“Oh, that artist,” Major Geschenko said disdainfully, “he has much talent. An inventive mind. Don’t ignore that. He’s kept us going a long time, both of us, my friend. East and West.”
“This is the worst news—” Lars began.
“But interesting,” Major Geschenko said. He glanced from Lars to Lilo. “Pitiful.”
“Yes, pitiful,” Lars said thickly.
TWENTY - ONE
After a pause Lilo said starkly, “You realize what this means. Now they can go directly to him, whoever draws that ghastly, gutterish comic. They don’t need us, Lars; not ever again.”
Major Geschenko murmured, with caustic but high-born politeness, “Go to him for what, Miss Topchev? What do you think he has? Do you think he’s held anything back?”
“There’s no more,” Lars said. “The man’s in business, writing a comic strip. His inventions have been completely spurious all along.”
“But all along,” Major Geschenko pointed out in his urbane, mild, devastatingly insulting way, “this was exactly proper for the need. Now that is no longer true. The Blue Cephalopod Man cannot fly through space and knock the alien satellites down with his fist. We are not able to call on him—he will not show up. A satire on ourselves has duped us for years. The artist will be amused. Obviously he is a degenerate. That vulgar strip—and I notice it is English-language, the official language of Wes-bloc—shows that.”
Lars said, “Don’t blame him if telepathically, in some crazy goddam way, we’ve been picking up his ideas.”
Lilo said, “They won’t ‘blame’ him; they’ll just shake him down. They’ll pick him up and bring him to the Soviet Union, to the Pavlov Institute, try with all they have available to get out of him what they haven’t got out of us. Just in case it might be there.” She added, “I’m glad I’m not him.” She seemed, in fact, relieved now. Because, as she understood the situation, the pressure was off her, and to her, in her immaturity, that was what mattered.
“If you’re so glad,” Lars said to her, “at least don’t show it. Try to keep it to yourself.”
“I’m beginning to think,” Lilo said, “that it’s exactly what they deserve.” She giggled. “It’s really funny. I’m sorry for that artist in Southern Ghana, but can’t you laugh, Lars?”
“No.”
“Then you’re as crazy as him.” She gestured in Major Geschenko’s direction, contemptuously, with a new, spirited superiority.
“Can I make a vidphone call?” Lars asked Major Geschenko.
“I suppose.” Geschenko again beckoned to an aide, spoke to him in Russian; Lars found himself being escorted down a hallway to a public vidphone booth.
He dialed Lanferman Associates in San Francisco and asked for Pete Freid.
Pete looked overworked and not in the mood for receiving calls. Seeing who it was, he gave forth a meager gesture of salutation. “What’s she like?”
“She’s young,” Lars said. “Physically attractive, I would say sexy.”
“Then your problems are over.”
“No,” Lars said. “Oddly, my problems aren’t over. I have a job I want you to do. Bill me for it. If you can’t do it yourself or won’t do it—”
“Don’t make a speech. Just say what it is.”
Lars said, “I want every back issue of The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan rounded up. A complete file from issue number one, volume one.” He added, “It’s a 3-D comic book. You know, the lurid kind that wiggles when you look at it. I mean, the girls wiggle—breasts, pelvic area, all there is to wiggle. The monsters salivate.”
“Okay.” Pete scratched himself a memo. “The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan. I’ve seen it, although it’s not made for North America. My kids seem to get hold of it anyhow. It’s one of the worst, but it’s not illegal, not outright pornographic. Like you say, the girls wiggle but at least they don’t—”
“Go over every issue,” Lars said. “With your best engineers. Thoroughly. List every weapons item employed in all the sequences. Check out which are ours and Peep-East’s. Draw up accurate specs, anyhow as accurate as you can, based on the data given in the comic book sequences.”
“Okay.” Pete nodded. “Well, go ahead.”
“Make a third list of all weapons items that are not ours and are not Peep-East’s. In other words unknown to us. Maybe there won’t be any but maybe there will. Have them, if possible, made into accurate specs; I want mockups and—”
“Did you and Lilo come up with anything?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“It’s called a steam engine. Donkey type.”
Pete regarded him. “Seriously.”
“Seriously.”
“They’ll massacre you.”
“I know that,” Lars said.
“Can you get away? Back to Wes-bloc?”
“I can try; I can run. But there’s other things that are more important at this moment. Now listen. Job number two, which you will actually do first. Contact KACH.”
“Right.” Jot-jot.
“Have them investigate all persons responsible for preparing, drawing, making up the dummies, writing the script ideas. In other words, go into the human sources of all the material in the comic book The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan.”
“Will do.” Pete scratched away.
“Urgently.”
“Urgently.” Pete wrote that. “And report to whom?”
“If I’m back in Wes-bloc, to me. If not, then to you. Next job.”
“Shoot, Mr. God, sir.”
“Vidphone on an emergency line the S.F. branch of the FBI. Tell them to instruct their team here in the field at Fairfax, Iceland, to—” And he stopped, because the screen had gone blank. The set was dead.
Somewhere along the line of the Soviet secret police who had been monitoring the call had pulled the plug.
It was astonishing that they hadn’t done so sooner.
He left the booth, stood pondering. Down the corridor waited two KVB men. No other way out.
Yet somewhere in Fairfax the FBI had holed itself up. If he somehow got to them he might be able to—
But they had orders to cooperate with the KVB. They would simply turn him back over to Major Geschenko.
It’s still that wonderful world, he thought, in which everyone cooperates—unless you happen to be the sole person who has ceased to cooperate and who would like to get out. Because there is no longer an out; all the roads lead back here.
He might as well eliminate the middlemen and deal directly with Major Geschenko.
So, reluctantly, he returned to the motel room.
At the table Geschenko, Dr. Todt and Lilo Topchev still sat, drinking coffee and reading the homeopape. This time they were conversing in German. Multilingual bastards, Lars said to himself as he sat down.
“Wie geht’s?” Dr. Todt asked him.
“Traurig,” Lilo said. “Können Sie nicht sehen? What happened, Lars? Did you phone up General Nitz and ask him to please take you home? And he said no, and don’t bother me, because you’re now under the jurisdiction of the KVB, even though Iceland is supposedly neutral ground. Nicht wahr?”
To Major Geschenko, Lars said, “Major, I am officially asking permission to discuss my situation alone with a rep from the United States police agency, the FBI. Will you grant that?”
“Easily managed,” Geschenko said. A KVB man, abruptly entering the room, surprised all of them. Geschenko included. He approached the major, presenting him with a typed, not a Xeroxed, document. “Thank you,” Geschenko said, and silently read the document. Then he lifted his head to confront Lars. “I think your idea is a good one—to sequester all the back-issues of The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan and to have KACH run a thorough analysis on the strip’s creators. We, of course, are already doing both ourselves, but there’s no reason why your people can’t duplicate it. However, to save time—and time, I should remind you, is in this case essential—I advance very respectfully the idea
that you ask your business associates in San Francisco whom you just now conversed with to notify us of any useable material which they might uncover. After all, it is an American city that has been the first object of attack.”
Lars said, “If I can speak to an FBI man, yes. If not, no.”
“I told you already that it was easy to arrange.” Geschenko addressed his aide again in Russian.
Lilo said, “He’s telling him to go out, stay five minutes, return and say in English that the FBI entourage here at Fairfax can’t be located.”
Glancing at her, Major Geschenko said irritably, “In addition to all else you could be arraigned under Soviet law for interfering with security operations. It would be a charge of treason, punishable by death before a firing squad. So why don’t you for once in your life shut up?” He looked genuinely angry; he had lost his poise and his face was dark red.
Lilo murmured. “Sie können Sowjet Gericht und steck’—”
Interrupting, Dr. Todt said firmly, “My patient, Mr. Powderdry, seems under great stress, due especially to this last interchange. Would you object, Major, if I gave him a tranquilizer?”
“Go ahead, doctor,” Geschenko said grouchily. He waved curtly, dismissing his aide—without having reinstructed him, Lars observed.
From his black medical bag Dr. Todt brought several bottles, a flat tin, a number of folders of free samples of the sort distributed by the large ethical pharmaceutical houses in incredible numbers all over the world, new drugs as yet untested and not on the market; he had, wearisomely, always been interested in the latest in medications. Mumbling, calculating to himself, Todt sorted among them, lost in his own idiosyncratic universe.
Again an aide brought Geschenko a document. He studied it silently, then said, “I have preliminary information on the artist who is the creator of The Blue Man abomination. Would you care to hear it?”
“Yes,” Lars said.
“I couldn’t care less,” Lilo said.
Dr. Todt continued to root about in his overfilled black medical bag.
Reading from the document presented him, Major Geschenko summarized for Lars’ benefit the info which the Soviet intelligence-apparatus, acting at top speed, had assembled. “The artist is named Oral Giacomini. A Caucasian of Italian origin who migrated to Ghana ten years ago. He is in and out of a mental institution in Calcutta—and not a reputable one at that. Without electroshock and thalamic-suppressors he would be in a complete autistic schizophrenic withdrawal.”
“Jeez,” Lars said.
“Further, he is an ex-inventor. For instance, his Evolution Rifle. He actually built one, about twelve years ago, had it patented in Italy. Probably for use against the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” Geschenko set down the document on the table; coffee stained it at once, but he did not seem to give a good goddam, Lars noticed; the major was as disgusted as he himself. “Oral Giacomini’s ideas, as analyzed by the second-rate psychiatrists at Calcutta, consist of worthless, grandiose, schizophrenic delusions of world-power. And this is the lunatic nonentity whose mentality you—” he shook his fist, futilely, at Lars and Lilo— “have seen fit to tap as the inspiration for your ‘weapons’!”
“Well,” Lars said presently, “that’s the weapons fashion designing biz.”
Dr. Todt closed his medical bag at last and sat regarding them.
“You have my tranquilizer?” Lars asked. Dr. Todt had something in his hands, resting on his lap out of sight.
“I have here,” Dr. Todt said, “a laser pistol.” He displayed it, pointing it at Major Geschenko. “I knew I had it somewhere in my bag, but it was under everything else. You are under arrest, Major, for holding a Wes-bloc citizen captive against his will.”
From his lap he produced a second object, a minute audio communications-system, complete with microphone, earphone and antenna. Snapping it on he spoke into the flea-size mike. “Mr. Conners? J. F. Conners, please?” He explained, for the benefit of Lars, Lilo and Major Geschenko, “Conners is in charge of FBI operations here at Fairfax. Um. Mr. J. F. Conners? Yes. We are at the motel. Yes, Apt. six. Where they first brought us. Evidently they plan to transport Mr. Powderdry to the Soviet Union when they return Miss Topchev and are awaiting transport-connections at this moment. There are KVB agents all over so—well, okay. Thanks. Yes. And thank you again.” He shut off the communications-system and restored it to his medical bag.
They sat inertly, saying nothing and then presently outside the door of the motel room there was a flurry of sharp, abrupt noise. Grunts, labored, and muffled thumps, a voiceless cat-fight of confusion that lasted several minutes. Major Geschenko looked philosophical but not very happy. Lilo, on the other hand, seemed petrified; she sat bolt-upright, her face stark.
The door snapped spring-like open. An FBI man, one of those who had brought Lars to Iceland, peered in, laser pistol sweeping potentially everything in the room with its ability to include them all as targets. However, he did not fire but merely entered, followed by a second FBI man who had somehow, in what had happened, lost his tie.
Major Geschenko rose to his feet, unbuttoned his holster, silently turned over his side arm to the FBI men.
“We’ll go back to New York now,” the first man said to Lars.
Major Geschenko shrugged. Marcus Aurelius could not have achieved more stoic resignation.
As Dr. Todt and Lars moved toward the door with the two FBI men, Lilo Topchev suddenly said, “Lars! I want to come along.”
The two FBI men exchanged glances. Then one spoke into his lapel-mike, conversed inaudibly with an unseen superior. All at once he said brusquely to Lilo, “They say okay.”
“You may not like it there,” Lars said. “Remember, dear—we’re both out of favor.”
“I still want to come,” Lilo said.
“Okay,” Lars said, and thought of Maren.
TWENTY - TWO
In the park in Festung Washington, D.C. the aged, feeble, shabbily dressed war veteran sat mumbling to himself and watching the children playing, and then he saw, making their way without haste down the wide gravel path, two second lieutenants from the Wes-bloc Air Arm Academy, youths of nineteen with clean, scrubbed, beardless but arrestingly, unusually intelligent faces.
“Nice day,” the ancient hulk said to them, nodding.
They paused briefly. That was enough.
“I fought in the Big War,” the old man cackled, with pride. “You never saw combat but I did; I was main-man for a front-line T.W.G. Ever seen a T.W.G. recoil ’cause of an overload, when the input-line circuit-breaker fails, and the induction field shorts? Fortunately I was off a distance so I survived. Field hospital. I mean a ship. Red Cross. I was laid up months.”
“Gee,” one of the shavetails said, out of deference.
“Was that in the Callisto revolt six years ago?” the other asked.
The ancient cobwebbed shape swayed with brittle mirth. “It was sixty-three years ago. I been running a fixit shop since. Until I got to bleeding internally and had to quit except for small work. Apt appliances. I’m a first-rate swibble man: I can fix a swibble that otherwise—” He wheezed, unable to breathe momentarily.
“But sixty-three years ago!” the first shavetail said. He calculated. “Heck, that was during World War Two; that was 1940.” They then both stared at the old veteran.
The hunched, dim, stick-like figure croaked, “No, that was 2005. I remember because my medal says so.” Shakily, he groped at his tattered great-cloak. It seemed to disintegrate as he poked at it, turning further into dust. He showed them a small metal star pinned to his faded shirt.
Bending, the two young commissioned officers read the metal surface with its raised figures and letters.
“Hey, Ben. It does say 2005.”
“Yeah.” Both officers stared.
“But that’s next year.”
“Let me tell you about how we beat ‘em in the ‘Big War,’” the old vet wheezed, tickled to have an audience. “It was a long war; sheoot
, it seemed like it’d never end. But what can you do against T.G. warp? And that’s what they found out. Were they surprised!” He giggled, wiped then at the saliva that had sputtered from his sunken lips. “We finally came up with it; of course we had all those failures.” With disgust he hawked, spat onto the gravel. “Those weapons designers didn’t know a thing. Stupid bastards.”
“Who,” Ben said, “was the enemy?”
It took a long time before the old veteran could grasp the nature of the question and when he did his disgust was so profound as to be overwhelming. He tottered to his feet, moved shufflingly away from the two young officers. “Them. The slavers from Sirius!”
After a pause the other second lieutenant seated himself on the other side of the old war veteran and then, thoughtfully, he said to Ben, “I think—” He made a gesture.
“Yeah,” Ben said. To the old man he said, “Pop. Listen. We’re going below.”
“Below?” The old man cringed, confused and frightened.
“The kremlin,” Ben said. “Subsurface. Where UN-W Natsec, the Board, is meeting. General Nitz. Do you know who General George Nitz is?”
Mumbling, the veteran pondered, tried to remember. “Well, he was way up there,” he said finally.
“What year is this?” Ben said.
The old man eyed him gleefully. “You can’t fool me. This is 2068. Or—” The momentarily bright eyes dimmed over, hesitantly. “No, it’s 2067; you were trying to catch me. But you didn’t, did you? Am I right? 2067?” He nudged the young second lieutenant.
To his fellow officer, Ben said, “I’ll stay here with him. You get a mil-car, official. We don’t want to lose him.”
“Right.” The officer rose, sprinted off in the direction of the kremlin’s surface-installations. And the funny thing was he kept thinking over and over again, inanely, as if it had any bearing: What the hell was a swibble?
TWENTY - THREE
On the subsurface level of Lanferman Associates, more or less directly beneath the mid-California town of San Jose, Pete Freid sat at his extensive work-bench, his machines and tools inert, silent, off.