Ohm was not a complete weedie in that he had not been satisfied to live off the minimum-income credit furnished by the government. His job, however, was not just to supply himself with extra goodies. He overheard much while behind the bar and in front of it after working hours. Sometimes, he picked up information that the immer council could use.
Today did not go as most. He drank very little, and he was so evidently wrapped in his thoughts that some of the patrons kidded him about it. Not sure that he was lying, he told them that he was in love. What he had seen on the screen in Immerman’s room, the voices that shouted inside him, and his efforts to select the elements of a new personality beat at him like waves against a seawall. He was glad when quitting time came; he rushed out past his relief with a short good-bye and walked to his apartment. There he ate a light supper and then paced back and forth as if he would wear off the rug and reveal the coded answers to his problems on the floor beneath. He stopped when, at 7:35 P.M., Mudge came to the door.
Bearer of a scowling face and bad news, Mudge told him that Immerman had changed his mind about his disposition of Ohm. It would be better, thus, imperative, that Ohm be stoned and shipped to Los Angeles in a box labeled as goods. The California city was due next week for an influx of ten thousand immigrants from Australia and Papua. Arrangements would be made so that Ohm would be listed among them. Tonight, Mudge and Ohm would work on the new ID. After Ohm got to Los Angeles, he could create the fine details of his persona.
Charlie sat down, breathed deeply, and said, “I suppose there’s no use protesting?”
“None,” Mudge said. “Hetman Immerman said that you must get far away from Manhattan.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night. A Sunday agent will take care of everything.”
Ohm thought, What guarantee is there that I’ll ever be destoned? The logic of the situation demands that I just disappear from the living, be stuck someplace where I won’t be found.
Mudge removed a tape from his bag and handed the tiny cube to Ohm. “Here’s the outline of the new persona, the really vital vital statistics and the outline of your background.”
“Already?”
“The council members are old hands at this sort of thing. They must have these in stock. A few changes, and they’re ready. Study it tonight and then erase it. You’ll be given another one when the time’s right.”
Which may be never, Ohm thought. Or am I just too suspicious?
He needed a drink, but he would not allow himself to have one.
Mudge walked to the door and turned. Instead of saying good-bye and good luck, he said, “You’ve sure been a lot of trouble. I hope you stay out of it in L.A.”
“I love you, too,” Ohm said, and he laughed.
Mudge scowled even deeper and closed the door behind him. Ohm turned on the hail and outside monitor strips to make sure that Mudge was not hanging around. Then he went to bed, applied the electrodes of a sleepwave machine to his temples, set and turned the unit on, and slept dreamlessly and compulsively. At 9:30 P.M., he was awakened by the unit alarm.
“I have to do it,” he muttered. “Maybe I shouldn’t. But I have to.”
26.
The loud voices had become whispers, perhaps because the others had hope now that they would not die. The quieting of that part of the inner tumult allowed Ohm to concentrate. Sitting in a chair, a cup of coffee on the table by him, he gave orders to a strip. One after the other, appearing or disappearing at his command, the diagrams of the Tower of Evolution and of the area beneath and around shone on the screen. At 10:15, he ordered any evidence of his viewing of the diagrams to be erased. He did not know that it would be done. It was possible that the Department of Building Construction and Maintenance had programed a nonerasure command. However, he could think of no reason why the department should do that. Even if it had done so, the chances that anyone would note his request and ask for the identity of the requester were not high.
He left the apartment at 10:17 P.M. and walked as much under the tree cover as possible. The sky was clear, and it was still hot but cooler than in the daytime. The streets were almost empty of traffic, though the sidewalks were crowded with neighborhood residents. Most of them were going home from the empathoria, the bowling alleys, or the taverns. In fifteen minutes, few would be outside. That would make him more conspicuous, but that could not be helped. Fear of consequences and desperation did not go hand in hand.
Ohm turned onto West Fourteenth Street and walked to the northwest corner of the Tower of Evolution. Here, as on every night at this time, an oblong of light shone up from a hole in the sidewalk. Ohm looked down into the hole and saw two men standing there. They were in the kilted blue uniform of Saturday’s Civilian Corps of Transportation and Supply. Ohm pressed the UP button on the mobile cylindrical machine by the hole. As the platform began moving, the men looked up. Ohm nodded at them, got onto the platform when it stopped level with the sidewalk and pressed the DOWN button. Twenty feet below the sidewalk, the platform stopped. Ohm got off and said, “How’re things going?”
The two men looked at each other, and one said, “Fine. Why?”
Ohm bounced the tip of a finger off his ID disc as if he was indicating that it contained his authority. “I have to investigate a shipment. It’s nothing illegal, just an error.”
He was at the first obstacle, the foremost of several ticklish crossroads. If the workers doubted him and asked for his ID, he would have to improvise an explanation. The workers, however, were not concerned, and his air of knowing what he was about convinced them.
He walked past them and into a tunnel, and soon he was around a bend and out of their sight. Below the grating on which he walked were well-lit levels on which belts or elevators carried boxes of stoned or unstoned supplies. These were part of the vast underground system that transported goods and food to computer-assigned destinations from the unloading depots at the ports or the Thirteen-Principles Towers. The individual belts and elevators moved with little sound, but their aggregation caused a low rumble like that of a distant cataract.
Ohm took an elevator reserved for personnel to the third level down. From there he passed over a narrow catwalk to a bank of personnel elevators, chose number three, and sent himself swiftly up to Exhibit No. 17, EXTINCT TYPES OF HOMO SAPIENS. He went down a short but wide and high hall and stopped at a door. The next ticklish crossroads would be when he entered the room beyond the door. There were hundreds of monitor strips inside the Tower, all active during visiting hours. Was there any reason for them to be on now? Vandalism and burglary were such uncommon crimes, especially in public buildings, that it seemed to him that active monitor strips and personnel to watch them would not be required. However, there might be someone in Immerman’s apartment who was viewing the exhibit display strips. Mudge was a likely candidate.
He breathed in deeply and pushed the door open. Stepping through, he found himself at the rear of the seventeenth-century French court tableau. The vast interior of the tower was silent, the sightseers gone, the circling escalator stopped, the information screens turned off, the sounds of the robot beasts quelled. The workers that he had feared might be repairing or altering exhibits were not there. Or, if they were, he could not hear them. Certainly, there were none in this recess.
He moved from around the back of the dais and thrones past the sitting figures of The King and The Queen. He zigzagged through The Courtiers, the gentlemen in their finery and powdered wigs, the ladies in their silk, brocades, hooped skirts, and high-piled wigs. They all looked very realistic. A smiling young woman displayed four teeth missing, the rest blackened by decay. A man’s face was deeply scarred with smallpox. A fan held by a woman did not entirely conceal that part of her nose had been eaten away by syphilis. Missing, however, were other realistic elements. The stench of long-unwashed bodies and the perfume to cover the stench. The head lice infesting the wigs. Stains on the shoes spattered when their owners urinated in the corners of the
palace halls.
He also noticed something that at another time would have made him laugh. Despite all the research and rechecking, the designer of these figures had forgotten that seventeenth-century people were much shorter than New Era people. Every one of these figures would have towered above all in the court of the real Louis XIII.
Near the middle of the throng, he stopped. The silent and motionless woman in a scarlet and yellow gown and golden-yellow wig stared at him with large brown eyes. Her face was thickly powdered and rouged.
He said, “God help us!”
He lifted the wig and saw, as he had expected, the short, straight, gleaming-brown hair that looked like the fur of a seal.
“The bastards! The old bastard! What arrogance!”
He stepped behind her and began dragging her backward toward the elevator. Her high-heeled shoes made a slight rubbing noise, then came off. He stopped, held her upright with one hand, and bent down to pick up the shoes. He must not leave any evidence that an exhibit figure was missing. It was possible that her absence might not be noticed for a long time. All he wanted was a relatively short time.
“Ohm!”
The voice came from somewhere close, and it was Mudge’s. Charlie dropped the shoes and the stoned body of Snick, which fell with a loud noise to the floor. He stared wildly around and saw two men, but he was so bewildered and surprised that he did not immediately recognize them. It took a second or two for him to bring them into the focus of reality. A dreamlike state washed over him, numbing him. Then he saw that the two cavaliers who had seemed to come to life were Mudge and a companion.
They had clad themselves in the clothes taken from two figures and had waited for him. They must have monitored him from the moment he entered the underground. They had assumed the stiffness of exhibit figures just before he came through the door.
“Traitor! Damn fool!” Mudge said as he walked slowly toward Ohm. “What do you care about the woman? She’s an organic, a danger to us! What in hell is wrong with you?”
Ohm slipped off his shoulderbag and let it fall to the floor. He crouched and looked around as if he were about to run. Let them think that.
The other man, a tall thin fellow with burning black eyes, circled around to cut Ohm off. He was drawing the rapier from the scabbard at his belt and would be in the path to the exit door before Ohm could get past him.
“I told Hetman…the chief…that you’d fall for it,” Mudge said. He had stopped and was removing the long moustaches and the feathered hat and wig. His right hand was on the grip of the rapier at his left.
“Fall for it?” Ohm said.
Wyatt Repp’s voice seemed to come faintly to him, telling him that this scene was right out of one of his dramatic—admittedly, corny—empathorium works. “You’re the hero,” the fading voice said.
“Yes. It wasn’t any accident that you saw Snick. There was a subliminal flashing just above her head. You couldn’t have missed her. Hetman Imm—…the chief…put her there to test you. He wanted to find out if you really were mentally unstable, if you could be a traitor. Now we know!”
“I wanted to find out if you killed her,” Ohm said. He moved toward a splendidly dressed male courtier on his right.
“What does it matter to you?” Mudge said. “You were getting away free, and the family was safe.”
His rapier whispered as it was pulled from the scabbard.
“Come quietly with us, Ohm. There’s no one else here, and you can’t fight us. If you do, I’ll have an excuse to kill you here and now.”
“Is she dead?”
Mudge smiled and said, “You’ll never know.”
“The hell I won’t!” Charlie yelled. He sprang forward, reached across his stomach with his left hand, and snatched the blade from the scabbard of the courtier dummy. “En garde, you son of a bitch!”
Mudge’s smile became even broader. “You stupid weedie, it’s two against one. You may be a pretty good fencer, Bela said you were, but you’re a drunk and even a world champion couldn’t stand against two good fencers. I’m not bad, and Bela…he’s an Olympic silver medalist. Put the sword down, Ohm, and take your medicine like a man.”
Mudge looked as if he were enjoying the coming attraction of combat to the death. The other man also seemed to be relishing it. So much for seven generations of government conditioning against the impulses and use of violence.
It would take five seconds, maybe more, for Bela to reach him. By that time, his intended victim should be even further away. Yelling, his voice seemingly reinforced by the shouts of the others in him—especially Jim Dunski and Jeff Caird—he pushed over the figure from which he had taken the sword. It fell toward Mudge, causing him to step back. Then Ohm had leaped over the figure and was on Mudge. Moving swiftly in the position required, he thrust for Mudge’s face. This was a target forbidden in fencing, but he hoped that Mudge, not being used to such an attack, would not react in time. Mudge, however, parried and then thrust for his enemy’s upper sword arm. Ohm riposted and leaped back out of the seventeenth-century exhibit area. Mudge advanced. With his right arm, Ohm toppled another figure, The Stockbroker, at Mudge.
He ran toward the railing and vaulted over it with his right arm to the escalator. Bela Wang Horvath and Janos Ananda Mudge stood side by side for a moment. Horvath said something to his partner, who nodded, turned, and ran toward the corner of the recess. Horvath ran toward the opposite corner. They were going to cut him off and move in on him from his front and back.
He went over the railing back into the recess and ran toward Mudge past the figures of The Mail Carrier, The Bald Man, and The Diplomat. Mudge stopped, whirled, and assumed a defensive position.
Mudge was grinning. Ohm grinned back at him. From the moment he had yelled, he had lost all doubts and fears. He seemed to have the strength of seven, a hallucination, no doubt, but his adrenaline was pumping through him. And he wanted to kill. Not just anybody. Mudge.
Their blades clashed and rang again and again. Though the rapier was heavier and stiffer than the foil, it felt to Ohm as light as balsa and as supple as a feather. Cold fury and the combined self-survival drive of seven men powered him. Mudge was an excellent fencer. But he had several disadvantages, one being that it was difficult for a right-handed fencer to duel with a left-handed fencer. The lines of target were changed, making it hard to aim at them. The sinister-handed fencer was also in the same reversed position, but he was more used to it.
After a brief engagement, Ohm leaped back, transferred the rapier to his right hand to confuse Mudge, attacked, was beaten back, was nicked in the shoulder, and transferred the rapier to his left hand. Mudge attacked. Ohm parried with a slight movement of the bell guard, deflecting Mudge’s point. At the same time, Ohm directed his point so that Mudge, who kept moving forward, received the point in his right forearm. It slid under the ulna, or outer bone, and came out beyond it.
Ohm stepped back, yanking the sword from the wound. Mudge’s hand opened. His rapier dropped. Ohm moved forward. Mudge staggered back into the figure of The Senator. It toppled over, and Mudge fell backward over it. He started to get up, but Ohm stepped up to him and ran his sword through Mudge’s other forearm.
Hearing the sounds of boots behind him, Ohm whirled. He brought the tip of the sword up and then down into a defensive position, ready to meet Horvath’s attack. He had turned so swiftly and whipped his rapier around so fast that it acted like a whip. A drop of blood was flicked from its end into Horvath’s right eye, disorienting him for a split-second. That was enough for Ohm, who seemed to see everything as if it were in a slow-motion film. He noted every meaningful detail; he was prepared by years of training to take advantage of every weakness or off-balance of his opponent. His rapier beat Horvath’s aside just far enough and long enough for him to send his blade through the man’s thigh.
Horvath jumped back, Ohm’s blade withdrawing from the flesh, followed by a gush of blood. Ohm attacked but could not for a moment get past H
orvath’s desperate but effective parries. Coolly, knowing that Horvath was weakening with every pump of blood, Ohm pressed him. Horvath, as was inevitable, bumped into a figure. The Soldier fell over, causing Horvath to fall onto the floor on his back. The Soldier knocked over The Oil Driller, which toppled The Insurance Salesperson, which knocked over The Mafia Gangster, which felled The Publisher, which toppled The Loan Shark, which knocked over The Marxist. The last in the domino series to crash to the floor was The Capitalist.
The wound in the thigh and the injury to his elbow in the fall seemed to put Horvath out of the combat. Ohm had thought that Mudge would be helpless, too, but the clomping of boots and a deep sobbing told him that that was not so. Howling, Ohm whirled just in time to meet Mudge’s attack. It was weak, however, and especially ineffective because Mudge was using his left hand to hold the rapier. He was brave—Ohm had to give him credit for that—but he was also stupid. He did not have a chance. Ohm’s point drove through Mudge’s left shoulder, sticking out behind it for at least three inches.
Mudge crumpled. Ohm whirled again. But Horvath was not making another incredible attack. He was crawling, groaning, trailing much blood, toward the elevator. Charlie watched him until he collapsed, face down, on the floor. His arms and legs moved, responding only partly to his will to get up and go.
Ohm turned and walked, breathing hard but feeling exultant, to Mudge. The man sat on the floor, holding his shoulders with his hands and glaring at Ohm.
“You were lucky, you bastard!”
“Don’t whine,” Ohm said, grinning. “Now… I want the star that opens the door to Immerman’s apartment.”
“I don’t have it!”
“Just how were you planning to get back into the place?” Ohm said. “Come on. Hand it over, or I’ll kill you and search your clothes.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” Mudge said. “You can’t outrun us, and you know that.”
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