right," Hada said. "Even Park couldn't miss that." He was silent then, deep in thought. Ragland Park was potentially even more dangerous than Max Fischer. On the other hand, Ragland seemed like a good egg; there was no reason to assume that he would misuse his power, as Max Fischer had his.
But it was a great deal of power for one human being to have. Much too much.
Dr. Yasumi said, "Care must be taken as to exactly what sort of ballads Ragland makes up. Contents must be edited in advance, maybe by you."
"I want as little as possible -" Hada began, and then ceased. The receptionist had buzzed him; he switched on the intercom.
"Mr. James Briskin is here."
"Send him right in," Hada said, delighted. "He's here already, Ito." Hada opened the door to the office – and there stood Jim-Jam, his face lined and sober.
"Mr. Hada got you out," Dr Yasumi informed Jim-Jam.
"I know. I appreciate it, Hada." Briskin entered the office and Hada at once closed and locked the door.
"Listen, Jim-Jam," Hada said without preamble, "we've got greater problems than ever. Max Fischer as a threat is nothing. Now we have to deal with an ultimate form of power, an absolute rather than a relative form. I wish I had never gotten into this; whose idea was it to hire Rags Park?"
Dr. Yasumi said, "Yours, Hada, and I warned you at the time."
"I'd better instruct Rags not to make up any more new ballads," Hada decided. "That's the first step to take. I'll call the studio. My God, he might make up one about us all going to the bottom of the Atlantic, or twenty AUs out into deep space."
"Avoid panic," Dr. Yasumi told him firmly. "There you go ahead with panic, Hada. Volatile as ever. Be calm and think first."
"How can I be calm," Hada said, "when that rustic has the power to move us around like toys? Why, he can command the entire universe."
"Not necessarily," Dr. Yasumi disagreed. "There may be limit. Psi power not well understood, even yet. Hard to test out in laboratory condition; hard to
subject to rigorous, repeatable scrutiny." He pondered.
Jim Briskin said, "As I understand what you're saying -"
"You were sprung by a made-up ballad," Hada told him. "Done at my command. It worked, but now we're stuck with the ballad singer." He paced back and forth, hands in his pockets.
What'll we do with Ragland Park? he asked himself desperately.
At the main studios of CULTURE in the Earth satellite Culone, Ragland Park sat with his banjo and guitar, examining the news dispatches coming in over the teletype and preparing ballads for his next appearance.
Jim-Jam Briskin, he saw, had been released from jail by order of a federal judge. Pleased, Ragland considered a ballad on that topic, then remembered that he had already composed – and sung – several. What he needed was a new topic entirely. He had done that one to death.
From the control booth, Nat Kaminsky's voice boomed over the loudspeaker, "You about ready to go on again, Mr. Park?"
"Oh sure," Ragland replied, nodding. Actually he was not, but he would be in a moment or two.
What about a ballad, he thought, concerning a man named Pete Robinson of Chicago, Illinois, whose springer spaniel was attacked one fine day in broad daylight on a city street by an enraged eagle?
No, that's not political enough, he decided.
What about one dealing with the end of the world? A comet hitting Earth, or maybe the aliens swarming in and taking over… a real scary ballad with people getting blown up and cut in half by ray guns?
But that was too unintellectual for CULTURE; that wouldn't do either.
/> Well, he thought, then a song about the FBI. I've never done one on the subject; Leon Lait's men in gray business suits with fat red necks… college graduates carrying briefcases…
To himself, he sang, while strumming his guitar:
"Our department chief says, Hark;
Go and bring back Ragland Park.
He's a menace to conformity;
His crimes are an enormity."
Chuckling, Ragland pondered how to go on with the ballad. A ballad about himself; interesting idea… how had he happened to think of that?
He was so busy concocting the ballad, in fact, that he did not notice the three men in gray business suits with fat red necks who had entered the studio and were coming toward him, each man carrying a briefcase in a way that made it clear he was a college graduate and used to carrying it.
I really have a good ballad going, Ragland said to himself. The best one of my career. Strumming, he went on:
"Yes, they sneaked up in the dark
Aimed their guns and shot poor Park.
Stilled freedom's clarion cry
When they doomed this man to die;
But a crime not soon forgotten
Even in a culture rotten."
That was as far as Ragland got in his ballad. The leader of the group of FBI men lowered his smoking pistol, nodded to his companions, and then spoke into his wrist transmitter. "Inform Mr. Lait that we have been successful."
The tinny voice from his wrist answered, "Good. Return to headquarters at once. He orders it."
He, of course, was Maximilian Fischer. The FBI men knew that, knew who had sent them on their mission.
In his office at the White House, Maximilian Fischer breathed a sigh of relief when informed that Ragland Park was dead. A close call, he said to himself. That man might have finished me off – me and everybody else in the world.
Amazing, he thought, that we were able to get him. The breaks certainly went our way. I wonder why.
Could be one of my psionic talents has to do with putting an end to folk-singers, he said to himself, and grinned with sleek satisfaction.
Specifically, he thought, a psi talent for getting folksingers to compose ballads on the theme of their own destruction…
And now, he realized, the real problem. Of getting Jim Briskin back into jail. And it will be hard; Hada is probably smart enough to think of transporting him immediately to an outlying moon where I have no authority. It will be a long struggle, me against those two… and they could well beat me in the end.
He sighed. A lot of hard work, he said to himself. But I guess I got to do it. Picking up the phone, he dialed Leon Lait…
Oh, To Be A Blobel!
He put a twenty-dollar platinum coin into the slot and the analyst, after a pause, lit up. Its eyes shone with sociability and it swiveled about in its chair, picked up a pen and pad of long yellow paper from its desk and said, "Good morning, sir. You may begin."
"Hello, Dr. Jones. I guess you're not the same Dr. Jones who did the definitive biography of Freud; that was a century ago." He laughed nervously; being a rather poverty-stricken man he was not accustomed to dealing with the new fully homeostatic psychoanalysts. "Um," he said, "should I free-associate or give you background material or just what?"
Dr. Jones said, "Perhaps you could begin by telling me who you are und warum mich – why you have selected me."
"I'm George Munster of catwalk 4, building WEF-395, San Francisco condominium established 1996."
"How do you do, Mr. Munster." Dr. Jones held out its hand, and George Munster shook it. He found the hand to be of a pleasant body-temperature and decidedly soft. The grip, however, was manly.
"You see," Munster said, "I'm an ex-GI, a war veteran. That's how I got my condominium apartment at WEF-395; veterans' preference."
"Ah yes," Dr. Jones said, ticking faintly as it measured the passage of time. "The war with the Blobels."
"I fought three years in that war," Munster said, nervously smoothing his long, black, thinning hair. "I hated the Blobels and I volunteered; I was only nineteen and I had a good job – but the crusade to clear the Sol System of Blobels came first in my mind."
"Um," Dr. Jones said, ticking and nodding.
George Munster continued, "I fought well. In fact I got two decorations and a battlefield citation. Corporal. That's because I single-handedly wiped out an observation satellite full of Blobels; we'll never know exactly how many because of course, being Blobels, they tend to fuse together and unfuse confusingly." He broke off, then, feeling emotional. Even remembering and talking about the war was too much for him… he lay back on the couch, lit a cigarette and tried to become calm.
The Blobels had emigrated originally from another star system, probably Proxima. Several thousand years ago they had settled on Mars and on Titan, doing very well at agrarian pursuits. They were developments of the original unicellular amoeba, quite large and with a highly-organized nervous system, but still amoeba, with pseudopodia, reproducing by binary fission, and in the main offensive to Terran settlers.
The war itself had broken out over ecological considerations. It had been the desire of the Foreign Aid Department of the UN to change the atmosphere on Mars, making it more usable for Terran settlers. This change, however, had made it unpalatable for the Blobel colonies already there; hence the squabble.
And, Munster reflected, it was not possible to change half the atmosphere of a planet, the Brownian movement being what it was. Within a period of ten years the altered atmosphere had diffused throughout the planet, bringing suffering – at least so they alleged – to the Blobels. In retaliation, a Blobel armada had approached Terra and had put into orbit a series of technically sophisticated satellites designed eventually to alter the atmosphere of Terra. This alteration had never come about because of course the War Office of the UN had gone into action; the satellites had been detonated by self-instructing missiles… and the war was on.
Dr. Jones said, "Are you married, Mr. Munster?"
"No sir," Munster said. "And -" He shuddered. "You'll see why when I've finished telling you. See, Doctor -" He stubbed out his cigarette. "I'll be frank. I was a Terran spy. That was my task; they gave the job to me because of my bravery in the field… I didn't ask for it."
"I see," Dr. Jones said.
"Do you?" Munster's voice broke. "Do you know what was necessary in those days in order to make a Terran into a successful spy among the Blobels?"
Nodding, Dr. Jones said, "Yes, Mr. Munster. You had to relinquish your human form and assume the repellent form of a Blobel."
Munster said nothing; he clenched and unclenched his fist, bitterly. Across from him Dr. Jones ticked.
That evening, back in his small apartment at WEF-395, Munster opened a fifth of Teacher's scotch, sat by himself sipping from a cup, lacking even the energy to get a glass down from the cupboard over the sink.
What had he gotten out of the session with Dr. Jones today? Nothing, as nearly as he could tell. And it had eaten deep into his meager financial resources… meager because -
Because for almost twelve hours out of the day he reverted, despite all the efforts of himself and the Veterans' Hospitalization Agency of the UN, to his old war-time Blobel shape. To a formless unicellular-like blob, right in the middle of his own apartment at WEF-395.
His financial resources consisted of a small pension from the War Office; finding a job was impossible, because as soon as he was hired the strain caused him to revert there on the spot, in plain sight of his new employer and fellow workers.
It did not assist in forming successful work-relationships.
Sure enough, now, at eight in the evening, he felt himself once more beginning to revert; it was an old and familiar experience to him, and he loathed it. Hurriedly, he sipped the last of the cup of scotch, put the cup down on a table… and felt himself slide together into a homogenous puddle.
The telephone rang.
"I can't answer," he called to it. The p
hone's relay picked up his anguished message and conveyed it to the calling party. Now Munster had become a single transparent gelatinous mass in the middle of the rug; he undulated toward the phone – it was still ringing, despite his statement to it, and he felt furious resentment; didn't he have enough troubles already, without having to deal with a ringing phone?
Reaching it, he extended a pseudopodium and snatched the receiver from the hook. With great effort he formed his plastic substance into the semblance of a vocal apparatus, resonating dully. "I'm busy," he resonated in a low booming fashion into the mouthpiece of the phone. "Call later." Call, he thought as he hung up, tomorrow morning. When I've been able to regain my human form.
The apartment was quiet, now.
Sighing, Munster flowed back across the carpet, to the window, where he rose into a high pillar in order to see the view beyond; there was a light-sensitive spot on his outer surface, and although he did not possess a true lens he was able to appreciate – nostalgically – the sight of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the playground for small children which was Alcatraz Island.
Dammit, he thought bitterly. I can't marry; I can't live a genuine human existence, reverting this way to the form the War Office bigshots forced me into back in the war times…
He had not known then, when he accepted the mission, that it would leave this permanent effect. They had assured him it was "only temporary, for the duration," or some such glib phrase. Duration my ass, Munster thought with furious, impotent resentment. It's been eleven years, now.
The psychological problems created for him, the pressure on his psyche, were immense. Hence his visit to Dr. Jones.
Once more the phone rang.
"Okay," Munster said aloud, and flowed laboriously back across the room to it. "You want to talk to me?" he said as he came closer and closer; the trip, for someone in Blobel form, was a long one. "I'll talk to you. You can even turn on the vidscreen and look at me." At the phone he snapped the switch which would permit visual communication as well as auditory. "Have a good look," he said, and displayed his amorphous form before the scanning tube of the video.