The guards at the gate took a few paces nearer to watch the fun and I seized my chance, slipping behind them, fumbling quietly but frantically with the catch on the wicket gate in full view of everyone. The catch slid back, the door opened outward, and I fell through, jumping to my feet instantly and running like hell. I bounded over gullies, tore through bushes, running north toward the distant lights of the hoverferry terminal, finally reaching the main highway, and collapsing on the grassy bank, utterly played out.
Eventually the late ferry came in and the hovercars whined past, heading for Louise, and I hitched a ride home.
As I lay in bed that night I tried to think of some good that had come out of the operation, but without success. I made sure all the doors were locked, but it was a long time before I fell asleep.
In the morning Carioca Jones arrived. I explained the failure of my mission as we sat in my living room drinking coffee and watching the early sling-gliders flitting down the Strait in the morning sun. I’d had a bad night, filled with strange visions of creeping homunculi, hunted by posses led by Gallaugher, and I felt exhausted mentally, my body stiff and aching.
“But I think it’s wonderful, darling,” cried Carioca too brightly for my mood. “Before, we only suspected. Now, we know”
“Know what?”
“Why, that those monsters are cutting people to ribbons, stripping them to the bone in the name of the law, turning them into immobile brains with nothing to do but think their lives away. Are you sure you didn’t see any of them suspended in nutrient fluid?”
“Carioca, for God’s sake.”
“But isn’t it just too abominable?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure it’s against the law. What’s illegal is what Gallaugher’s doing in his unofficial Pool for paying customers—but we have no concrete evidence that the place even exists.”
“Well, we simply demand that they throw the place open to inspection!”
I sighed. “And what if they refuse? It’s against Government policy to allow public access to the Pools, particularly since the recent outcries. They don’t want people to know just what a critical organ shortage means; it would be political suicide. Lambert and Gallaugher have the backing of the entire armed forces, if they want it; the police, the military, even the goddamned coast guard will come down on their side. If we squeal about unofficial Pools and cash customers they’ll just assume it’s a trick to get inside. They won’t even listen.”
Carioca said, “They’ll have to, if this one particular pen becomes a national issue.”
“Huh?”
“Joe, I have the most wonderful idea!” She bounced to her feet and started punching at the buttons of my visiphone. The long, sad face of an unmarried woman appeared on the screen. “Yolande!” cried Carioca. “Phone around the girls … uh, I mean the Foes of Bondage, at once, and tell everyone to assemble at the ferry terminal with banners and as many friends and relatives as they can drag out; and those who live in Louise, tell them to rent people from the beer parlors on my authority, and get the whole city out to the terminal, if they can. This is going to be the biggest thing ever!”
Faint signs of animation flickered over Yolande’s face, although it might have been a faulty connection; I’ve been having trouble recently. “Will do, Carioca,” she said briefly. “The girls need a good demo. Morale has been low recently. Uh, what’s our angle?”
“The abomination of buying and selling organs like a cattle market.”
“Sounds great. Shall I tell them to pack sandwiches? And what about the cost of transport for the hired heads?”
“For heaven’s sake, Yolande, charge it all to me. Now I must go, I have the publicity to arrange.” The screen went blank and Carioca prodded the buttons again.
This time a man appeared, surrounded by charts and stacks of files in a general picture of busy confusion. People passed to and fro behind him. Recognition showed in his tired face. “Carioca Jones,” he said with no great show of emotion. “How are you?”
In the course of Carioca’s long and persuasive talk it emerged that the man was a reasonably well-known reporter for Newspocket, and that he would not be averse to covering the Foes’ demonstration—provided it did not turn out to be a fiasco like the previous time. I concluded that he referred to the incident of Charles Wentworth and the President’s Trophy. Carioca assured the man—whose name was Dale Finlay—that there would be no repetition.
Finally she hung up and turned to me. “There,” she exclaimed, black eyes bright. “Now we shall see some action! You see, Joe? We strike now, before that poisonous little man Gallaugher has time to spirit the evidence away. With Newspocket there, and the whole of the country behind us, Heathcote Lambert will have to throw Gallaugher to the wolves and permit a public investigation of the basement at the very least! Particularly since he’s maintaining that there’s nothing down there!”
I watched her as she paced about my living room in barely controlled excitement, hands clasped tightly so that the graft scars stood out livid around her wrists, and I thought: This is what she’s been after. It has nothing to do with the Foes, with the Pool, with Gallaugher. It has to do with Carioca Jones, the once-great but now-forgotten 3-V star who thrived on publicity, then suddenly found her spiritual sustenance snatched away from her by a fickle public. At last she had the chance to get back in the public eye—and soon she would play her big comeback role—as Joan of Arc, maybe.
I remember thinking: For a clever woman she certainly is a stupid bastard.
I was astonished and a little unnerved by Yolande’s organizational ability. The crowd at the ferry terminal must have numbered all of five thousand, of which at least a quarter were men—and more than half of those, drunk. Banners waved and epithets echoed around the terminal buildings, causing the motorists waiting for the two o’clock ferry to huddle nervously within their hovercars. The Foes were in trenchant mood with glowing slithe-skin armbands—of varying hues—and I noticed several of the younger members attempting to entice the male motorists from their cars and into the march with all manner of unlikely bribes.
“Are you refusing the young lady?” one drunk bellowed, pounding on the roof of the hovercar while the driver cowered within, doors locked. We dragged the belligerent quasi-Foe away and Carioca told the girls to cool it. If the public was to take the demonstration seriously, it would have to be conducted in an orderly fashion.
Newspocket arrived in the form of a small bright antigrav gliding silently in from the east. I talked with Dale Finlay for a while and he seemed a sensible man, if cynical. “If you ask me, they’re a bunch of nuts,” he said confidentially. “But even nuts can hit the jackpot, newswise. I have a feeling this afternoon will prove interesting.”
Then Carioca was screaming into a megaphone and the march lumbered into straggling motion, banners flying.
As a sober male I was a member of an important minority subgroup and, as such, I was made to march near the front. Carioca strode nearby and seemed to feel that it was essential the leaders keep station, although a huge, crudely worded banner kept blowing in my face. The main column walked behind, separated from the leaders by a troupe of delectable youngsters known as the Louise Girls’ High School Baton Twirlers. Overhead glided the Newspocket antigrav. All in all, it was a creditable showing at short notice.
About an hour later we arrived outside the gates of the state pen. A truck pulled up nearby; a team of men jumped down and began to erect a temporary platform. The Newspocket antigrav landed and the cameramen set up their gear. Then the entire crowd, for no good reason that I could see, was led by Carioca from the platform in the singing of “Abide with Me,” accompanied by a little girl with an orchestrella.
I asked Finlay about this, following the final ragged note. “A nice touch,” he said, headphones clamped to his ear. “We sent it out, of course, and I hear there’s already been a favorable reaction nationwide.” We ducked as a sling-glider swept overhead and discharged an unidenti
fiable fluid onto the crowd. I recognized Doug Marshall’s craft. “It heightens the whole tone of the proceedings, starting with a hymn,” he explained. “But don’t ask me why. I merely gauge public reactions and act accordingly. For instance, there are things here I’d change right away, if I were in charge. For a serious gathering, there are too many drunks and the Girls’ School Twirlers are too sexy. We can correct that with our camerawork, of course.”
The flymart, which had been hovering overhead for the last few seconds looking for a vacant space, landed in a flurry of dust. The hatch slid open. The grocery display had been removed; in its stead gleamed a hot dog machine. Music blared. A beer tanker came bumping over the uneven ground from the west, scrub bushes swaying aside from the downdraft. The drunks cheered.
Happy faces were all around me. It was a fine afternoon and people lay relaxed on the grass; some lined up at the flymart and the beer truck was already besieged. The girls wore bright dresses and the hard-core Foes’ wristlets glowed pink with content as they gossiped in little clusters. Beyond, the ocean lay blue and serene and a few gliders flitted about the Strait. The little girl was playing a catchy tune on her orchestrella. Carioca trotted toward me across the grass, smiling. “Isn’t this fun,” she cried. “I’d like you and the other officials up on the platform now, Joe. We’re going to start.” She spotted a camera on her and grinned, laughing gaily.
“Yesterday I found a girl in that prison whose legs had just been cut off,” I said. “She was lying under a white sheet, and the sheet bulged quite a lot over her body, because she had nice breasts. But farther down the bed the sheet was flat, flat from her hips to the bottom of the bed, flat like a table, because there was nothing to hold it up, because her legs had been cut off.”
She glanced at me abstractedly, waving to someone. “Joe darling, you must remember to say that on the platform. The same words, exactly like you told me. Now”—she laughed—”let’s get started, shall we?”
The whole thing was beginning to seem unreal as I followed her to the platform and gravely took my seat among various other people whom Carioca considered Newspocket material. There was a burst of clapping and cheering as she stepped up to the mike.
“Welcome to you all, friend and Foe alike, on this wonderful afternoon.” There was a mild acclamation, then she continued, “Today is no ordinary day, however, and this meeting is no ordinary meeting. Oh, no. We are met here today for a purpose so serious that—”
She continued in this vein and I found myself turning around, my neck prickling. Behind me loomed the gaunt prison wall cutting off the bright warm grass with black shadow some fifty yards away. Two guards stood in the nearest watchtower, looking in our direction, holding rifles. It only needed a word from Gallaugher for them to pick me off. I tried not to think about it, and it was with some relief that I saw several uniformed police among the crowd before me. In the distance I saw Rennie’s bright blue hovercar swaying through the scrub toward me, dry dust blowing.
“We are here, good people, to demand a thorough and immediate investigation into the monstrosities which have been perpetrated in the name of the law behind these stark walls. Indeed—and heaven knows the Ambulatory Organ Pool is evil enough as it stands—I now hear on unimpeachable authority that this evil is within itself corrupt! An unofficial Pool has been spawned, born of a mind of diabolical cunning, whereby people may purchase limbs.”
I could feel the rifles leveled at my back.
Of course, Gallaugher would say it was an accident. “A guard’s gun malfunctioned. A dreadful occurrence and I can assure you, officer, that the man responsible will be severely disciplined and presented to you. We had intended to prosecute Mr. Sagar for trespass, willful damage, assault, and attempted murder—in support of which charges we have influential witnesses—but of course the matter will not now be mentioned. Such a tragic thing. Did he leave any relatives? A girlfriend, perhaps? The state pen would like to make some small token gesture.…”
Carioca Jones laughed harshly, arms wide, head back. “Ambulatory Organ Pool! Isn’t that just too amusing!” She paused, staring fixedly at the cameras as they zoomed in. “Those poor wrecks can’t even walk! Their legs have been ripped from their bodies! They have no arms, no eyes, hardly a body organ is left to them as they lie immobilized, blind, deaf, unthinking, too sick to care, in there!” She pointed; the crowd muttered. “In there! In there! In THERE!” she screamed, pointing, stabbing her finger in the epitome of accusation.
Lambert was suddenly beside me, gripping my shoulder. “Why wasn’t I told? Why did nobody have the courtesy to warn me of this? We’re not prepared in there! By. God, Sagar, if this crowd gets out of control—Stop her, why don’t you? Oh, my God. Is that Newspocket?”
The crowd was murmuring and swaying. A beer bottle shattered against the prison wall.
“Sacrifice Gallaugher, Lambert,” I advised shortly.
“What the hell do you mean, sacrifice Gallaugher?”
He was badly frightened. Carioca Jones screeched on, whipping the crowd into a fever, giving them a masterly performance.
“Don’t you know Gallaugher has his own Pool in the basement?”
His eyes were wild. “Not that crap again. Don’t give me that crap again, man!”
“I’ve seen it, Heath. I was there last night!”
“You what? You what?” Suddenly he shriveled up, dropped to his knees beside my chair. “My God, Sagar. Is this the truth?”
I ignored him while he blubbered on, kneading my forearm. Carioca’s act was reaching its crescendo, sweat eroded gullies in her makeup, she screamed directly into the cameras, the crowd forgotten.
But the crowd hadn’t forgotten her, and they accepted her words, they ate her words, her words nourished their latent hatred of authority and made it grow, and blossom. … I noticed the police had concentrated into little groups at strategic points. The guards on the wall held laser rifles at the ready.
Rennie was pushing his way through the crowd, white-faced, sensing the hatred all around him, making for the platform with a dozen men at his heels. I saw several cameras dip and follow him forward.
Carioca stared at the blue sky, clutched at the heavens with slim young hands, lips a livid scar in her wreck of a face. “And we shall demand the heads of the bastards who degraded—”
Rennie touched her on the shoulder.
The cameras captured the scene.
Carioca blinked, stared at him. “If you think you can stop me, you fool—”
I couldn’t see their faces. I fumbled out my Newspocket. It was there, in full close-up, in full color. Carioca’s mouth was open; it was not a flattering shot.
“I’m sorry, Miss Jones. I must ask you to accompany me to the Louise City Police Station where you will be charged with the attempted murder of Mr. Douglas Marshall, where you will be allowed to summon a lawyer to represent you, following which recording devices will be attached to your person and you will be detained to await trial.”
It was the standard caution, just like on 3-V.
The cameras whirred.
17
When somebody is beaten I don’t like to see them kicked, no matter how much I dislike them. So I found I was watching Finlay with some disgust as, blase cynicism cast aside, he capered beside Carioca Jones while she was led away, his goddamned mike stuck in her face, his free hand gesturing the cameras in, demanding that she give her comments to the world at large. Being Carioca Jones she obliged him, of course, and it didn’t do her any good at all.
I was still sitting in my chair and I stayed there while the other people on the platform jumped to their feet and obscured my view. I found Lambert still crouched beside me. In the incredulous silence which was gripping the whole crowd, I said:
“Didn’t you know Gallaugher was selling organs, Heath?”
He looked like a man who had pissed himself with fear. The immediate danger was over, but there was still an embarrassing problem to contend with. “That’s
a very serious accusation you’re making, Joe,” he replied, pulling himself together too fast, too smoothly for my liking. Only a moment ago he’d been practically in tears. If I didn’t pin him down now, I never would.
Around us the crowd was beginning to murmur again; the buzz of comment was starting. “I asked you a question, Heath.”
Suddenly, shockingly, an idiot technician switched the Newspocket broadcast into the public address system and Carioca’s voice screamed out: “… incompetent bastards for every goddamned penny …” As abruptly, the man realized his mistake and there was instant silence.
Lambert was standing up. I stood too, not wishing to lose him. “You’re way out of line, Joe. The records of the Pool are so watertight that not so much as a toenail could be smuggled out without it showing up. My God, we’re dealing with human beings in there. Everything’s checked and double-checked.”
“I’m saying there’s a person in there who never got onto the records. Maybe a number of people.”
“I’m sorry. I refuse to pry into Bob Gallaugher’s department without evidence. Oh, good. There he is. I have nothing more to say to you, Joe.” He began to move toward Gallaugher, who was blowing into the mike.
The crowd was milling about uncertainly, looking for a leader. I saw Evadne Prendergast, the ex-president of the Foes, make her way toward the mike, but Gallaugher shrugged her off. He took a deep breath. “Listen to me!” he shouted. Sweat was running down his plump face and his jowls were tense with determination. The crowd quieted down, people turned toward the platform again, while Rennie’s blue hovercar drifted away over the scrub, taking Carioca Jones with it.
“By now you’ll all have realized that you’ve been hoodwinked by an old phony who was trying to make personal capital out of the Foes of Bondage!” Gallaugher shouted. “Now, some of you people are members of that organization—if I can call it an organization—and some are not. What I have to say is for all of you. You have seen what can happen when you allow yourselves to be led by a crooked dictator whom most of you did not even have the chance to elect. This is what happens when democracy is thrown down the drain—the worser elements, the loudest mouths, come bubbling up and taint every honest person with their stink.”
The Girl With a Symphony in Her Fingers Page 17