“You’re positive it’s gone?”
“It’s not only gone—it’s out of existence. Unless she wrecked the car driving Tirol home.”
“She?” Garth asked.
“The woman.” Beam pondered. “She saw it. Or she knew about it; she was with him.” But, unfortunately, he had no idea who the woman might be.
“What’d she look like?” Garth asked.
“Tall, mahogany hair. Very nervous mouth.”
“I didn’t realize she was working with him openly. They must have really needed the device.” Garth added: “You didn’t identify her? I guess there’s no reason why you should; she’s kept out of sight.”
“Who is she?”
“That’s Ellen Ackers.”
Beam laughed sharply. “And she’s driving Paul Tirol around?”
“She’s—well, she’s driving Tirol around, yes. You can put it that way.”
“How long?”
“I thought you were in on it. She and Ackers split up; that was last year. But he wouldn’t let her leave; he wouldn’t give her a divorce. Afraid of the publicity. Very important to keep up respectability… keep the shirt fully stuffed.”
“He knows about Paul Tirol and her?”
“Of course not. He knows she’s—spiritually hooked up. But he doesn’t care … as long as she keeps it quiet. It’s his position he’s thinking about.”
“If Ackers found out,” Beam murmured. “If he saw the link between his wife and Tirol… he’d ignore his ten interoffice memos. He’d want to haul in Tirol. The hell with the evidence; he could always collect that later.” Beam pushed away his drink; the glass was empty anyhow. “Where is Ackers?”
“I told you. Out at Lantano’s place, picking him up.”
“He’d come back here? He wouldn’t go home?”
“Naturally he’d come back here.” Garth was silent a moment. “I see a couple of Interior vans turning into the garage ramp. That’s probably the pick-up crew returning.”
Beam waited tensely. “Is Ackers along?”
“Yes, he’s there. Banish It!” Garth’s voice rose in stentorian frenzy. “Banish the system of Banishment! Root out the crooks and pirates!”
Sliding to his feet, Beam left the bar.
A dull light showed in the rear of Edward Ackers’ apartment: probably the kitchen light. The front door was locked. Standing in the carpeted hallway, Beam skillfully tilted with the door mechanism. It was geared to respond to specific neural patterns: those of its owners and a limited circle of friends. For him there was no activity.
Kneeling down, Beam switched on a pocket oscillator and started sine wave emission. Gradually, he increased the frequency. At perhaps 150,000 cps the lock guiltily clicked; that was all he needed. Switching the oscillator off, he rummaged through his supply of skeleton patterns until he located the closet cylinder. Slipped into the turret of the oscillator, the cylinder emitted a synthetic neural pattern close enough to the real thing to affect the lock.
The door swung open. Beam entered.
In half-darkness the living room seemed modest and tasteful. Ellen Ackers was an adequate housekeeper. Beam listened. Was she home at all? And if so, where? Awake? Asleep?
He peeped into the bedroom. There was the bed, but nobody was in it.
If she wasn’t here she was at Tirol’s. But he didn’t intend to follow her; this was as far as he cared to risk.
He inspected the dining room. Empty. The kitchen was empty, too. Next came an upholstered general-purpose rumpus room; on one side was a gaudy bar and on the other a wall-to-wall couch. Tossed on the couch was a woman’s coat, purse, gloves. Familiar clothes: Ellen Ackers had worn them. So she had come here after leaving his research lab.
The only room left was the bathroom. He fumbled with the knob; it was locked from the inside. There was no sound, but somebody was on the other side of the door. He could sense her in there.
“Ellen,” he said, against the panelling. “Mrs. Ellen Ackers; is that you?”
No answer. He could sense her not making any sound at all: a stifled, frantic silence.
While he was kneeling down, fooling with his pocketful of magnetic lock-pullers, an explosive pellet burst through the door at head level and splattered into the plaster of the wall beyond.
Instantly the door flew open; there stood Ellen Ackers, her face distorted with fright. One of her husband’s government pistols was clenched in her small, bony hand. She was less than a foot from him. Without getting up, Beam grabbed her wrist; she fired over his head, and then the two of them deteriorated into harsh, labored breathing.
“Come on,” Beam managed finally. The nozzle of the gun was literally brushing the top of his head. To kill him, she would have to pull the pistol back against her. But he didn’t let her; he kept hold of her wrist until finally, reluctantly, she dropped the gun. It clattered to the floor and he got stiffly up.
“You were sitting down,” she whispered, in a stricken, accusing voice.
“Kneeling down: picking the lock. I’m glad you aimed for my brain.” He picked up the gun and succeeded in getting it into his overcoat pocket; his hands were shaking.
Ellen Ackers gazed at him starkly; her eyes were huge and dark, and her face was an ugly white. Her skin had a dead cast, as if it were artificial, totally dry, thoroughly sifted with talc. She seemed on the verge of hysteria; a harsh, muffled shudder struggled up inside her, lodging finally in her throat. She tried to speak but only a rasping noise came out.
“Gee, lady,” Beam said, embarrassed. “Come in the kitchen and sit down.”
She stared at him as if he had said something incredible or obscene or miraculous; he wasn’t sure which.
“Come on.” He tried to take hold of her arm but she jerked frantically away. She had on a simple green suit, and in it she looked very nice; a little too thin and terribly tense, but still attractive. She had on expensive earrings, an imported stone that seemed always in motion … but otherwise her outfit was austere.
“You—were the man at the lab,” she managed, in a brittle, choked voice.
“I’m Leroy Beam. An independent.” Awkwardly guiding her, he led her into the kitchen and seated her at the table. She folded her hands in front of her and studied them fixedly; the bleak boniness of her face seemed to be increasing rather than receding. He felt uneasy.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Cup of coffee?” He began searching the cupboards for a bottle of Venusian-grown coffee substitute. While he was looking, Ellen Ackers said tautiy: “You better go in there. In the bathroom. I don’t think he’s dead, but he might be.”
Beam raced into the bathroom. Behind the plastic shower curtain was an opaque shape. It was Paul Tirol, lying wadded up in the tub, fully clothed. He was not dead but he had been struck behind the left ear and his scalp was leaking a slow, steady trickle of blood. Beam took his pulse, listened to his breathing, and then straightened up.
At the doorway Ellen Ackers materialized, still pale with fright. “Is he? Did I kill him?”
“He’s fine.”
Visibly, she relaxed. “Thank God. It happened so fast—he stepped ahead of me to take the M inside his place, and then I did it. I hit him as lightly as I could. He was so interested in it… he forgot about me.” Words spilled from her, quick, jerky sentences, punctuated by rigid tremors of her hands. “I lugged him back in the car and drove here; it was all I could think of.”
“What are you in this for?”
Her hysteria rose in a spasm of convulsive muscle-twitching. “It was all planned—I had everything worked out. As soon as I got hold of it I was going to—” She broke off.
“Blackmail Tirol?” he asked, fascinated.
She smiled weakly. “No, not Paul. It was Paul who gave me the idea … it was his first idea, when his researchers showed him the thing. The M, he calls it. M stands for machine. He means it can’t be educated, morally corrected.”
&
nbsp; Incredulous, Beam said: “You were going to blackmail your husband.”
Ellen Ackers nodded. “So he’d let me leave.”
Suddenly Beam felt sincere respect for her. “My God—the rattle. Heimie didn’t arrange that; you did. So the device would be trapped in the apartment.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I was going to pick it up. But Paul showed up with other ideas; he wanted it, too.”
“What went haywire? You have it, don’t you?”
Silently she indicated the linen closet. “I stuffed it away when I heard you.”
Beam opened the linen closet. Resting primly on the neatly-folded towels was a small, familiar, portable TV unit.
“It’s reverted,” Ellen said, from behind him, in an utterly defeated monotone. “As soon as I hit Paul it changed. For half an hour I’ve been trying to get it to shift. It won’t. It’ll stay that way forever.”
III
Beam went to the telephone and called a doctor. In the bathroom, Tirol groaned and feebly thrashed his arms. He was beginning to return to consciousness.
“Was that necessary?” Ellen Ackers demanded. “The doctor—did you have to call?”
Beam ignored her. Bending, he lifted the portable TV unit and held it in his hands; he felt its weight move up his arms like a slow, leaden fatigue. The ultimate adversary, he thought; too stupid to be defeated. It was worse than an animal. It was a rock, solid and dense, lacking all qualities. Except, he thought, the quality of determination. It was determined to persist, to survive; a rock with will. He felt as if he were holding up the universe, and he put the unreconstructed M down.
From behind him Ellen said: “It drives you crazy.” Her voice had regained tone. She lit a cigarette with a silver cigarette lighter and then shoved her hands in the pockets of her suit.
“Yes,” he said.
“There’s nothing you can do, is there? You tried to get it open before. They’ll patch Paul up, and he’ll go back to his place, and Lantano will be banished—” She took a deep shuddering breath. “And the Interior Department will go on as always.”
“Yes,” he said. Still kneeling, he surveyed the M. Now, with what he knew, he did not waste time struggling with it. He considered it impassively; he did not even bother to touch it.
In the bathroom, Paul Tirol was trying to crawl from the tub. He slipped back, cursed and moaned, and started his laborious ascent once again.
“Ellen?” his voice quavered, a dim and distorted sound, like dry wires rubbing.
“Take it easy,” she said between her teeth; not moving she stood smoking rapidly on her cigarette.
“Help me, Ellen,” Tirol muttered. “Something happened to me … I don’t remember what. Something hit me.”
“He’ll remember,” Ellen said.
Beam said: “I can take this thing to Ackers as it is. You can tell him what it’s for—what it did. That ought to be enough; he won’t go through with Lantano.”
But he didn’t believe it, either. Ackers would have to admit a mistake, a basic mistake, and if he had been wrong to pick up Lantano, he was ruined. And so, in a sense, was the whole system of delineation. It could be fooled; it had been fooled. Ackers was rigid, and he would go right on in a straight line: the hell with Lantano. The hell with abstract justice. Better to preserve cultural continuity and keep society running on an even keel.
“Tirol’s equipment,” Beam said. “Do you know where it is?”
She shrugged wildly. “What equipment?”
“This thing—“ he jabbed at the M—“was made somewhere.”
“Not here, Tirol didn’t make it.”
“All right,” he said reasonably. They had perhaps six minutes more before the doctor and the emergency medical carrier arrived on rooftop. “Who did make it?”
“The alloy was developed on Bellatrix.” She spoke jerkily, word by word. “The rind … forms a skin on the outside, a bubble that gets sucked in and out of a reservoir. That’s its rind, the TV shape. It sucks it back and becomes the M; it’s ready to act.”
“What made it?” he repeated.
“A Bellatrix machine tool syndicate … a subsidiary of Tirol’s organization. They’re made to be watchdogs. The big plantations on outplanets use them; they patrol. They get poachers.”
Beam said: “Then originally they’re not set for one person.”
“No.”
“Then who set this for Heimie? Not a machine tool syndicate.”
“That was done here.”
He straightened up and lifted the portable TV unit. “Let’s go. Take me there, where Tirol had it altered.”
For a moment the woman did not respond. Grabbing her arm he hustled her to the door. She gasped and stared at him mutely.
“Come on,” he said, pushing her out into the hall. The portable TV unit bumped against the door as he shut it; he held the unit tight and followed after Ellen Ackers.
The town was slatternly and run-down, a few retail stores, fuel station, bars and dance halls. It was two hours’ flight from Greater New York and it was called Olum.
“Turn right,” Ellen said listlessly. She gazed out at the neon signs and rested her arm on the window sill of the ship.
They flew above warehouses and deserted streets. Lights were few. At an intersection Ellen nodded and he set the ship down on a roof.
Below them was a sagging, fly-specked wooden frame store. A peeling sign was propped up in the window:
FULTON BROTHERS
locksmiths
With the sign were doorknobs, locks, keys, saws, and spring-wound alarm clocks. Somewhere in the interior of the store a yellow night light burned fitfully.
“This way,” Ellen said. She stepped from the ship and made her way down a flight of rickety wooden stairs. Beam laid the portable TV unit on the floor of the ship, locked the doors, and then followed after the woman. Holding onto the railing, he descended to a back porch on which were trash cans and a pile of sodden newspapers tied with string. Ellen was unlocking a door and feeling her way inside.
First he found himself in a musty, cramped storeroom. Pipe and rolls of wire and sheets of metal were heaped everywhere; it was like a junkyard. Next came a narrow corridor and then he was standing in the entrance of a workshop. Ellen reached overhead and groped to find the hanging string of a light. The light clicked on. To the right was a long and littered workbench with a hand grinder at one end, a vise, a keyhole saw; two wooden stools were before the bench and half-assembled machinery was stacked on the floor in no apparent order. The workshop was chaotic, dusty, and archaic. On the wall was a threadbare blue coat hung from a nail: the workcoat of a machinist.
“Here,” Ellen said, with bitterness. “This is where Paul had it brought. This outfit is owned by the Tirol organization; this whole slum is part of their holdings.”
Beam walked to the bench. “To have altered it,” he said, “Tirol must have had a plate of Heimie’s neural pattern.” He overturned a heap of glass jars; screws and washers poured onto the pitted surface of the bench.
“He got it from Heimie’s door,” Ellen said. “He had Heimie’s lock analyzed and Heimie’s pattern inferred from the setting of the tumblers.”
“And he had the M opened?”
“There’s an old mechanic,” Ellen said. “A little dried-up old man; he runs this shop. Patrick Fulton. He installed the bias on the M.”
“A bias,” Beam said, nodding.
“A bias against killing people. Heimie was the exception, for everybody else it took its protective form. Out in the wilds they would have set it for something else, not a TV unit.” She laughed, a sudden ripple close to hysteria. “Yes, that would have looked odd, it sitting out in a forest somewhere, a TV unit. They would have made it into a rock or a stick.”
“A rock,” Beam said. He could imagine it. The M waiting, covered with moss, waiting for months, years, and then weathered and corroded, finally picking up the presence of a human being. Then the M ceasing to be a rock, becom
ing, in a quick blur of motion, a box one foot wide and two feet long. An oversized cracker box that started forward—
But there was something missing. “The fakery,” he said. “Emitting flakes of paint and hair and tobacco. How did that come in?”
In a brittle voice Ellen said: “The landowner murdered the poacher, and he was culpable in the eyes of the law. So the M left clues. Claw marks. Animal blood. Animal hair.”
“God,” he said, revolted. “Killed by an animal.”
“A bear, a wildcat—whatever was indigenous, it varied. The predator of the region, a natural death.” With her toe she touched a cardboard carton under the workbench. “It’s in there, it used to be, anyhow. The neural plate, the transmitter, the discarded parts of the M, the schematics.”
The carton had been a shipping container for power packs. Now the packs were gone, and in their place was a carefully-wrapped inner box, sealed against moisture and insect infestation. Beam tore away the metal foil and saw that he had found what he wanted. He gingerly carried the contents out and spread them on the workbench among the soldering irons and drills.
“It’s all there,” Ellen said, without emotion.
“Maybe,” he said, “I can leave you out of this. I can take this and the TV unit to Ackers and try it without your testimony.”
“Sure,” she said wearily.
“What are you going to do?”
“Well,” she said, “I can’t go back to Paul, so I guess there’s not much I can do.”
“The blackmail bit was a mistake,” he said.
Her eyes glowed. “Okay.”
“If he releases Lantano,” Beam said, “he’ll be asked to resign. Then he’ll probably give you your divorce, it won’t be important to him one way or another.”
“I—” she began. And then she stopped. Her face seemed to fade, as if the color and texture of her flesh was vanishing from within. She lifted one hand and half-turned, her mouth open and the sentence still unfinished.
Beam, reaching, slapped the overhead light out; the workroom winked into darkness. He had heard it too, had heard it at the same time as Ellen Ackers. The rickety outside porch had creaked and now the slow, ponderous motion was past the storeroom and into the hall.
The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories Page 20