“‘Not so perpendicular,’” Pete said, quoting the great old-time composer and poet of the last century, Marc Blitzstein.
Flaring up, Miss Bedouin said, “I am too perpendicular. That’s what I just now told you. And not only that—”
She ceased, because a small, elderly man with the final glimmerings of white hair coating irregularly a pinkish, almost glowing scalp, had abruptly appeared by their booth. He wore ancient lens-glasses, carried a briefcase, and his manner was a mixture of timidity and determination, as if he could not turn back now, but would have liked to.
Pete said, “A salesman.”
“No,” Miss Bedouin said. “Not well dressed enough.”
“Process-server,” Lars said; the elderly, short gentleman had an official look to him. “Am I right?” he asked.
The elderly gentleman said haltingly, “Mr. Lars?”
“That’s me,” Lars said; evidently his guess had been correct.
“Autograph collector,” Miss Bedouin said, in triumph. “He wants your autograph, Mr. Lars; he recognizes you.”
“He’s not a bum,” Pete added reflectively. “Look at that stickpin in his tie. That’s a real cut stone. But who today wears—”
“Mr. Lars,” the elderly gentleman said, and managed to seat himself precariously at the rim of the booth. He laid his briefcase before him, clearing aside the sugar, salt and empty coffee cups. “Forgive me that I am bothering you. But—a problem.” His voice was low, frail. He had about him a Santa Claus quality, and yet he had come on business, something firmer and without sentiment. He employed no elves and he was not here to give away toys. He was an expert: it showed in the way he rooted in his briefcase.
All at once Pete nudged Lars and pointed. Lars saw, at an empty booth near the door, two younger men with vapid, cod-like, underwater faces; they had entered along with this odd fellow and were keeping an eye on matters.
At once Lars reached into his coat, whipped out the document he carried constantly with him. To Miss Bedouin he said, “Call a cop.”
She blinked, half-rose to her feet.
“Go on,” Pete said roughly to her; then, raising his voice, said loudly, “Somebody get a cop!”
“Please,” the elderly gentleman said, pleadingly but with a trace of annoyance. “Just a few words. There’s something we don’t understand.” He now had in sight pics, glossy color shots which Lars recognized. These consisted of KACH-accumulated reproductions of his own earlier sketches, the 260 through 265 sequence, plus shots of final accurate specs drawn up for presentation to Lanferman Associates.
Lars, unfolding his document, said to the elderly man, “This is a writ of restraint. You know what it says?”
Distastefully, with reluctance, the elderly man nodded.
“‘Any and every official of the Government of the Soviet Union,’” Lars said, “‘of Peoples’ China, Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic,—’”
“Yes, yes,” the elderly gentleman agreed, nodding.
“‘—and all other ethnic or national entities comprising the political entity Peep-East, is restrained and enjoined during the pendency of this action from harassing, annoying, molesting, threatening or striking the plaintiff—myself, Lars Powderdry—or in any manner occupying him or being upon or within proximity so that—’”
“Okay,” the elderly gentleman said. “I am a Soviet official. Legally I cannot talk to you; we know that, Mr. Lars. But this sketch, your number 265. See?” He turned the KACH-manufactured glossy for Lars to examine; Lars ignored it. “Someone in your staff wrote on this that it is—” the wrinkled, plump finger traced the English words at the foot of the sketch—“is ‘Evolution Gun.’ Correct?”
Pete said loudly, “Yes, and watch out or it’ll turn you back into protoplasmic slime.”
“No, not the trance-sketch,” the Soviet official said, and chuckled slyly. “Must have prototype. You are from Lanferman Associates? You make up the model and prove-test? Yes, I think you are. I am Aksel Kaminsky.” He held out his hand to Pete. “You are—?”
A New York City patrol ship flopped to the pavement before the coffee shop. Two uniformed policemen hastened, hand at holster, through the doorway with glances that took in everyone, anything or person capable of harm, activity and/or motion—and most particularly those who might be able to in any fashion, wise or manner whatsoever draw a weapon of their own.
“Over here,” Lars said, heavily. He disliked this, but the Soviet authorities were behaving idiotically. How could they expect to approach him like this, openly, in a public place? Rising, he held his restraining writ out to the first of the two-man team of police.
“This person,” he said, indicating the elderly Peep-East official who sat frowning, drumming nervously with his fingers against his briefcase, “is in contempt of the Superior Court of Queens County, Department Three. I’d like him arrested. My attorney will ask that charges be pressed. I’m supposed to tell you that,” he said. He waited while the two policemen studied the writ.
“All I want to know,” the elderly Soviet official said plaintively, “is part 76, your number. What does it refer to?”
He was led off. At the doorway the two silent ultra-neat, fashionable, cod-eyed young men who had accompanied him pursued his retreating figure but made no move to interfere with the actions of the city police. They were unemotional and resigned.
“All in all,” Pete said presently as he sat down again, “it wasn’t too messy.” He grimaced, however. Clearly he hadn’t enjoyed it “Ten will get you twenty he’s from the embassy.”
“Yes,” Lars agreed. Undoubtedly from the USSR Embassy, rather than the SeRKeb. He had been given instructions and had sought only to carry them out, to satisfy his superiors. They were all on that ratwheel. The encounter hadn’t been pleasant to the Soviets, either.
“Funny they were so interested in 265,” Pete said. “We haven’t had any trouble with it. Who do you suppose on your staff is working for KACH? Is it worth having the FBI check them over?”
“There isn’t a chance in the world,” Lars said, “that the FBI or CIA or anybody else in the business could pry loose the KACH-man on our staff. You know that. What about the one at Lanferman Associates? I saw shots of your mockups.” He had of course known that anyhow. What bothered him was not the verification that KACH had someone at Mr. Lars, Incorporated—that Peep-East knew as much about his output as he did about Miss Topchev’s—but that something ailed item 265. Because he had favored that. He had followed it through its several stages with interest. The prototype, down in Lanferman’s almost endless subsurface chambers, was being tested this week.
Tested, anyhow, in one sense.
But if he let himself dwell on that long enough, he would have to abandon his profession. He did not blame Jack Lanferman and certainly not Pete. Neither of them made the rules or defined the game. Like himself they sat passive, because this was the law of life.
And in the subsurface chambers that linked Lanferman Associates of San Francisco with their “branch” in Los Angeles—actually merely the south end of the titanic underground network of the organization itself—item 265, the Evolution Gun (a hastily scrawled screed of a title, in the trade deprived of durability by adding the term working to it), this superweapon snatched from the puzzling realm which the weapons-mediums groped about in, would see what the pursaps liked to think of as—action.
Some ersatz gross victim, susceptible of being expended, would be treated to a swat from item 265. And all this would be caught by the lenses of the media, the mags, the books, the ’papes, the TV, everything except helium-filled blimps towing red neon signs.
Yes, Lars thought; Wes-bloc could add that to its repertory of media by which the pursaps are kept both pure and saps. Something that lights up ought to cross the nighttime sky very slowly, or, as in former times, sputter unendingly around and around the turret of a skyscraper, edifying the public to the extent desired. Due to the highly specialized nature of this i
nfo-medium, it would have to be phrased simply, of course.
The blimp could initiate its journey, Lars reflected, with what might be a sanguine piece of knowledge. That the “action” which item 265 was now seeing beneath the surface of California was utterly faked.
It would not be appreciated. The pursaps would be furious. Not UN-W Natsec, he realized. They could take such a leak in their stride. The cogs would survive an exposure of that and every other datum their possession of which defined them as a ruling elite. No, it would be the pursaps who would crumble. And that was the part that made him feel the impotent anger that eroded, day by day, his sense of his own worth and the worth of his work.
Right here in this coffee shop, Joe’s Sup & Sip, he realized, I could stand up and yell, There are no weapons. And I’d get—a few pale, frightened faces. And then the pursaps within range would scatter, get out as fast as possible.
I know this. Aksel Kandinsky or Kaminsky or whatever it calls itself, the kindly, elderly official from the Soviet Embassy—he knows. Pete knows. General Nitz and his kind know.
Item 265 is as successful as anything I have ever produced and ever will produce, the Evolution Gun which should turn every living sentient, highly organized life form within a five-mile radius back two billion years, devolved to the most remote past; articulated morphological structures should give way to something resembling an amoeba, a slime lacking a spine, fins; something unicellular, on the order of a filterable protein molecule. And this the audience of pursaps watching the six o’clock news-roundup on TV, will see, because it will happen. In a sense.
In that, fake heaped on fake, it will be staged before the variety of cameras. And the pursaps can go to bed happy, knowing that their lives and the lives of their kids are protected by Thor’s hammer from The Enemy; that is, from Peep-East, which is also mightily testing their disaster-producing tearweps of havoc.
God would be amazed, probably pleased, by the ruin items 260 through 280, when built by Lanferman Associates, can call into being. It is the Greek sin of hubris made incarnate logos-wise in the flesh—or rather in poly-something and metal, miniaturized with backup systems throughout in case some gnat-sized component fails.
And even God, in raring back and passing the original miracle, The Creation, hadn’t gone into miniaturized backup system. He had put all His eggs in one faultily woven basket, the sentient race which now photographed in 3-D ultra-stereophonic, videomatic depth something which did not exist. He thought, Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Because getting clear 3-D ultra-stereophonic, videomatic depth shots of constructs which do not exist is not easy. It has taken us fifteen thousand years.
Aloud he said, “The priests of ancient Egypt. Circa Herodotus.”
“Pardon?” Pete said.
Lars said, “They used hydraulic pressure to open temple doors at a distance. As they raised their arms and prayed to the animal-headed gods.”
“I don’t get it,” Pete said.
“You don’t see?” Lars said, feeling baffled. It was so obvious to him. “It’s a monopoly, Pete. That’s what we’ve got, a goddam monopoly. That’s the whole point.”
“You’ve gone nuts,” Pete said grumpily. He fooled with the handle of his empty coffee cup. “Don’t let that Peep-East flunky come in here and get you shook.”
“It’s not him.” Lars wanted to make his point; he felt the urgency of it. “Down below Monterey,” he said, “where nobody can see. Where you fellas run the prototypes. Cities blown up, satellites knocked down—” He halted. Pete was jerking his head warningly toward silver-tipped Miss Bedouin. “A hedgehog satellite,” Lars said carefully, thinking of the most ominous extant. The hedgehogs were considered impenetrable, and out of the more than seven hundred Earth-satellites in current orbit, almost fifty were hedgehogs. “Item 221,” he said. “The Ionizing Fish that decomposed to the molecular level, drifted as gas—”
“Shut up,” Pete said harshly.
They finished their coffee in silence.
SIX
That evening Lars Powderdry met his mistress Maren Faine at the Paris branch of Mr. Lars, Incorporated, where Maren maintained an office as elaborate as—
He searched for the metaphor, but Maren’s esthetic tastes eluded description. Hands in his pockets he gazed around him as Maren disappeared into the powder room to make ready for the real world. For her, existence began when the workday ended. And this despite the fact of her high managerial position. Logically she should have been career-oriented, as involved in her vocation as the darkest, most sullen Calvinist.
But it had not worked out that way. Maren was twenty-nine, slightly tall—she stood five-seven barefoot—with luminous red hair. No, not red; it was mahogany in tone, polished, not like the artificial, photograph-grained plastic but the real thing. Yes, Maren’s coloration had been proved authentic. She woke up illuminated, eyes bright as—hell, he thought. What did it matter? Who cared at seven-thirty in the morning? A beautiful, alert, slightly-too-tall woman, colorful and graceful and muscular at that time of day, was an offense to reason and an abomination to sexuality, in that what did one do with her? At least after the first few weeks. One could hardly go on and on …
As Maren reentered the office, coat over her shoulders, he said, “You really don’t care what goes on here.”
“You mean the enterprise? The incorporated?” Her cat-eyes flew wide, merrily; she was way ahead of him. “Look, you have my soma at night and my mind all day long. What else do you want?”
Lars said, “I hate education. I’m not kidding. Soma. Where’d you learn that?” He felt hungry, irritable, at loose ends. Due to the buggery of contemporary time-zone computation he had in actuality been on his feet sixteen hours.
“You hate me,” Maren said, in the tone of a marriage counselor. I know your real motivations, the tone implied. And it also implied: And you don’t.
Maren gazed at him squarely, unafraid of anything he might do or say. He reflected that although technically he could fire her by day, or kick her out of his Paris conapt by night, he had really no hold over her. Whether her career meant anything to her or not, she could get a good job anywhere. Any time. She did not need him. If they parted company she would miss him for a week or so, grieve to the extent of bawling unexpectedly after the third martini … but that would be it.
On the other hand, if he were to lose her the wound would never close.
“Want dinner?” he said unenthusiastically.
Maren said, “No. Want prayer.”
He stared at her. “W-what?”
Calmly she said, “I want to go to church and light a candle and pray. What’s so strange about that? I do it a couple of times a week, you know that. You knew it when you first—” Delicately she finished, “Knew me. In the Biblical sense. I told you that first night.”
“Candle for what?” Lighting a candle had to be for something.
Maren said, “My secret.”
Feeling baffled he said, “I’m going to bed. It may be six o’clock to you but it’s past two a.m. for me. Let’s go to your conapt and you can fix me something light to eat and then I’ll get some sleep and you can go pray.” He started toward the door.
“I heard,” Maren said, “that a Soviet official managed to get to you today.”
That startled him. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I got a warning. From the Board. An official reprimand to the firm, telling us to beware of short old men.”
“I doubt it.”
Maren shrugged. “The Paris office ought to be informed, don’t you agree? It did happen in a public place.”
“I didn’t seek the idiot out! He approached me—I was just having a cup of coffee.” But he felt uneasy. Had the Board really transmitted an official reprimand? If so, it ought to have come to his attention.
“That general,” Maren said, “whose name I always forget—the fat one you’re so afraid of. Nitz.” She smiled; the spear in his side twisted. “General Nitz con
tacted us here in Paris via the ultra-closed-circuit vidline and he said to be more careful I said talk to you. He said—”
“You’re making this up.” But he could see she wasn’t. Probably it had happened within the hour of his meeting with Aksel Kaminsky. Maren had had all day to relay General Nitz’ warning to him. It was like her to wait until now, when his blood-sugar was low and he had no defense. “I better call him,” he said, half to himself.
“He’s in bed. Consult the time-zone chart for Portland, Oregon. Anyhow I explained it all to him.” She walked out into the hall and he followed, reflexively; together they waited for the elevator which would carry them to the roof field where his hopper, property of the firm, was parked. Maren hummed happily to herself, maddening him.
“You explained it how?”
“I said you had been considering for a long time that in case you weren’t liked, appreciated here, you intended to ’coat.”
Levelly, he said, “And what was his answer?”
“General Nitz said yes, he realized that you could always ’coat. He appreciated your position. In fact the military on the Board, at their special closed session at Festung Washington, D.C. last Wednesday had discussed this. And General Nitz’s staff reported that they had three more weapons fashion designers standing by. Three new mediums which that psychiatrist at the Wallingford Clinic at St. George, Utah had turned up.”
“Is this on the level?”
“Sort of.”
He made a quick computation. “It’s not two a.m. in Oregon; it’s noon. High noon.” Turning, he started back toward her office.
“You’re forgetting,” Maren said, “that we’re now on Toliver Econ-time time.”
“But in Oregon the sun’s in the middle of the sky!”
Patiently, Maren said, “But still by T.E.T. it’s two a.m. Don’t call General Nitz; give up. If he had wanted to talk to you he would have called the New York office, not here. He doesn’t like you; that’s what it is, midnight or midday.” She smiled pleasantly.