American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58

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American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 Page 62

by Gary K. Wolfe


  “Why couldn’t we take him back from them?”

  “I don’t handle tactics on that level. I imagine we might have had trouble, though, kidnaping a seriously hurt man out of a hospital.” And the man was an American national. Suppose he’d died? The Soviet propaganda teams would have gone to work on the Americans, and when the next A.N.G. bill came up in their Congress, they might not be so quick with their share of next year’s budget. Rogers grunted to himself. It was that kind of war.

  “I think it’s a ridiculous situation. An important man like Martino in their hands, and we’re helpless. It’s absurd.”

  “That’s the kind of thing that gives you your work to do, isn’t it?”

  The Foreign Ministry representative changed his tack. “I wonder how he’s taking it? He was rather badly knocked about in the explosion, I understand.”

  “Well, he’s convalescent now.”

  “I’m told he lost an arm. But I imagine they’ll have taken care of that. They’re quite good at prosthetics, you know. Why, as far back as the nineteen forties, they were keeping dogs’ heads alive with mechanical hearts and so forth.”

  “Mm.” A man disappears over the line, Rogers was thinking, and you send out people to find him. Little by little, the reports come trickling in. He’s dead, they say. He’s lost an arm, but he’s alive. He’s dying. We don’t know where he is. He’s been shipped to Novoya Moskva. He’s right here, in this city, in a hospital. At least, they’ve got somebody in a hospital here. What hospital?

  Nobody knows. You’re not going to find out any more. You give what you have to the Foreign Ministry, and the negotiations start. Your side closes down a highway across the line. Their side almost shoots down a plane. Your side impounds some fishing boats. And finally, not so much because of anything your side had done but for some reason of their own, their side gives in.

  And all this time, a man from your side has been lying in one of their hospitals, broken and hurt, waiting for you to do something.

  “There’s a rumor he was quite close to completing something called a K-Eighty-eight,” the Foreign Ministry man went on. “We had orders not to press too hard, for fear they’d realize how important he was. That is, in the event they didn’t already know. But, of course, we were to get him back, so we couldn’t go too soft. Delicate business.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Do you think they got the K-Eighty-eight out of him?”

  “They have a man on their side called Azarin. He’s very good.” How can I possibly know until I’ve talked to Martino? But Azarin’s damned good. And I wonder if we shouldn’t run this gossip through another security check?

  Out beyond the gateway, two headlights bloomed up, turned sideward, and stopped. The rear door of a Tatra limousine snapped open, and at the same time one of the Soviet guards went over to the gate and flipped the rail up. The Allied M.P. sergeant called his men to attention.

  Rogers and the Foreign Ministry representative got out of their car.

  A man stepped out of the Tatra and came to the gateway. He hesitated at the border and then walked forward quickly between the two rows of M.P.’s.

  “Good God!” the Foreign Ministry man whispered.

  The lights glittered in a spray of bluish reflection from the man in the gateway. He was mostly metal.

  2.

  He was wearing one of their shapeless, drab civilian suits, with lumpy shoes and a striped brown shirt. His sleeves were too short, and his hands hung far out. One was flesh and one was not. His skull was a polished metal ovoid, completely featureless except for a grille where his mouth ought to be and a half-moon recess, curving upward at the ends, where his eyes lurked. He stood, looking ill at ease, at the end of two rows of soldiers. Rogers came up to him, holding out his hand. “Lucas Martino?”

  The man nodded. “Yes.” It was his right hand that was still good. He reached up and took Rogers’ hand. His grip was strong and anxious. “I’m very glad to be here.”

  “My name’s Rogers. This is Mr. Haller, of the Foreign Ministry.”

  Haller shook Martino’s hand automatically, staring. “How do you do?” Martino said.

  “Very well, thank you,” the Foreign Ministry man mumbled.

  “And you?”

  “The car’s over here, Mr. Martino,” Rogers cut in. “I’m with the sector Security office. I’d appreciate it if you came with me. The sooner I interview you, the sooner this’ll be completely over.” Rogers touched Martino’s shoulder and urged him lightly toward the sedan.

  “Yes, of course. There’s no need delaying.” The man matched Rogers’ quick pace and slipped in ahead of him at his gesture. Haller climbed in on the other side of Martino, and then the driver wheeled the car around and started them rolling for Rogers’ office. Behind them, the M.P.’s got into their jeeps and followed. Rogers looked back through the car’s rear window. The Soviet border guards were staring after them. Martino sat stiffly against the upholstery, his hands in his lap. “It feels wonderful to be back,” he said in a strained voice.

  “I should think so,” Haller said. “After what they—”

  “I think Mr. Martino’s only saying what he feels is expected of people in these situations, Mr. Haller. I doubt very much if he feels wonderful about anything.”

  Haller looked at Rogers with a certain shock. “You’re quite blunt, Mr. Rogers.”

  “I feel blunt.”

  Martino looked from one to the other. “Please don’t let me unsettle you,” he said. “I’m sorry to be a source of upset. Perhaps it would help if I said I knew what I look like, and that I, for one, am used to it?”

  “Sorry,” Rogers said. “I didn’t mean to start a squabble around you.”

  “Please accept my apologies, as well,” Haller added. “I realize that, in my own way, I was being just as rude as Mr. Rogers.” Martino said, “And so now we’ve all apologized to each other.”

  So we have, Rogers thought. Everybody’s sorry.

  They pulled into the ramp which served the side door of Rogers’ office building, and the driver stopped the car. “All right, Mr. Martino, this is where we get out,” Rogers told the man. “Haller, you’ll be checking into your office right away?”

  “Immediately, Mr. Rogers.”

  “O.K. I guess your boss and my boss can start getting to gether on policy toward this.”

  “I’m quite sure my Ministry’s role in this case was concluded with Mr. Martino’s safe return,” Haller said delicately. “I intend to go to bed after I make my report. Good night, Rogers. Pleasure working with you.”

  “Of course.” They shook hands briefly, and Rogers followed Martino out of the car and through the side door.

  “He washed his hands of me rather quickly, didn’t he?”

  Martino commented as Rogers directed him down a flight of steps into the basement.

  Rogers grunted. “Through this door, please, Mr. Martino.”

  They came out into a narrow, door-lined corridor with painted concrete walls and a gray linoleum tile floor. Rogers stopped and looked at the doors for a moment. “That one’ll do, I guess. Please come in here with me, Mr. Martino.” He took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. The room inside was small. It had a cot pushed against one wall, neatly made up with a white pillow and a tightly stretched army blanket. There was a small table, and one chair. An overhead bulb lit the room, and in a side wall there were two doors, one leading to a small closet and the other opening on a compact bathroom.

  Martino looked around. “Is this where you always conduct your interviews with returnees?” he asked mildly.

  Rogers shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’ll have to ask you to stay here for the time being.” He stepped out of the room without giving Martino an opportunity to react. He closed and locked the door.

  He relaxed a little. He leaned against the door’s solid metal and lit a cigarette with only a faint tremor in his fingertips.

  Then he walked quickl
y down the corridor to the automatic elevator and up to the floor where his office was. As he snapped on the lights, his mouth twisted at the thought of what his staff would say when he started calling them out of their beds. He picked up the telephone on his desk. But first, he had to talk to Deptford, the District Chief. He dialed the number. Deptford answered almost immediately. “Hello?” Rogers had expected him to be awake.

  “Rogers, Mr. Deptford.”

  “Hello, Shawn. I’ve been waiting for your call. Everything go all right with Martino?”

  “No, sir. I need an emergency team down here as fast as possible. I want a whatdyoucallit—a man who knows about miniature mechanical devices—with as many assistants authorized as he needs. I want a surveillance device expert. And a psychologist. With the same additional staff authorizations for the last two. I want the three key men tonight or tomorrow morning. How much of a staff they’ll need’ll be up to them, but I want the authorizations in so there won’t be any red tape to hold them up. I wish to hell nobody had ever thought of pumping key personnel full of truth-drug allergens.”

  “Rogers, what is this? What went wrong? Your offices aren’t equipped for any such project as that.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t dare move him. There’re too many sensitive places in this city. I got him over here and into a cell, and I made damned sure he didn’t even get near my office. God knows what he might be after, or can do.”

  “Rogers—did Martino come over the line tonight or didn’t he?”

  Rogers hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said.

  3.

  Rogers ignored the room full of waiting men and sat looking down at the two dossiers, not so much thinking as gathering his energy.

  Both dossiers were open to the first page. One was thick, full of security check breakdowns, reports, career progress résumés, and all the other data that accumulate around a government employee through the years. It was labeled Martino, Lucas Anthony. The first page was made up of the usual identification statistics: height, weight, color of eyes, color of hair, date of birth, fingerprints, dental chart, distinguishing marks and scars. There was a set of standard nude photographs; front, back, and both profiles of a heavy-set, muscular man with controlled, pleasantly intelligent features and a slightly thickened nose.

  The second dossier was much thinner. As yet, there was nothing in the folder but the photographs, and it was unlabeled beyond a note: See Martino, L.A. (?) The photographs showed a heavy-set, muscular man with broad scars running diagonally up from his left side, across his chest and around his back and both shoulders, like a ropey shawl. His left arm was mechanical up to the top of the shoulder, and seemed to have been grafted directly into his pectoral and dorsal musculature. He had thick scars around the base of his throat, and that metal head.

  Rogers stood up behind his desk and looked at the waiting special team. “Well?”

  Barrister, the English servomechanisms engineer, took the bit of his pipe out of his teeth. “I don’t know. It’s quite hard to tell on the basis of a few hours’ tests.” He took a deep breath. “As a matter of exact fact, I’m running tests but I’ve no idea what they’ll show, if anything, or how soon.” He gestured helplessly. “There’s no getting at someone in his condition. There’s no penetrating his surface, as it were. Half our instruments’re worthless. There’re so many electrical components in his mechanical parts that any readings we take are hopelessly blurred. We can’t even do so simple a thing as determine the amperage they used. It hurts him to have us try.” He dropped his voice apologetically. “It makes him scream.”

  Rogers grimaced. “But he is Martino?”

  Barrister shrugged.

  Rogers suddenly slammed his fist against the top of his desk. “What the hell are we going to do?”

  “Get a can opener,” Barrister suggested.

  In the silence, Finchley, who was on loan to Rogers from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, said, “Look at this.”

  He touched a switch and the film projector he’d brought began to hum while he went over and dimmed the office lights. He pointed the projector toward a blank wall and started the film running. “Overhead pickup,” he explained. “Infra-red lighting. We believe he can’t see it. We think he was asleep.”

  Martino—Rogers had to think of him by that name against his better judgment—was lying on his cot. The upturned crescent in his face was shuttered from the inside, with only the edges of a flexible gasket to mark its outline. Below it, the grille, centered just above the blunt curve of his jaw, was ajar. The impression created was vaguely that of a hairless man with his eyes shut, breathing through his mouth. Rogers had to remind himself that this man did not breathe.

  “This was taken about two a.m. today,” Finchley said. “He’d been lying there for a little over an hour and a half.”

  Rogers frowned at the tinge of bafflement in Finchley’s voice. Yes, it was uncanny not being able to tell whether a man was asleep or not. But it was no use doing anything if they were all going to let their nerves go ragged. He almost said something about it until he realized his chest was aching. He relaxed his shoulders, shaking his head at himself.

  A cue spot flickered on the film. “All right,” Finchley said, “now listen.” The tiny speaker in the projector began to crackle.

  Martino had begun to thrash on his cot, his metal arm striking sparks from the wall.

  Rogers winced.

  Abruptly, the man started to babble in his sleep. The words poured out, each syllable distinct. But the speech was wildly faster than normal, and the voice was desperate:

  “Name! Name! Name!

  “Name Lucas Martino born Bridgetown New Jersey May tenth nineteen forty-eight, about . . . face! Detail . . . forward . . . march!

  “Name! Name! Detail . . . Halt!

  “Name Lucas Martino born Bridgetown New Jersey May tenth nineteen forty-eight!”

  Rogers felt Finchley touch his arm. “Think they were walking him?”

  Rogers shrugged. “If that’s a genuine nightmare, and if that’s Martino, then, yes—it sounds very much like they were walking him back and forth in a small room and firing questions at him. You know their technique: keep a man on his feet, keep him moving, keep asking questions. Change interrogation teams every few hours, so they’ll be fresh. Don’t let the subject sleep or get off his feet. Walk him delirious. Yes, that’s what it might be.”

  “Do you think he’s faking?”

  “I don’t know. He may have been. Then again, maybe he was asleep. Maybe he’s one of their people, and he was dreaming we were trying to shake his story.”

  After a time, the man on the cot fell back. He lay still, his forearms raised stiffly from the elbows, his hands curled into rigid claws. He seemed to be looking straight up at the camera with his streamlined face, and no one could tell whether he was awake or asleep, thinking or not, afraid or in pain, or who or what he was.

  Finchley shut off the projector.

  4.

  Rogers had been awake for thirty-six hours. It was a whole day, now, since the man had come back over the line. Rogers pawed angrily at his burning eyes as he let himself into his apartment. He left his clothes in a rumpled trail across the threadbare old carpet as he crossed the floor toward the bathroom. Fumbling in the medicine cabinet for an Alka-Seltzer, he envied the little wiry men like Finchley who could stay awake for days without their stomachs backing up on them.

  The clanking pipes slowly filled the tub with hot brown water while he pulled at his beard with a razor. He clawed his fingers through the crisp, cropped red hair on his scalp, and scowled at the dandruff that came flaking out.

  God, he thought wearily, I’m thirty-seven and I’m coming apart.

  And as he slid into the tub, feeling the hot water working into the bad hip where he’d been hit by a cobblestone in a riot, looking down under his navel at the bulge that no exercise could quite flatten out any more, the thought drove home.

  A few
more years, and I’ll really have a pot. When the damp weather comes, that hip’s going to give me all kinds of hell. I used to be able to stay up two and three days at a clip—I’m never going to be able to do that again. Some day I’m going to try some stunt I could do the week before, and I won’t make it.

  Some day, too, I’m going to make a decision of some kind— some complex, either-or thing that’s got to be right. I’ll know I’ve got it right—and it’ll be wrong. I’ll start screwing up, and every time after that I’ll get the inside sweats remembering how I was wrong. I’ll start pressing, and worrying, and living on dexedrine, and if they spot it in time, upstairs, they’ll give me a nice harmless job in a corner somewhere. And if they don’t spot it, one of these days Azarin’s going to put a really good one over on me, and everybody’s kids’ll talk Chinese.

  He shivered. The phone rang in the living room.

  He climbed out of the tub, holding carefully onto the edge, and wrapped himself in one of the huge towels that was the size of a blanket, and which he was going to take back to the States with him if he was ever assigned there. He padded out to the phone stand and picked up the head-piece. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Rogers?” He recognized one of the War Ministry operators.

  “That’s right.”

  “Mr. Deptford is on the line. Hold on, please.”

  “Thank you.” He waited, wishing the cigarette box wasn’t across the room beside his bed.

  “Shawn? Your office said you’d be home.”

  “Yes, sir. My shirt was trying to walk off me.”

  “I’m here, at the Ministry. I’ve just been talking to the Undersecretary for Security. How are you doing on this Martino business? Have you reached any definite conclusions as yet?”

  Rogers thought over the terms of his answer. “No, sir, I’m sorry. We’ve only had one day, so far.”

  “Yes, I know. Do you have any notion of how much more time you’ll need?”

  Rogers frowned. He had to calculate how much time they could possibly spare. “I’d say it’ll take a week.” He hoped.

 

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