The Walking Shadow

by Brian Stableford

  “That remains to be seen,” admitted Marcangelo. “Better think carefully about the kind of performance you’re going to put on—it might just be your last.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In one of the conference rooms of the Presidential Manse, Diehl, Marcangelo and Lindenbaum sat in intense, if rather fatigued, conversation. None of them had slept for nearly thirty hours. Marcangelo, who had been the most active of the three, was showing the strain most obviously.

  “In my view,” said Diehl, “we ought to try to compel co-operation. We have a hostage. We ought to put pressure on by using her. All we need is for him to make a few short statements in front of a camera. We can broadcast them over a period of a week. By that time, we’ll have Wishart and Gray. We’ve already rounded up a hundred of the Movement’s active agents.”

  “It’s a drop in the ocean, and you know it. Our position is balanced on a knife-edge. If the Movement were to act, we’d suddenly find that half the men we thought were ours are really theirs—policemen, government workers, even the guards at the damn prison. Even your security forces, Nick. We only hold control at the moment because the Movement’s waiting. It’s waiting for the same reason we’re waiting—because it doesn’t know what Heisenberg is going to do. I think we ought to call a truce—let Wishart see him. Let’s all get together; personally, I’d rather co-operate with Wishart than fight him.”

  “You know what co-operating with Wishart would involve,” said Diehl, coldly. “It would mean him taking over. We can’t let him get to Heisenberg. It would be fatal.”

  “Heisenberg’s not a fool,” replied Marcangelo. “He knows Adam Wishart a damn sight better than we do. Just because he was willing to let Wishart manage his career as a five cent prophet doesn’t mean to say he’s going to play front man while Wishart becomes the emperor of America. Essentially, he’s honest. If we can persuade him that we’re in the right, then he’ll help us.”

  “We need him now,” said Lindenbaum. “We need to put him on the TV, to keep the lid on things. It doesn’t matter what he says—maybe it’s better if he says nothing at all—but he’s got to appear, to stop these stupid rumors about what we’re doing and what we’re going to do.”

  “When you listen to Nick,” Marcangelo pointed out, “they’re not so stupid. Look, if you’ll just give me time, I think I can persuade him. Let me offer him a meeting with Wishart if he’ll help us stall. In the long run, it’ll work better for us than trying to use a stick to threaten him.”

  “I don’t like the idea of playing into Wishart’s hands,” said Lindenbaum.

  “It might be worth you setting up a meeting with Wishart,” said Marcangelo. “There’s a chance we can set up some kind of a deal with him on a temporary basis. This isn’t the time for him to stage a takeover.”

  “Do you think he knows about the spaceships?” asked the president.

  “If he doesn’t, we can tell him. We can show him the signals. He might be willing to talk, and to declare a truce until we know what’s going to happen. Maybe he knows more than we do—the phantom phone caller seems to have helped him stay free.”

  “No,” said Diehl. “If you give me time I can bring Wishart in. I can find him. Let Heisenberg see him in a prison cell. We have to keep control.”

  “Even if you can find Wishart,” said Marcangelo, “you then have to take him, and keep him. You’d never do it. You’d just blow the whole thing sky high. Do you want fighting on the streets? Open warfare? We’re just that far away from it, and if the weather wasn’t so bitterly cold we’d likely have it already. The seeds of a major riot are scattered over the whole south side, and all it takes is some trigger incident to start the bloodshed. We have to play it my way.”

  “How do we set up a meeting with Wishart?” asked Lindenbaum.

  “Release some of the Movement people that Nick brought in. One of them will get a message to him. Let him choose a spot to make contact. I’ll meet him.”

  “All right,” said the president. “Get back to the prison. Tell Heisenberg he can have what he wants after he makes a broadcast for us. He doesn’t have to say anything much, just that he’s safe and well and that everyone has to be patient while he sorts things out. Just get him to buy time, nothing more. Then you can meet with Wishart.”

  “This is suicide,” said Diehl. “We can’t afford it.”

  “Leave it, Nick,” said the president. “Just keep your men on a tight rein. This isn’t the time. For now, we have to play it Ricky’s way.”

  “You’re going to regret this,” said Diehl, flatly.

  “Maybe we all are,” said Lindenbaum. “But just remember that we’re all in it together. We don’t need to start fighting among ourselves, or against the Movement. This time next week we might be all humans together, fighting a new enemy.”

  “If those signals really do come from spaceships in Sagittarius,” said Diehl. “We don’t know yet that we aren’t being led by the nose.”

  “If we are,” replied Lindenbaum, calmly, “it’s your job to find out. I suggest you get on it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “This time,” said Paul, “I think I look and feel better than you do.” He was out of bed now and fully dressed. He’d been given newspapers to read to fill out his knowledge of the new world in which he found himself, but he still hadn’t been able to talk to anyone except Marcangelo and the security man, Laker.

  “I want you to go on television,” said Marcangelo, coming straight to the point.

  “That’s nice,” said Paul. “It’s a whole week since I last appeared on TV. A whole week’s memory, that is. Why?”

  “People want to see you. They want to be reassured that you’re all right and that you’ve begun work on their terrible problems. They don’t expect you to have saved the world already, but they’d like to know that you’re on the job.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to tell them to wait. Just that and no more. Ask them to be patient. You could save a lot of trouble—you could stop people getting killed.”

  “And help to keep you in power.”

  “We are in power. We’ll still be in power if the fighting in the streets breaks out. Only that way, we’ll have to kill people.”

  “Can I take advice?”

  “You can see Wishart after the broadcast. We’re trying to contact him now, in order to open negotiations. We don’t want to fight him—at least until we know what’s going to happen when the spaceships arrive. It’s in everyone’s interests to hold things together for the time being.”

  Paul leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Marcangelo stood over him, anxiously waiting and not bothering to conceal his weariness.

  “You know,” said Paul, softly. “I still can’t seem to get a sense of being involved in all this. It still seems unreal. I keep hoping to wake up, though I’m not sure why I don’t want it to continue. I know it’s not a dream, but I just can’t seem to connect with it all. I feel as if I’m only involved in the sense that I might identify with a character in a book, fascinated, but with no real sense of being able to act of my own free will.”

  “It’s real,” said Marcangelo, sourly. “It’s real to us.”

  “The only thing that’s seemed real to me is the girl. She’s the only one who talked to me for a while as if I were an ordinary human being. Is she still here?”

  “I’ll bring her in. She’s just down the corridor. But I want an answer. I want you to go on TV tonight—you have a couple of hours to think about it and to get ready. We’ll prepare a statement for you, or we can work one up together, but either way time is tight. You haven’t got time to sit there and wonder whether the world is just a figment of your imagination and whether the problem of free will is an illusion.”

  “All right,” said Paul. “I’ll do it. But I’ll write my own piece. You can veto anything that’s in it, but I have to be able to mean what I say.”

  Marcangelo breathed ou
t, letting his relief show.

  “Fine,” he said. “You can have anything you want, within reason. I’ll get things started.” He turned away to the door, and beckoned to Laker, who was still outside. As Laker began to come in, the wall began to shake. Then the sound came—not a sharp bang but an ongoing rumble, which expanded to fill the room.

  Even as the sound of the explosion died away it was joined by the distant sound of gunshots.

  “What’s happening?” said Paul, coming quickly to his feet. Laker, as if by instinct, moved to block the door, and reached into his jacket for the gun that was holstered beneath his arm.

  Marcangelo didn’t move, but his shoulders seemed to sag, and he drew his mouth into a hard line. With an obvious effort to keep his voice calm, he said: “I think it was a bomb. We seem to be too late to stop the revolution.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Wishart had bags under his eyes that made him look like a comic-book villain. His face looked unwashed and his hair was greasy, and he felt unwashed and greasy. The situation had forced it upon him, but that didn’t make him any less resentful of his condition. He was frustrated and uneasy, and not in the best of tempers.

  “What’s the situation?” he asked of Max Gray, who had just returned to the hiding place.

  “Stalemate,” replied Gray. “We hold the prison walls, including all the observation posts, plus all the blocks except the administration building and the hospital. Most of the buildings we took without the ghost of a fight, but the hospital’s full of Diehl’s men and cops. Castagna’s put men all around the prison, but they can’t get in without using artillery, and they’re not about to do that. Essentially, Heisenberg’s in the middle, surrounded by Diehl’s men, who are surrounded by ours, who are surrounded by Castagna’s. Every stage is a deadlock. Paul Scapelhorn is negotiating from inside the prison, but it’s not easy. Marcangelo is with Heisenberg, and he’d probably be prepared to make a deal, but I’m not sure Laker would accept his authority without personal clearance from Diehl. Anyhow, the phone lines into the prison haven’t been cut, so negotiations are under way, although all incoming calls are monitored. I suppose the proposed meeting’s off, now that Marcangelo can’t make it?”

  “The president has other aides,” grunted Wishart. “But I think we might be strong enough now not to have to talk to the second rank. I’ll send back a messenger to suggest that Lindenbaum should come to talk himself.”

  “I think it’s too dangerous,” said Gray. “We needn’t come out into the open—I don’t think we should. All they have to do is pick you up....”

  Wishart scowled, and made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “It would be a declaration of war,” he said. “They don’t want war. They can’t afford it. If they could have got me into the prison before the whole thing broke, they might have kept the lid on, but it’s gone too far now. They need me now, because I’m the only one can deliver Paul Heisenberg...on my terms.”

  “You think Lindenbaum will agree to a meet?”

  “Yes,” growled Wishart. “He knows what it takes to survive. He’ll let us move in, even if it costs him three-quarters of his administration. He wouldn’t have been president for so long if he couldn’t bend with the wind. He’s a professional front man—a performer. I know him from top to toe, because I’ve been dealing with people like him all my life. He’s ours, the moment we promise him a deal that’ll let him keep what he’s got—the appearance of power, the glamour. Within a couple of days he’ll be greeting me every day as if I were the prodigal son.”

  “And suppose the men behind him now don’t want to be dropped?” demanded Gray. “You think they’re just going to let him hand over the meat cleaver to you, so you can cut them down?”

  “Give him credit for some sense,” said Wishart. “They won’t realize he’s gone until he’s out of reach. When he turns his coat he isn’t going to wait around. I only hope that he has a big enough private army, because he isn’t going to be able to call on Diehl’s. Diehl will be the first to go.”

  “I still don’t like it,” said Gray.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “We could take it slowly. Play it cool. With Heisenberg on our side we could force an election. We have the strength on the streets to keep it honest. We could landslide our candidates in and get rid of the whole Lindenbaum operation.”

  Wishart coughed out a contemptuous laugh. “Sure,” he said. “We could do that, if we had the time, and the strength to fight a war against Diehl’s assassins, and if we had Paul Heisenberg, body and soul. My way, we only need the body, and to be perfectly honest, I think we’d be fools to reckon on ever getting the other. Paul might be a performer, just like Lindenbaum, but he’s not quite the straw man that Lindenbaum is. Sure, his immediate loyalties ought to lie with us, especially with the likes of Diehl on the other side, but if he were to be our front man he’d want to know a lot about our program of action once we got voted in. He’d want to know just what we could do—and he’d want a free hand to make his own amendments. Quite frankly, I don’t know what the hell Paul makes of the year of our lord 2119, or what he’s likely to think it needs in the way of advice or administration, but I do know one thing, and that’s that Paul Heisenberg has a pretty weird mind. I want his name, while it’s mine to use—I don’t want his help in deciding a political program.”

  “You’re going to have to deal with him afterwards, whatever happens,” Gray pointed out.

  “Afterwards is another day,” replied Wishart. “Even Paul knows a fait accompli when he sees one. Besides which, his lifetime as the world’s favorite successor to Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammed isn’t going to be a long one. People expect a great deal of him, and you know what happens to prophets who can’t produce the miraculous on demand. If I had to bet, I’d say that Paul isn’t going to be around very long. When he realizes what kind of promises people have made themselves in his name, and what kind of check he has to pick up, he’ll be off, headfirst into nowhere-land again, heading for the far, far future. He’ll run a million years, if he has to, to escape his reputation...because there’s no way on Earth he’s going to be able to make a start on living up to it.”

  Gray grinned wryly. “If the people whose loyalty you’re counting on to get you into power could hear you say that,” he observed, “they’d tear you to pieces.”

  “I made Paul Heisenberg,” said Wishart, coldly. “Even what he is today. It was me that put him up on that platform to be struck by divine lightning. It was me who made it mean something to the world when that lightning struck. Without me, he’d be nothing. He doesn’t own his name or the fact that millions of people think that he’s the messiah. I do. Those things are mine, because I’m responsible for them. They’re mine to use.”

  “You don’t like him very much, do you?”

  “Sure I like him. He’s like a son to me. But what’s that got to do with anything? The simple fact is that when he was on stage, I couldn’t even trust him to stand still so that the lights could maintain his halo.”

  “You’re a bastard,” said Gray, making it sound almost like a compliment. “Just don’t ever begin to think of me as a son, okay?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There was a phone on the wall opposite the door to Paul’s room, and Ricardo Marcangelo was speaking into the receiver calmly and unhurriedly. His voice was relaxed and patient, but whenever he paused to let the man at the other end reply, his teeth would catch his lower lip and worry at it.

  Paul watched him from the doorway. To his right stood Laker, the security man, balancing in his hand a small radio set that kept him in constant touch with his direct superior. There was another security man with him—a man named Horne. To Paul’s left stood two other people, both of whom had been in rooms on the same corridor. One was Rebecca, who looked very frightened. The other was the injured policeman, Sheehan, who was sporting an ugly black eye but seemed fit and alert. He was in full uniform, and obviously considered himself
to have been returned to duty for the duration of the emergency.

  Marcangelo hung up, and turned to his audience. “They’ve taken over the whole prison, except for this block and the administration buildings behind it. The Movement sent weapons in with the men that security rounded up and brought out here. There must have been a measure of co-operation from the police and from some of the security men...and the prison guards, of course. Either the Movement has agents in all three forces, or it recruited sympathizers, or knew where to go with bribes. The operation was limited—they never intended to try to break out, or even to take the hospital block. What they’ve done is simply to cut us off from the outside. They’re under siege and can’t last forever, but they know that even a few days hold-up is going to put the whole administration on the skids. Scapelhorn is asking for Paul to be released into his hands, of course, and for various other concessions to the Movement, to which he knows we won’t agree. He also knows that it doesn’t really matter what we agree to, or not, at least for the next few days.”

  “What do we do?” asked Laker, harshly.

  “What can we do?” countered Marcangelo. “It’s up to Wishart to make the next move—he’ll deal with Lindenbaum and the cabinet. There’s nothing we can do but wait. We’re just pawns trapped on the board until somebody works out a way of moving us.”

  Laker waved his pocket radio at Paul and Rebecca. “Hadn’t we better get these two locked up and out of the way?”

  “What for?” asked Marcangelo. “Are you planning to do a strip-tease?”

  Laker didn’t take kindly to the note of levity. “We don’t want them making a break to try to join their friends in the outer prison. They’re all we’ve got. Hostages. If they get away Scapelhorn’s men could start shooting.”