The Final Affair

by David McDaniel

  "Oh, ten thousand degrees or so — you can have them as cool as seven thousand degrees, and there's really no upper limit short of mass-energy conversion, which only happens inside stars. We don't know yet, of course, what temperature the KugelBlitzGewehr generates. Oh, that's ten thousand degrees Celsius, I should say."

  "Celsius?"

  "Centigrade. The ionized gas is probably released with a spin on it, and since a moving electric charge generates a magnetic field it is temporarily self-sustaining. Surface turbulence tends to prevent the heat escaping, and its own field holds it together until something stops its motion."

  "Releasing the heat."

  "Releasing whatever volume of super-heated electrically charged gas went to make it up. If it was the size of a pinhead it wouldn't last very long, and would likely burn a hole in your coat. Naturally they lose some heat, unless Dr. Warfield has come up with a better way to hold them together."

  This time Illya interrupted. "Dr. Warfield?"

  "I'm confident this is his creation. He should be rather elderly now, but he has been involved in research of this nature for many years. Been with Thrush since a few years after the War. Decades ahead of his time."

  "Granting that this could be generated from a handgun, how would you project it? How far would it go and how fast?"

  "Well, how far would partly depend on how fast, since they tend to cool off even before they dissipate. This is something else we hope you can find out for us in San Francisco."

  Napoleon and Illya looked at each other, then back to Mr. Simpson. "I don't even know enough to ask questions," said Napoleon. "Is there anything else you can think of? If I have this straight, the thing should shoot very bright balls."

  "You might mention that anomaly of relative size versus energy," suggested Mr. Waverly.

  "Oh, yes. A larger plasmoid would not necessarily be more powerful; its destructive capacity would be more governed by the amount of energy stored in it — temperature, charge, turbulence, all would be more important than size. A film of this device in operation would be most informative."

  "We'll do our best."

  "If there are no more questions — by the by, did you see the report on the Thrush suicide corps? If not, look it up. I must be going." And so saying, he went.

  "Indeed," said Mr. Waverly. "San Francisco already has a few."

  "I think I missed that," said Napoleon. "What was it?"

  "They're called 'stim-heads'," said Illya. "Agents of no particular value whose services call for special rewards. Remember those wolves in Transylvania? With remote-controlled cortical stimulation of pain or pleasure centers, they could be made to do all sorts of things. This is a little simpler, since it's designed to be plugged into a fixed installation and only stimulates the pleasure center of the cerebral cortex. It has a long technical name in Japanese — I forget the literal translation, but it means 'Once you've had it you'll kill to get -it.' "

  "Reports on the few we've identified indicates they tend to wear their hair long — to conceal the terminal implanted in the scalp," said Mr. Waverly. "San Francisco is a city full of surprises, isn't it," said Napoleon.

  "The surprises I worry about," said Illya, "are the ones we won't know about in advance."

  "Those will be kept to a minimum," said Mr. Waverly, "as long as Ward Baldwin has no reason to suspect you are in town. If you gentlemen can avoid attracting attention, for a change...."

  "Believe me, sir," said Napoleon sincerely, "my deepest desire is to remain as far as possible from the mind of Ward Baldwin. I would wear a false beard if I thought it would fool him. But he'd just make a snide remark about my costume."

  "Forget Ward Baldwin," said Illya. "As I said earlier, this job will be a creampuff."

  "Yeah. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now." He stood and picked up his manila envelope. "But I guess that doesn't matter. Let's go."

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Little Sirrocco, How Do You Do?"

  All nightclubs look alike during the day. Chair legs bristled from tabletops and the garish decor seemed tawdry in the merciless glare of a couple of thousand-watt lamps in standing birdcages in opposite corners.

  The faint chemical smell of cedar-sweeping compound mingled with stale smoke and sweat left from the night before, and there was a tang of ammonia in the cool air somewhere. FM jazz was piped into the sound system, like a ghostly combo on the empty stage.

  Napoleon and Illya looked around the place, having found the front door open, the checkstand deserted and the cashier's desk unguarded with the cash drawer gaping empty. Behind a partition to the left they heard a telephone ring and a voice answer it; following the clue they found an office and a balding man saying, and the last show starts at 1:15. Thank you."

  He hung up the phone and looked up at Napoleon and Illya. "One of these days I'll get a gadget to answer that. What can I do for you gentlemen?"

  "Is Little Sirrocco here?"

  "What for? You don't look like fuzz."

  "We're family friends," said Napoleon. "You can tell her we work for her Uncle."

  "Tell her yourself. She's back in the dressing room, unless she left without me hearing her — cleaning up after rehearsal. I can buzz her."

  "Tell her we're coming. Where's her dressing room?"

  "Around behind the stage, on your left. Green door with a gold star on it. Not the one with the gold crescent — some wiseacre put that on the men's john." He reached for a box with buttons on it as they left.

  The corridor curved around behind the stage, and a door was open ahead of them. Inside, a girl sat at a dressing table doing things with her long blonde hair. She saw Solo in the mirror as he looked cautiously around the doorframe.

  "Come on. in and close the door," she said. "This place is safe to talk — I can fill you in on the situation as it's developed." Her voice was soft and husky, but her speech was crisp and precise.

  Illya closed the door behind them as Napoleon pulled a couple of folding chairs from a corner and sat down straddling one with his arms folded across its back. "Okay. Mr. Waverly said you could bring us up to date on Harry Stevens and his current project".

  "Good," she said. "That proves who you are. I was pretty sure. See, something came up and we've got a pickup for you to make in the next couple of days. You are Solo and Kuryakin, by the way?"

  "None genuine without this signature," said Napoleon, gracefully flipping out his gold identification card. Illya's appeared beside it — Sirrocco looked at each a moment and then returned to her mirror and her comb.

  "Okay. How much did Mr. Waverly tell you about Harry's condition?"

  "The fundamentals. He's running on a constant posthypnotic and you see him once a week."

  "Yeah. And when he reports in we can set him onto a specific track — which can get pretty complicated. You know all about the KBG?"

  "As much as anyone outside of Thrush."

  "Somebody named Simpson back in New York was asking about anything that fired along with the fireball, like for sighting or ranging, and Harry found out there was such a thing. It's like a laser, but not in the visible spectrum, and Harry said it ionizes a path in the air and the plasmoid runs down it. This came up day before yesterday when he came over to my place to report. So we set him to get one of those things and bring it to us. You'll pick it up."

  "Pick it up? Why doesn't he bring it to you next week?"

  "New York didn't want to wait. Harry can drop it off at a bar in North Beach. It's all been arranged."

  "Just a minute," said Illya; "I thought Harry didn't know he was working for anyone but Thrush. You just gave me the impression that Harry was going to steal this — whatever it is — and drop it off at a place in North Beach for us to pick up."

  "That's right. But he won't know you'll be there, and he won't know why he's doing it, and he'll forget he did it afterwards. So it's all okay. Didn't they explain it to you?"

  Napoleon stared at her reflection in the mirror, a
nd his eyebrows rose.

  "I don't know exactly how it works, myself," she admitted. "Dr. Grayson can tell you. But when Harry gets this thing, he'll signal me at my place around six-thirty or seven, before I leave for work. I'll let you know when I hear, and you'll plan to be at this place in North Beach. He'll leave it in his booth and you'll pick it up."

  "How big is it?" asked Illya.

  "About three inches long and maybe as big around as a pencil."

  "And what does it do?"

  "Well, it's some kind of a laser crystal. But instead of light it lases gamma radiation. Not a whole lot— I think they said it'd just give you a quarter-inch-wide sunburn — but enough to ionize the air it goes through so the plasmoid, being electrically charged, follows the track. That's as close as I remember. Does it seem reasonable?"

  "Completely," said Illya. "And Mr. Simpson wants the real thing so he can study its atomic crystalline structure, shoot some neutrons through it and see what it's made of. I wonder what they use to drive it."

  "Anyway, after Harry leaves, you go to the booth, pick up the thing and come home. And that's it. Nobody should be tailing him, and you can just stay out of sight if they are."

  "Tailing him? I thought he was above suspicion."

  "In this Satrapy, nobody's above suspicion. I think Baldwin watches himself. Harry's been followed-a couple of times, even though they have absolutely nothing on him. He tests clean. He loves Thrush like a mother."

  "He must, if they let him get at something this important."

  "Well, he doesn't have much rank, but he's in the copying section. He's cleared for just about everything, and his clearance gets him into places. See — there's only one KBG, and that's at their test site down near Gilroy. But there are replacement parts for everything, even parts nothing can go wrong with, like the laser crystal. And Harry can wander into Top Secret Storage and pick one up and it won't be missed for months."

  "And all this time he's loyal to Thrush," said Napoleon.

  "Uh-huh. That's what makes things a little touchy. You don't dare do anything that might disturb him while he's around. See — he doesn't really know what he's doing. But he can do everything right as long as he doesn't stop to think about it, and he won't as long as nobody calls his attention to it."

  "It doesn't sound healthy," said Napoleon.

  "It isn't," said Illya. "But you'd be surprised how many people go around like that most of the time."

  "No, I wouldn't. On the other hand, natural conditions are usually stabler than artificial ones."

  "That's right," said Sirrocco. "He'd freak out. And we don't want that to happen. Dr. Grayson might be able to put him back together again, but, some cracks might show.

  See, all I'm trained to do is cue him into a trance, debrief him into a recorder, play a tape of Dr. Grayson telling him what we want him to notice and reiterating his basic programming, wake him up, pat him on the back and send him home happy. Since I'm the only field contact he has, it's part of my job to keep an eye on his emotional balance. They say he has a chance of coming out of all this with his head in one piece, if nothing jiggers him badly."

  "That's slightly reassuring," said Solo. "I hope he doesn't have a family."

  "No," said Sirrocco. "Just me. And I'm not supposed to get personally involved. This is purely professional."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Partly for my own curiosity," said Illya, "and partly on the grounds that knowledge is more useful than ignorance, what can you tell us about Harry's condition? You mentioned he'd signal you when he got the gamma laser— how does he do this?"

  "He calls my home phone, and rings once —— "

  A pair of electronic birdcalls sounded softly, and Napoleon said, "I'll get it." He unclipped what looked like a fat silver ballpoint pen from inside his coat, twisted one end to extend a short antenna, and reversed the point to reveal the microphone/speaker. "Solo and Kuryakin here."

  "As soon as you have finished your briefing, please report back to the local office. This is of overriding priority."

  "I. — ah — think we're just about done here," said Napoleon reluctantly. "Is this new development going to supersede our present assignment?"

  "We don't know yet. Apparently it's much bigger. Mr. Waverly is on his way from New York right now by courier jet; if you can manage to get here by six you can meet him and get right to business."

  "Good. Should we arrange to have dinner sent in?"

  "We'll take care of that. Off the record, I haven't the least idea what this could be — but the tone of his voice sounded as if you could be at this all night once you got started."

  "Thanks. We'll check in by six. Solo out."

  Little Sirrocco finished sorting her hair, mist-green eyes darting back and forth from her own reflection to Solo's and Illya's as she tucked it through a band and. tossed it. over her shoulder.

  "I gather they may have to send in the second team," she said. "Good luck, fellas, but I guess that's war."

  "We may still be here to handle the pick-up," said Illya. "If the drop is on for tonight, you'll still check in and they'll have to send someone. We might be out in time, and I would like very much to observe this programming in operation."

  "Okay," she said, standing and slinging a rough leather bag over her shoulder. "If I see you again, that's cool,. and if I don't, hang in there." She fumbled in the bag until she found a pair of opaque plastic glasses, and gestured with them towards the door. "I have to head home now to wait for a phone call."

  As she locked the dressing room behind her she called up the corridor, "Hey, Spiros!"

  A faint "Yeah?" came from beyond the stage wall.

  "I'm checking out — see you about eight. These two guys are leaving with me."

  "Okay," answered the distant voice. "Why don't you use the call box? All the money I paid to put it in and you gotta yell!"

  "I already locked my door. G'bye," she called, and pushed the panic bar of the fire exit, opening into an airshaft with golden afternoon sunlight spilling in at the top and filtering down over trash cans and sooty brick walls.

  "You parked off Grant? Go out that way. I catch a cable at the top of the hill."

  "Can we give you...."

  "Thanks, no. You go check in. I get around okay on my own." And with a swirl of her hair and a flicker of hip, she was gone.

  "Miss Sirrocco needn't have heard about this," said Mr. Waverly, "but no harm is done. You will not be abandoning your assignment immediately at any rate — for that matter, the entire operation centered around Stevens may shortly become obsolete."

  "You mean he may be relieved — or he may be killed?"

  "Not precisely. He may be out of a job. For that matter, we all may have things a bit easier in the near future."

  They looked at him, then at each other. "I beg your pardon?"

  Mr. Waverly smiled. "I believe it would not be too rash to say that we are now preparing to strike the most damaging blow ever delivered to the very heart of Thrush. If you fulfill your duties well in the next few weeks, we may have an opportunity to cripple the organisation — if not to destroy it completely."

  They stared.

  "A long-range project was begun some three years ago," he continued, reaching for his humidor, "while you were short-circuiting a nasty situation in the Middle East. I'm sure you remember that week."

  "Clearly," said Illya.

  "You went there from England after meeting that Rainbow chap."

  "That business about the robbery was never settled either, was it?" said Napoleon. "That whole affair seemed unresolved, I always felt. We were off our stride."

  "We did well enough in the war afterwards, I thought," said Illya.

  "Your work there was most satisfactory," their commander said. "But your final report from London, filed between assignments, included information which correlated with some anomalous data we'd received from other sources and made me willing to invest some effort to take advantage of the revealed sit
uation." His pipe now packed, he searched for a match. "If you have nothing pressing, I would like to explain at length."

  "Here we have Thrush Central, housing the Ultimate Computer and in constant communication by remote terminal with every Satrap in the world. And over here, several thousand miles away, is a complete duplicate set of hardware, with most of the files copied on its tapes, warmed up and waiting With a staff of forty or fifty sitting around playing cards. And thirdly, yet another full set of staff and equipment is en route from one location to another, where they will reassemble and activate their own Thrush Central. With consideration of several constantly changing factors, probably including a random variable generated within the Computer itself, on a given signal everyone in the second, or stand-by, Central assumes their stations and all available communications channels are utilised at high speed to transfer every remaining bit of information from the first set of machinery into the second. Simultaneously, all functioning channels are switched to the second site, which then becomes Thrush Central, and the third unit goes to stand-by status.

  "This accomplished, the first group packs up everything — Section Three tells me all their equipment is modularised and containerised. Loathsome neologisms." He sucked at his pipe and sweet blue clouds rose around him. "They load into trucks, onto railroad cars, aircraft or boats like a travelling theatrical, troupe and are carried to another location, also chosen by the Computer, where they set up, realign and test the entire system, and signal that they are ready to assume stand-by status.