An hour later, towards the end of his working day, Quellen learned from Koll that nothing had been settled concerning Mortensen. Koll had talked to Spanner, and then he had talked to Giacomin, and now Giacomin was talking to Kloofman, and no doubt one of Them would be handing down The Word on the Mortensen project in a few days. Meanwhile, Quellen was to sit tight and take no provocative action. There was still plenty of time between now and Mortensen’s documented 4 May departure date.
Quellen did not feel any sense of delight at the trouble he was causing. Tagging Mortensen was a clever idea, yes; but it was dangerous sometimes to be too clever. Quellen knew that he had made Koll uncomfortable. That never paid. For all he could tell, Koll had made Giacomin uncomfortable too, and now Giacomin was troubling Kloofman, which meant that Quellen’s clever proposal was stirring eddies of annoyance all the way to the very top of the global power structure. When Quellen had been younger and seething with ambitions to rise to Class Seven eminence, he would have liked nothing better than to win such attention to himself. Now, though, he was Class Seven, so he had attained the private apartment that was his dream, and further promotions would gain him little. Besides, his highly illegal nest in Africa weighed on his conscience. The last thing he wanted was to have a member of the High Government say, ‘This man Quellen is very clever – find out all you can about him.’ Quellen wished to remain inconspicuous, these days.
Still, he could not have let himself suppress the Mortensen idea. He had official responsibilities to fulfil, and the extent of his private deviation from the residence laws made him all the more conscientious about doing his public duties.
Before going home for the day, Quellen sent for Stanley Brogg.
The beefy assistant said at once, ‘We’ve got a wide net out for the slyster, CrimeSec. It’s only a matter of days or even hours before we know his identity.’
‘Good,’ said Quellen. ‘I’ve got another line of approach for you to begin on. But this has to be handled with care, because it hasn’t been officially approved yet. There’s a man named Donald Mortensen planning to take his time-hop on 4 May. Check him in the records you gave me; that’s where I found out about him. I want tracers put on him. Check his activities and contacts. But it’s got to be done with extreme delicacy. I can’t stress that too highly, Brogg.’
‘All right. Mortensen.’
‘Delicately. If this man finds out we’re tracing him, it could lead to a gigantic mess for all of us. Demotions or even worse. So get it straight; work around him, but don’t even graze him. Otherwise it’ll go hard for you.’
Brogg smiled slyly. ‘You mean you’ll drop me a couple of classes if I bungle?’
‘Quite likely.’
‘I don’t think you’d do that, CrimeSec. Not to me.’
Quellen met the fat man’s eyes steadily. Brogg was becoming offensive lately, taking too keen a relish in the power he held over Quellen. His accidental discovery of Quellen’s African villa was the great torment of the CrimeSec’s life.
‘Get out of here,’ Quellen said. ‘And remember to be careful about Mortensen. It’s very possible that this line of investigation will be quashed by the High Government, and if it is we’ll all be frying if They find out we’ve alerted Mortensen.’
‘I understand,’ said Brogg. He left.
Quellen wondered if he should have done that. What if word came down via Giacomin that Mortensen was to be left alone? Well, Brogg was competent enough – too competent, sometimes. And there was really not much time to handle the Mortensen situation if approval did come through. Quellen had to initiate the project in advance. On a speculative basis, so to speak.
He had done all he could for now. Fleetingly he considered the idea of getting Brogg to handle the whole filthy case while he went back to Africa, but he decided that that would be inviting disaster. He shut up his office and went outside to catch the nearest quickboat back to his little Class Seven apartment. In the next few weeks, he knew, he might be able to slip off to Africa for an hour or two at a time, but no more than that. He was mired in Appalachia until the hopper crisis was over.
Returning to his apartment, Quellen discovered that he had neglected to keep his foodstocks in good supply. Since his stay in Appalachia threatened to be long or possibly permanent, he decided to replenish his stores. Sometimes Quellen ordered by phone, but not today. He fastened the Privacy radion to his door again and went down the twisting flyramp to the supply shop, intending to stock up for a long siege.
As he made his way down, he noticed a sallow-looking man in a loose-fitting purple tunic heading in the opposite direction up the ramp. Quellen did not recognize him, but that was unsurprising; in the crowded turmoil of Appalachia, one never got to know very many people, just a handful of neighbours and relatives, and a few service employees like the keeper of the local supply shop.
The sallow-looking man stared curiously at Quellen. He seemed to be saying something with his eyes. Quellen felt profoundly uncomfortable about the contact. In his departmental work, he had learned a good deal about the various classes of molesters one could encounter on the streets. The ordinary sexual kind, of course; but also the ones who sidled up to you and punctured your veins to inject the addictive dose of some infernal drug like helidone, or the sinister sorts given to jamming carcinogens against your skin in a crowd, or perhaps the secret agents who subtly stuck a molecular probe into your flesh that would transmit every word of your conversation to a distant pick-up point. Such things happened all the time.
‘Take it and read it,’ the sallow-faced man muttered.
He brushed against Quellen and shoved a wadded minislip into his hand. There was no way Quellen could have avoided the contact. The stranger could have done anything to him in that brief instant; right now Quellen’s bone calcium might be turning to jelly, or his brain sloughing off through his nostrils, all to satisfy the gratuitous needs of some bump-killer. But it seemed that all the man had done was to put some kind of advertisement into Quellen’s palm. Quellen unfolded the minislip after the other had disappeared up the flyramp, and read it:
OUT OF WORK?
SEE LANOY
That was all. Instantly Quellen’s CrimeSec facet came into play. Like most lawbreakers in public office, he was vigorous in prosecution of other lawbreakers, and there was something in Lanoy’s handbill that smacked of illegality, not just the offensive means of person-to-person transmission but also the offer itself. Was Lanoy running some kind of job placement operation? But that was a government responsibility! Quellen swung hastily around with the thought of pursuing the rapidly retreating sallow-faced man. He caught one last glimpse of the loose purple tunic, and then the man was gone. He could have gone almost anywhere after leaving the flyramp.
Out of work? See Lanoy.
Quellen wondered who Lanoy was and what his magic remedy might be. He made up his mind that he would have Leeward or Brogg look into the matter.
Carefully stowing the minislip in his pocket, Quellen entered the supply shop. The lead-lined door swung back to admit him. Robot merchandise-pickers were scuttling down the shelves, taking inventories, filling orders. The red-faced little man who ran the shop – as a front for the computers, naturally; what housewife wanted to gossip with a computer? – greeted Quellen with an unusual display of heartiness.
‘Oh, it’s the CrimeSec! We haven’t been honoured by you in a long time, CrimeSec,’ the rotund shopkeeper said. ‘I was beginning to think you’d moved. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? You’d have notified me if you had got a promotion.’
‘Yes, Greevy, that’s true. I’ve just not been around lately. Very busy these days. Investigations.’ Quellen frowned. He did not want the news of his frequent absences noised all around the community. Quickly, edgily, he grabbed up the greasy grey binding of the basic catalogue and began to call off numbers. Canned foods, powdered concentrates, staples, all the components of a basic diet. He scrawled his list and jammed it before the sensors wh
ile the shopkeeper looked on benignly. Greevy said, ‘Your sister was in yesterday.’
‘Helaine? I haven’t seen much of her lately.’
‘She looks poorly, CrimeSec. Terribly thin. I programmed some Calfill for her, but she didn’t want it. Has she been to the medics?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Quellen. ‘Her husband’s had some medical training. Not a doctor, just a technician, but if there’s anything wrong with her he ought to be able to diagnose it. If he’s got his wits still working. The rest of him certainly isn’t.’
‘That’s a trifle unfair, CrimeSec. I’m sure Mr Pomrath would be happy to work more often. Why, I know it. No one likes to be idle. Your sister says he’s really suffering. In fact – ’ the shopkeeper leaned close to whisper conspiratorially – ’I shouldn’t be telling you this, maybe, but there’s some bitterness about you in that family. They think that perhaps, with your political influence – ’
‘I can’t do a thing for them! Not a thing!’ Quellen realized he was shouting. What business was it of this damned shopkeeper’s that Norman Pomrath was out of work? How dare he meddle like this? Quellen struggled for calm. He found it, somehow, apologized for his outburst, quickly left the supply shop.
He stepped out into the street for a moment and stood watching as the multitudes streamed past. Their clothes were of all designs and colours. They talked incessantly. The world was a beehive, vastly overpopulated and getting more so daily, despite all the restrictions on childbirth. Quellen longed for the quiet retreat he had built at such great cost and with so much trepidation. The more he saw of crocodiles, the less he cared for the company of the mob who swarmed the crowded cities.
It was an orderly world, of course. Everybody numbered, labelled, registered, and tagged, not to say constantly monitored. How else could you govern a world of eleven or twelve or maybe thirty billion people without imposing a construct of order on them? Yet Quellen was in a fine position to know that within that superficial appearance of order, all sorts of shamelessly illegal things went on – not, as in Quellen’s case, justifiable efforts to escape an intolerable existence, but shady, vicious, unpardonable things. Take the drug addictions, he thought. There were laboratories in five continents grinding out new drugs as fast as the old addictions were abolished. Right now they were pushing some kind of deathly alkaloids, and they pushed them in the most flagrant ways. A man walks into a sniffer palace hoping to buy half an hour of innocent hallucinatory amusement, and buys a hellish addiction instead. Or, aboard a quickboat, a man’s hand traverses a woman’s body in which seems like something no more deplorable than an indecent caress, but two days later the woman discovers she has developed an addiction, and must seek medical help to find out what it is she’s addicted to.
Things like that, thought Quellen. Ugly, inhuman things. We are a dehumanized people. We injure one another without any need but the simple need to do injury. And when we turn to each other for help, we get no response but fear and withdrawal. Stay away, stay away! Let me alone!
And consider this Lanoy, Quellen ruminated, fingering the minislip in his pocket. Some kind of crookedness going on there, yet it was concealed well enough to have avoided the attention of the Secretariat of Crime. What did the computer files say about Lanoy? How did this Lanoy manage to hide his illegal activities from his family or roommates? Surely he did not live alone. Such an outlaw could not be Class Seven. Lanoy must be some shrewd prolet, running a free-enterprise swindle for his own private benefit.
Quellen felt a strange kinship with the unknown Lanoy, much as it repelled him to admit it. Lanoy, too, was beating the game. He was a wily one, possibly worth knowing. Quellen frowned. Quickly he moved on, back to his apartment.
Six
Peter Kloofman lay sprawled out in a huge tub of nutrient fluid while the technicians changed his left lung. His chest panel was wide open on its hinges, exactly as though Kloofman were some sort of robot undergoing repair. He was no robot. He was mere mortal flesh and blood, but not very mortal. At the age of a hundred and thirty-two, Kloofman had undergone organ replacements so frequently that there was very little left of his original persona except for the grey slab of his wily brain itself, and even that was no stranger to the surgeon’s beam. Kloofman was willing to submit to such things gladly, for the sake of preserving his existence, which is to say his infinite power. He was real. Danton was not Kloofman preferred to keep things that way.
‘David Giacomin is here to see you,’ purred a voice from the probe riveted just within his skull.
‘Admit him,’ said Kloofman.
Some twenty years ago he had had himself reconstructed so that he could carry on the business of the state even while undergoing regenerative surgery. It would have been impossible to remain, in power, otherwise. Kloofman was the only flesh-and-blood member of Class One, which meant that ail power lines converged towards him. He delegated as much as he could to the assortment of cams and relays that went by the name of Benjamin Danton; but Danton, after all, was unreal, and in the long run even he was only an extension of the tireless Kloofman. It had not always been this way. Before the Flaming Bess affair there had been three members of Class One, and still farther back Kloofman had been but one of five.
He carried on satisfactorily this way, however. And there was no reason why he could not continue to bear his unique burden for another six or seven hundred years. No man in all the history of the world had held the power Peter Kloofman held. In his occasional moments of fatigue he found that a comforting thing upon which to reflect.
Giacomin entered. He stood in a position of relaxed attentiveness beside the nutrient tub in which Kloofman lay. Kloofman valued Giacomin highly. He was one of perhaps two hundred Class Two individuals who provided the indispensable underpinning for the High Government. Between Class Two and Class Three was a qualitative gulf. Class Two understood the way the world was run; Class Three, on the other hand, enjoyed great comforts, but no true understanding. To a Class Three surgeon or administrator, Danton was probably real, and other unnamed Class Ones existed as well. Giacomin, privy to the knowledge a Class Two man had, was aware of the truth.
‘Well?’ Kloofman asked, watching with detached interest as the surgeons lifted the grey, foamy mass of the replacement lung and inserted it in his gaping chest cavity. ‘What’s the story for today, David?’
‘Hoppers.’
‘Have they located the process yet?’
‘Not yet,’ said Giacomin. ‘They’re taking steps, though. It won’t be long.’
‘Good, good,’ murmured Kloofman. This enterprise of illicit time travel troubled him more than he cared to admit. For one thing, it went on despite the best efforts of the government to track it to its source, and that was bothersome. But of course it was only a few days since Kloofman had requested a detect on the operation, anyway. Much more annoying was the fact that for all his power he could not reach out instantly, seize this temporal process, and put it to his own uses. It had been developed independently of the instrumentalities of the High Government. Thus it was a conspicuous reminder to Kloofman that not even he was omnipotent.
Giacomin said, ‘There’s a problem. They’ve thought of isolating a potential hopper and keeping him from making the jump.’
Kloofman moved convulsively in his bath. Fluid splashed into his chest cavity. Homeostatic pumps imperturbably removed it, and a surgeon clamped his lips together and went about the job of stapling the new lung in place without comment. The world leader said, ‘A listed hopper? One who’s been recorded?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you permitted this?’
‘I brought it to you. I’ve got a hold on it until The Word comes down.’
‘Kill it,’ said Kloofman decisively. ‘Beyond a doubt. I go further: make absolutely certain that there’s no interference with any listed hoppers. Take that as a flat rule. Anyone who has left must leave. Yes? That’s The Word, David. It goes out to all departments that are even remot
ely connected with the hopper business.’
As he spoke, Kloofman felt a faint stinging sensation in the fleshy part of his left thigh. Sedation; he must be getting too excited. The automatic monitoring system was compensating by chemical means, dilating arteries, flooding his system with useful enzymes. He could do better than that. Consciously, he willed himself to be calm even in the face of this threat. Giacomin looked concerned.
Kloofman grew tranquil. Giacomin said, ‘That was all I wanted to report. I’ll pass your instructions along.’
‘Yes. And notify the Danton programmers. Anything going through his office should carry the same notification. This is something too important to let slide. I don’t understand how I failed to anticipate the possibility.’
Giacomin departed, making his way carefully around the tank and out of the faintly clammy atmosphere of the chamber. Kloofman eyed the green vitreous walls with displeasure. He realized that he should have been forewarned. It was the job of those in Class Two to plot the pitfalls for him in advance, and they had been cognizant of the hopper problem for some time now. As far back as ‘83, contingency schedules had been drawn to deal with the hopper problem. Why had they not included this? Of all things to forget!
Kloofman forgave himself for overlooking it. The others, though – they were in for a declassing.
Out loud he said, ‘Imagine what could have happened if anybody had begun meddling with the registered and documented hoppers. Pulling chunks out of the past – why, it might have turned the world upside-down!’
The surgeons did not reply. It would be worth their classifications if they ever spoke to Kloofman except on matters of their own sphere of professional competence. They closed his chest and ran anemostats over it. The instant healing process began. The temperature in the nutrient bath began to descend as the autonomic regulators prepared Kloofman for his return to independent motility.
The Time Hoppers Page 6