By Furies Possessed

by Ted White

  “Uhm, that’s right, sir,” I said, swallowing something bitter that had risen into my throat.

  “At whose suggestion?”

  “Mine, sir,” I said.

  “You suggested it.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “A fellow investigator—equal to your rank. Not even assigned to the case. But you suggested it to her. And she went along with it? Are you trying to tell me that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “No sir, I’m not.”

  “You’re a liar, Dameron. And I’m going to pry the truth out of you if we have to pull each cell out of your brain by hand.”

  “Sir, you’re being very unreasonable—”

  “Shut up. Dameron, let me tell you something. You may have been her equal in rank, but that’s as far as it goes. You weren’t half the person she was. Do you know that?”

  “I—”

  “You’re a failure, Dameron. A straight-out, pretested failure. It’s on your charts. Do you know that?”

  “I—”

  “That girl had a brilliant career ahead of her. She was just starting. Just starting, Dameron, and she held your rank. You’ve been a Level Seven for how many years?”

  “Ten—”

  “For ten years, Dameron. And you’re never going to go any higher. You were never going to go any higher. You are bottom-of-the-heap, Dameron. Strictly Earthbound. Expendable. If you washed out of your job tomorrow, you wouldn’t be missed. Almost anyone in the Bureau could do your job. Do you understand that, Dameron? Expendable. And you put that girl out on the limb, and sawed it off! You walked her right out of the fifty-story window. What did you do to her, Dameron? How did you get her to do a filthy thing like that? Dameron?”

  “Look—why don’t you ask her? Why’re you throwing all this at me, fergawd’s sake? If you don’t believe me, why don’t you check it out with her?”

  “Believe me, Dameron, it would be a distinct pleasure to be able to do that one little thing. It really would. But—” Tucker leaned so close to his pickup that his features filled my screen and blurred. “She’s gone, Dameron. She’s not available.”

  “Gone?” I echoed.

  “G-O-N-E: gone. Disappeared. With that Bjonn. Into thin air.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. No, that won’t wash at all, sir. Bjonn had a tattletale in him. He is definitely not gone into thin air.”

  Tucker let out a gusty sigh. “Ah, but for the sheer omniscient wisdom of our juniors where would we old fools be today? His tattletale was precisely monitored by Monitor Central, and I have the chart here before me.” He flashed an indecipherable chart at the screen for a moment. “It was followed from the evacuation-disposal unit in the refreshment chamber, down sixty-three stories of sewage pipe to the waste-disposal network under Fourth Avenue, thence to the Owl’s Head Processing Plant, and there reclaimed. I have it here now.” A huge thumb and forefinger filled the screen; they held a tiny pellet and then disappeared again. “It’s completely sanitized, of course. Had it not been sensed and removed, it would even now be in an algae vat somewhere on Staten Island.

  “Have you any further comments?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. What do you want me to do?” He considered me for a moment. “Well, what I want is not important right now. Report to your office. Your story will have to be checked out by truth technicians.” The screen went blank.

  I spent half a day wired to machines of various persuasions, and by the time it was over my arms ached from injections, and my mind was numb. Everything I’d said had been checked out, and it was all verified. I saw Tucker in the spare office he used in Megayork, when they were finished with me. He had my graphs spread out over his entire desk and half the infomat console. He ignored me for several minutes.

  Finally he looked up. “Okay, Dameron, you get to keep your job this time.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I guess some of the bitterness I was feeling leaked out.

  “Don’t get tight with me, fellow,” Tucker said. He was treating me as if he’d never met me before, as if no bond had ever existed between us. “If you lucked out this time, it doesn’t change a thing. You had a responsibility—a moral responsibility if nothing else—and you failed it. You failed it one hundred percent.”

  “Maybe I’d just better hand in my resignation,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “You’ve made it pretty plain to me, sir. I have no future here. I’m at a dead end, and you’ve thrown that in my face.”

  “Dameron, you’ve been in the Bureau since when? Graduation?”

  “Just about.”

  “This is the only job you’ve ever held.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you think the odds are on finding another government job?”

  “If I walk out on this one? Pretty poor, I’d imagine.”

  “You’d be right. So what does that leave? The so-called ‘private sector?’ Have you any idea how tight jobs are there? You have to be born to them to get in the door—that, or be so goddamned right for the job that they can’t afford to ignore you. If you walk out of here, you’ll be on Public Care tomorrow morning, and you’ll remain on Public Care the rest of your life. Do you know that?”. “I guess so.” I hadn’t thought about it, but he was right. A private job is a joke, there are so few left—and when you turn your back on civil service, that’s it.

  “So—on top of everything else, you’re a quitter,” Tucker said. His voice lashed me with scorn.

  “If you say so, sir.”

  He nodded, as if in confirmation of some private thought. “I see.… You have just sold Dian down the river to that… colonist, and now you want to walk out, turn your back on the whole thing, pretend it never happened.”

  “What are you getting at, sir?”

  “Just this: Dian is still your responsibility. So, for that matter, is Bjonn. Just because they’ve worked some sort of disappearing act doesn’t let you off the hook. You’re weak, Dameron. You disgust me. One setback, and you’re ready and willing to call it quits!”

  “I was under the impression that I was no longer wanted here, sir,” I said, stiffly.

  “Nobody is talking about whether you’re wanted, Dameron. Who said you were ever wanted? The first time I saw your personality profile, I wanted to see you transferred to somewhere far, far away—like the Sahara reclamation project. You think I want some space-happy nut in my department? How many times have you put in for space duty? How many times have you requested transfer to Lunaport? And just why do you think I’ve been forced to deny those requests?”

  “I’ve seen my file, sir.” Yes, and the big, rubber-stamped, “Refused—Unstable” on every transfer form I filed. I’ve read the expert opinion, neatly entered into the appropriate spaces by some anonymous secretary, from a shrink’s offhand remark: Borderline paranoia—childhood fixation upon space travel, space career, tending toward adult instability. Acceptable for Earth-assignment only; clearance for Moon-shuttle solely in line of above assignment. I had daily bouts of nausea for more than a week after I read that.

  “However, you have your talents. Your major talent is your ability to organize data systematically, in such a way that a previously hidden fact becomes apparent. Which is to say, you make an adequate field investigator. Or so I thought, until this situation developed. Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  “You’re asking me to investigate their disappearance, then?”

  “Hell, man,” he roared, “I’m not asking you a thing! It’s your job!”

  “Yes sir,” I said, and walked out.

  It’s funny how you can deceive yourself. I mean, without half trying. Take me: I wanted to believe I was liked. For some dumb reason, I wanted to think that Tucker was my Old Man—like a foster father to me. It had made me feel the job I was doing was more valuable, somehow—because I had a specific person to please in my execution of it.

  Well, strike one illusion
.

  Then, as I sat brooding at my desk, I began thinking about another false illusion: Dian. Why had she gone so willingly with Bjonn? I hadn’t known the degree to which his proposition had bothered her—but it had taken relatively little on my part to persuade her to see him again. Why?

  I’d assumed it was because of what he was—and I wasn’t. I had come to think of the man as an irresistibly romantic figure in her eyes. I had even thought (hell, I took it for granted) she would go to bed with him, even though she had refused to do so with me (and, for that matter, with anyone else that I knew of).

  Backtrack a bit. When she agreed so readily to go along with me, to be my “secretary” for that first meeting, I’d put it down to eagerness on her part to meet a fascinating man. If hadn’t occurred to me that she had wanted to do something with me, to join in my enterprise. And for that matter, hadn’t Dian always been more friendly with me than almost anyone else in the office? How many other guys had she gone out with? (Well, maybe a few, that first year, but not many since—I would have known.)

  Rethink it: Could it be that Dian had steeled herself to take Bjonn sightseeing, had forced herself to join him in a meal, solely because she knew how important it was to me?

  That was hard to accept. Probably the truth lay between the two extremes. She wanted to help me, but Bjonn didn’t make it difficult….

  The way she’d changed… what had she said? That at last she was “free”? Free, how? In what sort of way? What had I thought when I’d seen her standing here? That she had shed her old facade—her old defenses? Could that be what she’d meant?

  Had she been walking through life as thoroughly frightened of it as I was?

  Put that on hold. Let’s try another tack.

  Bjonn had flushed his tattletale. Either he’d known himself it was there, or Dian had told him. Would she have known? I couldn’t be sure. I hadn’t specifically told her, but she might have checked the records on him; she might just have made an educated guess—or Bjonn himself might have worked it out. That would have to be checked later.

  How else could they be trailed?

  Credit.

  You can’t use a pod, you can’t board a tube, take a plane or rocket—you simply can’t travel at all except by shank’s mare—without your molecularly-keyed credit card.

  Bjonn had no card. Or did he? Check that out.

  I consulted the infomat.

  Okay. The Bureau had issued him a card as a courtesy, because he was an Emissary. But he hadn’t used it. Obviously, he hadn’t needed to.

  Ergo, Dian. They’d used hers.

  I used the infomat again, requesting and receiving Credit Clearance on Dian Knight, employment No. QW8490358-HG-465397A-F.

  Nothing.

  Oh, sure, bills for clothing, charges for transportation within the city, and so on, the most recent a hovercraft pleasure cruise around the islands, yesterday afternoon. Nothing since, not even a local pod. Nothing.

  I was staring at the printout, trying to read something clever and nefarious between the lines, when Tucker stuck his head in the door.

  “I’m glad to see you working,” he said. “But you’re still trailing the hounds. We’ve found nothing on their credit after a most thorough search.” The door snicked shut behind him and I regarded its blank surface for several moments. His drawl was back. Just what did that mean?

  Chapter Six

  Dian shared an apt with another girl in Old Manhattan. It was in an old building in the seedy East Seventies, just off the park. Once a rich and fashionable area, it had resisted change longer than most of the core city, and when the rest of the original, New York City was rezoned and rebuilt, the Upper East Side had become an island of blight, a “historical landmark,” duly enshrined and preserved in all its amber glory. The pod-lines ran underground here, in old subway tunnels, and I had to walk the three blocks west on the surface of the old, original streets. Someone had put potted shrubs in the onetime traffic lanes, but refuse and debris cluttered the pedestrianways and when I kicked one pile of litter that barred my way, live rats scurried angrily out from under it. Sordid. I wondered why anyone as fresh and bright and attractive as Dian ever wanted to live here.

  Of course these days the area is considered to be “quaint” and it draws its percentage of young rebels. At one intersection I saw a young man spraying brightly colored plastics from a hose attached to a portable machine. The plastics solidified on contact with the air, and he was “painting” an object of some sort—perhaps a sculpture—that took form directly in midair. Quaint. Sure, a return to antiquarian values and all that. Recreate the individual artwork: down with computers, all that sort of thing. He even had short hair.

  I found Dian’s building. Twelve stories and huddled against the ground. Stone facades showing the signs of many repairs, coated now with clear epoxies, a misguided attempt to Preserve The Past in a few of its glories. Six badly worn stone steps led up to an ancient door of wrought-iron filigree which swung inward after I’d leaned on it for several moments. There was an empty vestibule large enough for a one-room apt, and beyond it another set of doors, locked.

  The light came from one dingy overhead fixture, an ancient tube-type light, and I had to get within a foot of the names over the bell pushes before I could read them clearly.

  Knight—Carr 12F.

  I pushed the button.

  “Scrawkutt?” I jumped, feeling guilty for no good reason. The sound had come from a tiny grill under the buttons.

  “Hello?” it said again.

  “Hello?” I replied, feeling foolish.

  “Who is it, I said?”

  “Miss Carr?” I returned. “I’m Tad Dameron. I work with Miss Knight. I’d like to come up and see you a few minutes.”

  “Now?”

  I sighed. “If I might.” I had no intention of making another trip like this.

  “Okay.” And the inner door began an irregular buzzing sound.

  I caught it before it stopped, and pushed it open. The lobby beyond was even larger than the vestibule, with stairs on each side. I had visions of climbing twelve flights of stairs until I noticed a red door with a round window in it and a button-push in the jamb at its side.

  Another door that swung open, and the lift chugged and wheezed as it literally crawled up past each floor. Apparently there had once been an inner door, but it was long gone, and someone had rewired the shaft so that the elevator would work without it.

  I found Miss Carr waiting for me at the end of the hall. She had a turban of some sort wrapped around her head, and a voluminous robe around her bulky figure. “Please come in,” she said. “I don’t want to stay out here in the hall.” She sneezed. “I’m sick,” she added.

  I followed her into the apt. The ceilings were high, and it appeared to consist of at least three rooms, plus, of course, the eating cubicle. The room we’d entered was cluttered with objects I couldn’t distinguish in the dim light. The air was oppressively hot and humid.

  “Have you received medical treatment?” I asked, mostly to be polite.

  “Ha!” she snorted. Her face was moonlike—round and bland; she’d apparently had all her facial hair removed, including eyebrows and lashes. “They never know!”

  I removed several articles of clothing from a chair and sat down. “I believe the Bureau has been in touch with you,” I began.

  “Oh! Have they ever! Beginning in the middle of the night!” She slapped her hand against her forehead in apparent mock anguish; the effect was only partially successful since most of her forehead was under the turban.

  “The middle of the night, you say?” That seemed strange.

  “Well, no later than six, this morning,” she conceded’.

  Not long before Tucker had called me.

  “And you told them—?”

  “What could I tell them? She wasn’t home. Far as I know, she wasn’t home all night. So? She’s of age—she can stay out when she wants.” This was offered up to me in th
e spirit of complaint.

  “‘But she hasn’t done so often?” I suggested.

  “Well, no… not that I recall.”

  “How long have you been rooming together?”

  “Oh, must be … let me see … almost three years, now.”

  “Have you employment, Miss Carr?”

  She turned red. “Is that any business of yours?”

  “You’re on Public Care, then?”

  “So what if I am?”

  “I’m a little surprised to see you living in a building like this,” I said. “It was my understanding that….”

  “Dian made up the difference,” she said. “She understood how it was with me. I’m an artist. You can’t be creative in one of those public hencoops. I told them that. I told them, just give me my allowance and let me worry about how far it will go, huh?” Her eyes narrowed. “Which agency did you say you were with, again?”

  “I’m with the Bureau of Non-Terran Affairs, Miss Carr. I have absolutely no interest in how you choose to spend your allowance.”

  “Well, just why are you here, anyway?”

  “I’m here because Dian Knight has disappeared,” I said.

  Her jaw dropped open, exposing neat, even rows of carnivorous teeth. “How do you mean disappeared?” she demanded.

  “Disappeared,” I repeated. “Without a trace. When is the last time you saw her?”

  “I—yesterday. In the afternoon. I was just getting up.”

  “You were sick yesterday?”

  “No, I—say, what is all this? I normally get up in the afternoon. And it’s none of your business!”