That was the first thing. The second was more obvious. The man weaving unsteadily on his feet, blood streaming down his face and neck and his clothes, cursing and raving at me for running the red light, was no stranger. It was Charles Kane, the programmer from my section.
And third, I hadn't run any red light. The shrieking, bloody man before me believed I had. But I hadn't. Because there isn't any traffic light at the corner.
A sense of horror appeared deep within me, pushing aside disbelief and incredulity because I knew, as swiftly as the horror began, that it was all too true.
There had been no accident.
There wasn't any traffic light at the corner.
Charles Kane had been programmed to kill me.
32
eight times during the past two weeks. Starting with that split-second escape from death when Charlie Kane did his best to run me down with his car. Eight times someone had tried to kill me. Each time it had been close, and each time I knew that sooner or later the clumsy attempts would succeed.
Because they were getting better at it.
79 was learning. That was the worst of it. The first time someone tried to get me with a knife, I was helpless. I mean, for a moment I stood there stupidly, not believing what was happening. I had just parked my car by the apartment when a dark form loomed up and I had a glimpse of light off a steel blade. At that moment, when I had the chance to defend myself, to move, to do something, shock took over. All I did was to stare. The blade swept down, and then it faltered. I heard a strangling gasp from the throat of my assailant as he fought a terrible struggle within himself. Abruptly he flung away the knife and cried out hoarsely, "I can't ... I can't do it!" With that he ran off into the darkness. I took the knife into my apartment and spent twenty minutes staring at it.
A lack of knowledge of hypnotic control on the part of 79 had saved my life. It's not always possible to get someone to commit murder when there is a deeply ingrained defense built up against such an act. It runs contradictory to basic tenets not only of conscious thoughts but also of the subconscious acceptance of not committing certain deeds. Fortunately, the knife wielder was one of these people.
Otherwise ... I shrugged, for I was swiftly becoming inured to the thought that I had been set up electronically as a clay pigeon.
Time was running out, and I knew I had to expect anything. I added a bolt to my apartment door and I never went anywhere without a gun. I knew guns and I never thought twice about keeping a shell in the chamber. All I needed to do was to thumb the safety off, and I wasn't helpless any more.
I went to see Tom Smythe, who was still wrestling with the matter of attempted sabotage of the cybernetics system. No one had been found attempting to escape (naturally), and I fear I would have come in for suspicion (I did; Tom suspected everyone and everything) had it not been for the adamant statements of the guards that I had saved the day. I think Tom welcomed my problem. It took him away from the infuriating blank wall of the "incident" and it raised the possibility that perhaps there existed a link between the sabotage attempt and the dark forms that had tried to do me in.
I couldn't prove a thing about Charles Kane. Ever since he climbed from the sidewalk, bloody and screaming, he'd gone into shock. There simply wasn't any reaching him, and we had some of the best people in the business. The doctors clucked their tongues and shook their heads and murmured that withdrawal of this sort in such an incident simply wasn't normal. I didn't offer to enlighten them by explaining that Charles Kane, very decent guy and husband and father, had been hypnotized by a monstrous electronic brain.
But there was something that didn't depend entirely upon words. The knife. The long steel blade dropped in the parking lot that night. I told Tom what had happened, and I tossed the knife carelessly onto his desk.
He studied it for several moments, turning it over slowly and looking at it from one end to the other. "German," he said. "Postwar, sucker knife."
"Sucker knife?"
"Uh-huh," he confirmed. "It's made up to look like some sort of ceremonial Nazi dagger." He pointed. "See the scrollwork and the designs here?" He waited until I nodded. "But it's junk, turned out en masse with scrap metals to sell as souvenirs. Nothing at all like the real thing." He tapped the point gently with his forefinger. He tossed the knife back to his desk, and grunted. "But it kills just as well as the real thing."
"Very interesting," I said dryly.
"Tell me what's been happening," he said.
I didn't tell him everything. I didn't tell him about the rifle bullet that smacked into a tree only inches from my head because I couldn't prove it, and Tom Smythe was a man who wanted either proof or the whole story. He couldn't have the latter, and I couldn't give him any less for the former. So I didn't say that I knew Charlie Kane had tried to kill me or that I'd been shot at more than once. I told him what happened with the knife, and that someone had broken into my apartment while I'd been out.
He chewed his lip and thought about my words. He grunted again, sure sign he'd come to a decision. "All right, Steve," he said, his voice showing his commitment, "we'll put a watch on your place."
Then, casually, "Any idea while we're at it, I mean, while we're here, just us two . . . any idea why this is happening?"
"No."
"You're lying."
"I said 'no.' "
He sighed. "You're scared, Steve."
"Damn right I am! I don't like people going around trying to stick souvenirs in me!"
He laughed. "You have a novel way of putting it." The smile vanished from his face. "But you still haven't told me everything, Steve."
"I've told you enough."
His eyes seemed to sharpen. Tom Smythe had been in this game for a long time, and unsaid things didn't escape him. He also knew enough not to push too hard.
"I want a promise from you," he said after a long pause.
"Shoot."
"Whenever you're through playing secret agent on your own, you will tell me the rest of what you are not telling me now."
I stared at him and started to speak. But I held my tongue and shook my head slowly. There wasn't any use lying to the man. You got away with that only so far and no more.
"All right," I promised. "I'll do that."
"I'm a far sight from being satisfied about what happened that night with 79." He threw that one at me without the slightest warning.
I didn't even blink my eyes.
Tom shrugged. "I'm going to put a tail on you. I have a feeling I want you to stay alive just to tell me a great many things I want to know."
"You mean someone will be following me?"
"Twenty-four hours a day."
"Don't let him come too close without my knowing who he is," I said, my voice suddenly grim.
He raised his eyebrows. I opened my jacket and revealed the shoulder holster.
He gestured. "What is it?"
"Llama. Spanish; scaled-down model of the Colt .45. It's .380 caliber, and very effective. Hell of a muzzle velocity."
"You got a permit for that thing?"
His question startled me. "Why, no, I didn't think—"
"I didn't think you did." He pursed his lips as he sought a decision. He sighed again and opened his lower left desk drawer, fumbled around, and withdrew a card. Quickly he typed in my name, countersigned the card, punched a seal onto it, and rang for his secretary. He held out the card as she entered the office.
"Have a rad-print run on this and then plastiseal it," he told her.
I watched her leave. "What's that all about, Tom?"
"I must be getting old"—he sighed again—"and there's no fool like an old fool. Guns are dangerous things, especially in the hands of amateurs—"
"I'm no amateur with this thing," I broke in, patting the bulge beneath my jacket.
He ignored me and went right on as though I hadn't spoken a word. "—who think they can chase away shadows with a couple of squeezes of the trigger. Let me tell you a few things, Steve. I know you bet
ter than your parents know you and I know you better than you do yourself, and I happen to trust you, and I also know that you are not a wild-eyed fool. So I won't push you and demand to find out what you're holding from me. Not yet, anyway," he added with a clear hint that sooner or later I would have to account for what I concealed at this moment.
Several minutes later his secretary returned. He took the card from her, told her to forget she had ever seen it, and studied it for a few moments.
"What is it?" I asked.
He offered the card. "You're now a member of my security staff," he said in answer. "We're a federal office, and that card is your full authority to pack the cannon you're wearing under your left armpit. If the police pick you up, they won't heave your silly scientific ass into the cooler until we come and get you out. The card makes you legal."
I grinned as I slipped the card into my wallet.
"Thanks, Tom."
He still wanted to know what I wasn't telling. But it would have to wait.
I felt better for bringing Tom into the picture. And I felt even better than that for knowing he would be keeping an eye on me.
But you can't figure all the angles. ...
Which is how I came to be sprawled, naked, on the cold floor of my bathroom, my chest heaving for air and my stomach knotting in spasms and pain crawling like a furry horror through my mind. To say nothing of the slimy thing in my stomach that brought me heaving to the edge of the toilet bowl. But there wasn't anything left to come up any more, and I tried to fight down the spasms. I grabbed the ampul of smelling salts and held it again beneath my nose. I went into a fit of coughing once more, but at least my head felt slightly clearer.
I tried to assemble my fragmented thoughts. The light from the bathroom splashed into the bedroom, and I stared dully at the still unconscious form of Barbara Johnson. It all swept back to me now. Her body, sensuous and writhing, her breasts against my face and ... I gave a mental shrug of one more narrow escape. Whatever chemical she had put on her skin to send me into the middle of next week had come terribly close to working. I'd like to find out a little more about that drug. When someone wasn't trying to kill me, anyway. And now wasn't the time for playing detective about unknown drugs.
It took almost all my strength, but I regained my feet and walked back into the bedroom. I almost stubbed my toe on the .38 lying on the carpet. I picked it up, checked the safety, and turned again to examine Barbara. The blood from the long gash in her scalp—the gash I'd inflicted by clubbing her with the barrel—had almost stopped. She'd be all right. She would have a wild headache when she came out of it, but that was much better than a slug through her chest.
Damn it, I had to stop wandering around in my mind. I froze where I was when the rest of my memory welled up in my brain and tapped insistently for attention. Of course . . . that car outside, where I'd spotted the telltale glow of the cigarette.
So now they were teaming up on me. Not just one person fighting wildly with his conscience not to use a knife. But a team. Barbara to use the chemical sprayed on her to knock me out, and then she would signal the men waiting in the street below. Neat; too neat. I doubted if Barbara herself would have been able actually to commit murder. Not with me, anyway. We had been too close. So she would just carry out the first act in their carefully planned scheme, and then—
The enormity of what was happening struck me almost a physical blow! Barbara! When had she been exposed to that deadly light in Cubicle 17? And who were her accomplices in the street, waiting for the signal that all was in readiness for them to come to my apartment to finish their grisly task?
How many people had 79 already reached? When would it get to the guards who would be convinced, absolutely convinced in their minds, that I was a saboteur, running away from them, who could be stopped only with the wrist-jarring motions of a gun being emptied?
Who else had been assigned Steven Rand as their objective?
Right then and there I knew I had to get out from under. Get away from here. Get away from exposure to any person who would or could recognize me. I couldn't tell who might have been assigned under increasingly effective hypnotic control to do me in.
Any human being was suspect.
Anyone.
Tom Smythe . . . Kim . . . total strangers . . . anyone.
I needed time. Time in which to think.
While I was still alive.
33
in the bathroom I opened a plastic vial and withdrew two green capsules. Quickly I swallowed them with water, and took the vial with the remaining capsules into the bedroom. They were powerful stimulants I had obtained for working as much as twenty-four hours without a stop. Now they would pay off in a manner unexpected. The chemical fumes I had inhaled from Barbara's body still had me weak and somewhat disconnected, and I needed a push to get me back in proper working order. As I dressed, I could feel the effects of the drug working within me.
Somehow I knew that events would come to this moment. Not even the assurance of the .38 in its holster could alleviate the situation, and when I got down to brass tacks it didn't solve anything. Sure, if someone tried to do me in and I had only a brief warning I could defend myself, even kill an assailant. But that would solve only that problem at that moment, and leave me facing the same overwhelming forces being arrayed against me by that damned computer. I could survive from moment to moment, and that was all. I needed time in which to think, to produce the solution that eliminated entirely the danger that not only I faced, but that loomed with terrible expanding effect against the country. And that meant getting away.
I planned for this contingency. Not in specifics but in a general manner. The one defense I had in my possession that 79 could not overcome easily was an assumed anonymity and freedom of action.
Intrinsic to the latter was a means of random movements. It wouldn't be difficult to disappear within the breadth and the teeming mass of the country. If I had the means to remain mobile.
I checked my clothing and my equipment. And money. I had $1,500 in cash with me; I didn't want to be using credit cards that would effectively track my movements. The .38 went into the shoulder holster, and in a leather bag I kept ready for this moment I had an extra clip and a box of ammunition. I had already packed clothing, my toilet kit, a list of names and telephone numbers, and a tool kit of my own making.
I bent down to check the wound along Barbara's scalp. She had drifted into a deep sleep, and I figured she would remain that way for at least several hours. I went to the window, pushed aside the drapes just enough to look out. Sure enough, the reception committee was still there. Impatient by now, I thought. Well, I intended to keep them that way as long as I could.
I left by the front door, double-locking it behind me. It was nearly five o'clock, and I still had plenty of time before the occupants of the apartment house would be stirring. I used the stairs instead of the elevator, and descended to the basement. A long corridor ran the length of the building and exited directly to the parking lot.
No one around. I moved quickly, but without running, to my car. I was in the seat and ready to turn the starter key when I started getting real sensible. I took a flashlight from the glove compartment, climbed from the car, and lifted the hood.
My breath turned cold. They weren't missing any bets. The beam from the flashlight played on three sticks of dynamite wired to the starter. If the setup with Barbara didn't work, arid I went downstairs in the morning to drive to work—just the turn of the key and Steve Rand would be out of the way for good. I closed the hood and locked the car, making a mental note to call Tom Smythe at the first opportunity. The dynamite would serve as an excellent supporter of what I had been telling him, and he could get a specialist to render the dynamite harmless. Standing alongside the car, I fished in the bag, removed what I would need. I shoved the equipment into my side pocket, looked around me, and walked quickly to the adjacent parking lot.
One of the overhead lights was out, wrapping much of the
parking lot and its cars in darkness. So much the better. I went down the rows of cars until I came to a new Ford. None of the General Motors or Chrysler makes would do. Detroit was making it rougher for hard-working car thieves, I guessed.
The Ford I'd selected was unlocked, and I had no key. This is where preparations paid off. From my pockets I removed two wires with alligator clips on each end of the wires. I opened the hood, attached one clip to the battery post and another to the 12-volt side of the dropping register along the side of the engine mount. Then with the other wire I jumped a line from the battery post to the starter solenoid. I worked the accelerator clip to move fuel to the carburetor, touched the second alligator clip to the solenoid, and the engine coughed immediately into life. Good; the automatic choke was holding the engine fast enough to keep it from faltering. I removed the wires, closed the hood, and climbed in. The headlights went on as I pulled the knob. As I expected, neither the radio nor the turn signals operated; they were linked directly to the ignition system that I had bypassed.
I drove steadily toward a highway that would take me to the southeast. While the car sped over the nearly empty roads, the pressure for the moment was off me and the drugs I'd taken were at their peak. It felt wonderful to be out from under, at least for now, and settle down to some serious planning.
I was not sanguine about the possibilities. 79 was an adversary of dimension and purpose never before known. It was easy to adopt the trite attitude that it was only a mechanical-electronic thing, and lacked the mental agility so treasured by the human race. That was, in unscientific terms, so much crap.
The human being was essentially an oblongated bag into which went some 60 percent water, other assorted liquids, unbelievable complexity, a staggering fragility, a skeletal framework, and all manner of emotional maladjustments—yet we did pretty well.
My goals lay far beyond myself, and yet, to accomplish my purpose of removing 79 as a threat to the country, I knew I must fight for my life. I wondered just what advantages I might extract from the contest. Two more dissimilar gladiators had never existed!
The God Machine Page 24