The pain hurt worse and I brushed at it because it was interrupting my mood.
Something flew out onto the other pillow. I turned my head.
Face to face, I saw a note. It said:
Just to remind you that idleness don't pay. Lombar was sure you would slack off. So this serves notice that if you haven't handled Heller, it will be my duty to terminate you.
It had only a bloody dagger as signature.
Ah, so my vision was going to come true after all.
After a little while, I sat up. The beautiful cathedral music still haunted me.
I picked up the note. The rear side of it was blank.
I found a pen. I wrote on it Go ahead. I signed my name. I left it on the pillow.
It seemed the right thing to do.
Utanc would kneel in the rain. She would be sorry. At least I'd have her precious tears in mud spots on my grave.
I made sure I had no weapons in my pockets.
I walked out across the shattered mess in the patio-how similar it was to my shattered life.
With the cathedral music sounding in my ears, I walked alone through the dusk, hoping for a fatal shot that would end a life that no longer was worth living.
Perhaps, as she wept, she would sing some sad song and realize she should have been much nicer to me while I still lived.
How beautiful.
Chapter 3
I walked all night and nobody shot me.
In the cold dawn, I went to my bedroom, disappointed.
The note I had left was gone. Whoever it was that had Lombar's assignment to kill me must be pretty skilled at getting in and out of places, but I had gone all over that.
Exhausted, I got out of my clothes and got into bed. Maybe there was still hope. Maybe I would die in my sleep.
In the late afternoon, I awoke. I was disappointed to find I was still alive.
Somewhat petulantly I turned over to get out of bed.
And there, on the other pillow, not five inches in front of my eyes, was a new note! Maybe it was an apology for not having killed me last night.
I sat up. I disinterestedly turned it right way to.
It said:
While it would be a pleasure to kill you, that isn't the sequence. If Heller is not stopped, Utanc will be killed first.
A surge of shock went through me!
A scream of protest struggled to escape my constricted throat!
Without even grabbing a towel, I rushed into the patio and pressed my ear to Utanc's door.
Silence!
Maybe they had killed her already!
I dashed into the yard.
Melahat was cutting some flowers. She averted her eyes.
"Have they killed Utanc?" I demanded.
She stared at me. Then she averted her eyes again. "She was all right a few minutes ago when I took in some towels."
I wheezed with relief. Then I thought I'd better take precautions! I lifted my head and yelled real loud, "I'm working!"
Maybe that would hold them!
It seemed to confuse Melahat. But this was no time for parlor manners.
I rushed back into my room. I struggled into some clothes. I tried to think. It was difficult. What was the reason for this sudden attack?
They must know something I didn't know!
Heller. Heller was up to something!
I rushed into my secret room. I turned on the viewer. I braced myself and stood watching it. I couldn't see it well from that angle. I sat down.
Just some old parts on a table.
He looked up at that moment. He was in his office at the Empire State Building. The office had some people in it. The decor was different!
Ah, the walls. Huge murals of oil refineries decorated the walls now. They were in color. They were belching smoke. Vast vistas of tall stacks coating the sky black.
No. They were not all of refineries. One wall had a montage. Hard to make out in peripheral vision but it seemed to be birds drowning in pools of oil, flowers wilting, trees dying.
Wait. That wasn't all of them. As he turned his head I saw another mural. It seemed to be a planet festooned with hydrogen-bomb explosions.
He turned his head again. There was another one! It was a sort of fantasy drawing. Dimly seen spaceships were firing barrages at a planet that looked like Earth. Maybe the original of a magazine cover?
The people. There seemed to be quite a few people in that huge office. I still-framed the record strip so I could see how many and who. People can be dangerous.
Over at the bar, behind it, was a white-coated bartender. He was just sitting there, reading the Daily Racing Form.
There was a girl sitting on a stool at the office bar. She was dressed in a very skimpy-back gown of sequins. She had very dark, seductive eyes. She was toying with an ice-cream soda. His secretary?
Three girls were standing to Heller's right. Their skirts barely covered their hips. They had little pillbox caps at an angle on their heads. They had on short boots. Their clothing—what there was of it—was all in sparkling white, matching the shag rug. They seemed to be holding pens. His secretaries?
In my nervousness, I had had the sound off. I turned it up. In the background could be heard a very hot band playing atmosphere music. Lots of kettledrums and rolling snares, a strident trumpet rolling over the top of it.
I began to relax. My fears were not well founded. Nobody could work in that much commotion. Heller was just playing around as usual.
He seemed to be fiddling with two metal objects. He had a thick canvas spread out under them. He turned his head further. Izzy was sitting on his left.
Con man Izzy. He was in his Salvation Army suit and he had the battered briefcase on his knees. His hornrimmed glasses flashed away on either side of his beaked nose.
"You have lost me, Mr. Jet," Izzy was saying. "I just am not very bright about engineering. I know you explained it yesterday but with so many things worrying me, I couldn't retain it. I had a headache all night. My health isn't good, you know."
Heller handed a screwdriver to one of the three girls. She spun it expertly in a baton twist and slipped it into a case.
Heller made some kind of a mysterious signal. I watched it closely. A code of some sort. The barman put down his Daily Racing Form, picked up a tall glass-crystal?—and expertly began to toss a fizzing stream into another matching glass, back and forth in an arc. He put it on a silver tray and brought it to Izzy. Did Heller have Izzy on drugs?
Izzy drank it, leaving a white fizz mustache on his upper lip. The bartender courteously took the crystal back. "Was the Bromo Seltzer to the right strength, sir?"
Izzy nodded and thanked him.
Meanwhile, the slinky girl at the bar had finished her soda and left. A girl wearing almost absolutely nothing in bright red came in. She sat down on a stool. The bartender on his return started to serve her some ice cream. Another secretary?
Oh, nobody could work in an area like this. No real danger. Engineering work is very painstaking and tense. An engineering lab is stark and steely. An engineer doesn't work like this. I had been unduly alarmed.
"Your headache better?" said Heller to Izzy.
"I'm afraid it's gone," said Izzy.
"All right," said Heller. "I will explain it again. It all boils down to whether or not a society can handle force. This one doesn't seem to be able to.
"Now, pay attention. You must be able to convert matter to energy. Then you can use energy to move matter.
"Politically, financially and every other way, you have to know how to handle force. If you don't, you can blow up the whole society.
"Now, for some screwball reason, this society considers life junior to force. This is a nutty philosophy called materialism or mechanism. It is false.
"Unless this society snaps out of it and gets rid of that philosophy, which is just primitive nonsense, this society will never be able to survive.
"The fact is, it
is life that handles force! Only life gives things direction. Matter cannot control matter—it has no intentions. Life is NOT a product of matter. It is its boss!
"You want this society to get into space? Start considering that life can handle force. You want this culture to survive, realize it is life that handles force.
"Anybody telling you otherwise is not only trapping you on this planet, he is also trying to destroy it."
"Oh, dear," said Izzy. "Do you mean we'd better shoot all the psychologists and other materialists?"
"I'm not talking about shooting anybody, but it might be a good idea. They've got you trapped on this planet!"
"I abhor violence," said Izzy. "Excuse me, Mr. Jet, but you said you wanted to see me about matter conversion."
Heller looked back at his huge desk and waved his hand at it. "Well, for starters, here are a couple of matter converters."
Lying there were two metal objects, duplicates. They had a lot of parts and intricate curves. Oh, those were just those two elementary-school demonstration machines he had taken out of the box in Connecticut—the educational models. They were even all there. The rods for electrical discharge and the bags to catch the gas were included. Heller picked one up. The three girls promptly did baton twirls with three screwdrivers and presented them. He took one. The other two twirled theirs and put them back in their bags.
He started dismantling the object. He extended his hand, more baton twirls and he got more tools.
He began to shed parts all over in front of Izzy.
"I've got two," said Heller, as he worked. "So dismantling one is all right."
Izzy was staring at about forty parts, spread before him.
Heller took the one he had not dismantled. "Now, see here." He pointed to the top. "You put a rod of pure carbon in the top. The machine then reduces it by atomic conversion. Oxygen comes out this side and hydrogen comes out the other side. Electrical charge comes out on these two wires."
"Oh, dear," said Izzy.
Heller put out his hand and, after the baton twirl, got a pen.
"It's simple chemistry," said Heller. And he began to write. "Carbon has six electrons. Oxygen has eight electrons. Hydrogen has one electron. The machine simply shifts electrons in the atoms. Carbon loses its identity as carbon. Its electrons shift up and down on the periodic chart and you get oxygen and hydrogen. You then have the formula C2 -> H4 + O."
He tossed the paper at Izzy. "Oxygen and hydrogen burn when combined. Got it?"
"But... but..." floundered Izzy.
"Actually," said Heller, "the amount of energy available is higher in terms of electrical potential and the planet needs electrical engines. But nearly everything right now is powered by internal-combustion engines-cars and all that. It's a silly sort of engine. You put fuel in to get heat and then you have a cooling system to take the heat away and waste it. But people seem addicted to it so we will use it. This machine makes oxygen and hydrogen out of carbon and there's an almost unlimited supply of carbon on this planet so we're in."
"Any kind of carbon?" gaped Izzy.
"Sure. Oil, asphalt, old weeds, rags. The amount of gas volume—and I mean gas, not gasoline—you get out of solid matter approaches a billion to one. Gas is awfully full of space. So you can put a chunk of carbon in the top here. You put a pressure tank on each side of this machine to catch the gas. You put a lever to feed the amount of carbon in the top, you put a valve to use as an accelerator to regulate the gas flow into the engine itself, and you've got it."
"I haven't got it," mourned Izzy. "I'd need full engineering drawings showing every part."
Heller sighed. He held out his hand, some kind of a finger signal. One of the girls set up a drawing board with a flourish. The second waved a piece of drawing paper like a flag and pinned it on the board. The third baton-twirled two pens.
Heller went smoothly and rapidly to work. With motions so fast his hand blurred, he began to freehand perfect engineering drawings using Earth symbols.
More paper was waved and put on the board, more pens twirled and offered.
He shortly had fifteen complete engineering drawings. All of the general and particular parts of the device.
Izzy seemed suddenly to be all business. He was rolling the drawings up. "Can I have one of these models?"
Screwdrivers were baton-twirled, wrenches spun. Parts grew and the device was reassembled.
Izzy took it and put it carefully in a box.
"I'll get all this patented," he said. "I'll attribute it to an anonymous team of engineers. We don't want your name associated with anything here—because of Bury, you know." He paused. "I think the patents should be in the name of Multinational. I control that."
"Patent away," said Heller. Didn't he realize Izzy was stealing his patent? The fool. "I've got to work on this other one. I have to make the tanks and fit it on the car once I've got the car tested with its own fuel."
"You go right ahead, Mr. Jet," said Izzy. "But don't connect any part of that activity with these companies or Multinational."
"I promise," said Heller.
The three girls did a sort of dance and one of them said, "Can we have some ice-cream sodas now? We've got to get back to baton-twirling school."
"Give them some sodas," said Heller and the bartender went to work.
"Gee, ain't he cute?" said one of the girls as she sat down on a stool.
Bah, they weren't his secretaries at all, just some students from a school on the same floor. And the slinky girls who had been at the bar must be just from the model school. They were cadging ice-cream sodas. Typically New York. Decadent.
The bartender brought Heller a nonalcoholic Swiss beer.
Just as he was about to drink it, a man came bursting in the door, followed by some others with cases. The tailor!
"I'm so sorry, sir," the tailor said. "I would have waited until you were back at your rooms. But the whole production line stalled."
Heller drank some nonalcoholic beer.
A tailor's assistant came up. He had a costume. It was blue. It was like a jump suit but the front lapel buckled across the front very boldly. Another one came up. He was holding an incomplete suit just like it.
"The color," said the tailor. "We got into a dispute about the color. Blue is more ethereal. But then it suddenly occurred to us about the blood."
"Blood?" said Heller.
"Yes, you see, racing is a dangerous sport. And you want to be very suitably dressed. TV cameras are always around at racing wrecks and if you wore red, it won't show the blood. So we had to get your opinion. Don't you think red is best?"
Heller sort of snorted into his beer. Maybe it was too strong for him. "Maybe you better put some padding across the front flap. It will absorb the blood better."
"Ah," said the tailor. "Make a note of that, Thread-needle. More padding on the front. Then red will do?"
"The car is red," said Heller.
"Ah, that's such a relief. Forgive us for bothering you." They all rushed off.
Izzy had not left. He was nervously wringing his hands. "Mr. Jet. He spoke of blood. Are you sure I had not better hire security guards for you twenty-four hours a day?"
"Nonsense," said Heller. "I've got weeks of work ahead of me. Nobody will get wind of this."
"Mark my words, Mr. Jet," said Izzy. "I am responsible for you even if the companies have no connection. Rockecenter will be put right out of business if you popularize that carburetor. It could be the end of the oil industry."
"No, no," said Heller. "It can burn oil, it just won't burn much of it. And it will be totally clean."
"It could ruin him just the same," said Izzy.
I went cold. Suddenly I understood what Heller was about to do! Those (bleeped) children's demonstration kits. He was using it for a carburetor! For any car or engine!
My Gods! The very worst was happening! If Delbert John Rockecenter lost a fortune, he could also lose his c
ontrol of I. G. Barben Pharmaceutical! Lombar was right! Our arrangements with I. G. Barben would vanish! And that would be the end of Lombar's fondest dreams on Voltar!
It WAS an emergency!
And I had not caught it!
This would not wait for Krak! I had only a few weeks!
I must ACT!
Chapter 4
I had to get something effective going on this at once. Up to now, I realized, I hadn't been heavy enough on Heller.
On flying feet, I sprinted down the long, long tunnel to the office of Faht Bey.
I burst in. "Get Raht and Terb on this at once!"
He wasn't at his desk.
I tore into his living area. He was stuffing himself at the table. His wife was just getting ready to hand him another platter of kadin budu—"woman's thigh," a dish of meatballs and rice. I snatched at his arm. His wife leaped back and the platter spilled all over the floor.
Urgently, I dragged him into his office. "There's trouble in New York!" I shouted at him. "I've got to get Raht and Terb on this at once!"
He was wiping at his mouth with a napkin. He didn't look very cooperative.
"I'm working on it!" I shouted into the air.
Faht Bey said, "Raht and Terb are still in the hospital, thanks to whatever you did. They won't be out for two weeks and you know it."
Oh Gods! That was true.
"The New York office!" I cried. "You've got to send something out to the New York office. They can begin to work on it at once!" Then I lifted my head and yelled, "I'm being industrious!"
Faht Bey heard his wife crying as she tried to scrape the food off the other room's floor. It made him scowl. "Every person in the New York office is gone. They're flying all over the world trying to locate people on that list of criminals you sent. You knocked them right out of operation!"
I raised my head and shouted at the top of my lungs, "I'll think of something!"
"Why are you yelling up in the air like that?" said Faht Bey.
"In case somebody is listening," I said. Stupid fool, didn't he realize this was a national emergency?