V 15 - Below the Threshold

by Allen L Wold (UC) (epub)

  “So you’re using subliminal subversion instead,” Jack said.

  “Exactly. We simply send extra low frequency signals on a weak carrier wave that exactly matches the broadcast frequencies of the TV stations that can be received in Freeport. Properly tuned, ELF signals can directly influence the minds of the viewers. For over a year now we’ve tested hundreds of people in our Bay Shore facility, finding out just what kind of ELF signals produce what effects.” “Abbot was right,” Sally said. “It’s mind control.” “Of a sort. We can’t put a specific thought into a viewer’s mind. If we could, we could control the whole world tomorrow.

  “But what we can do is nearly as effective. Certain ELF frequencies, for example, enhance suggestibility, open up psychological channels to the deep subconscious. This allows us to use more prosaie subliminal techniques more effectively. They can be briefer, and still be perceived; more subtle, but more precisely understood. And the viewers believe the message, when they see it.”

  “It’s ironic,” Lewis said. “It’s the message we’ve been using all along—‘The Visitors Are Your Friends.’” “You’ve got to be kidding,” Sally said. “What can you hope to accomplish with a dumb idea like that?”

  “Ask Dr. Page,” Dwight said. “Ask him how many of his ‘clients’ have stopped complaining of ‘Alien Anxiety Syndrome. ’ ”

  “Almost all of them,” Jack said. “I became aware of it just recently, but it started happening about a month ago.” “If you could check your records,” Dwight said. “I think you would find that the first signs of improvement started

  almost exactly six weeks ago, when we started broadcasting from here. ”

  “That would also explain,” Sally said quietly, “why so many of our people seem to have lost heart in the resistance.”

  “Of course it does,” Dwight said. “Why resist somebody who’s only trying to be your friend?”

  “But that can’t be enough,” Walter objected. “If you really wanted to be friendly, sure, but you don’t want that.” “You’re right,” Dwight said. “It’s too little, too late. If we’d had this system when we first landed three years ago, and taken a more leisurely approach with the initial phases of our invasion to give it time to work, we would have had the whole planet eating out of our hands. Humans were already favorably disposed towards us, and there would have been no resistance at all by the time we were ready to move in earnest. Now, of course, this subliminal seduction is only a part of a much larger elfort. And if we are successful here, it will do me,” he glanced up at Lewis, “and the rest of us, a lot of good.”

  “This larger effort,” Jack said. “That’s where Kline and Oswald fit in.”

  “Exactly. Of course, they are not aware that they are helping us with our plans. Their pursuit of their own selfish interests are playing right into our hands. Freeport is notorious throughout your part of the country for its crime, its powerful underworld, its political corruption. It kept you free of us before, but without that now, no matter how effective my transmissions and their messages might be, I would be powerless to take over Freeport.

  “What I need,” he went on after a glance at Lewis, “if Northampton is to take control of Freeport, is for the people of Freeport to ask our help.”

  “They’ll never do it,” Sally said.

  “Oh, but they will. Freeport will find itself in a situation so bad that it cannot cope, cannot get itself out of trouble, and must ask for help from whoever is most handy—and that, of course, is Northampton.”

  “That would explain your interest in Kline,” Sally went on. “You’re encouraging his crime, helping him make our lives miserable.”

  “You’re very perceptive,” Dwight said, “though Kline may see it in a subtly different way. He just thinks he’s doing me favors. After all, I started doing ‘favors’ for him long ago, he’s just repaying them. During the last two years, Kline and his organization have come to depend on me—for dope, tools, weapons, communications, hideouts, and so on. Sometimes they pay me in money. I prefer payment in favors.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” Lewis said, looking down at Dwight. “What do you do with all that money?” “I used it,” Dwight said, “to finance this studio, and this whole operation. 1 thought it a lot better to use these humans’ dirty money against themselves than to tax the resources of our own people. Doesn’t the irony of that please you, Lewis? But the money is just a convenience. It wasn’t really necessary. It is the favors that Kline owes me, that he’s grown accustomed to doing for me, that will make this operation work.

  “Because Kline has contacts on the police force, in government, in the trades and unions. And Kline is not afraid to force favors in return from them, favors which I might suggest to him. At my request, Kline has used his friends to put certain people in key places, and has corrupted others. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Freeport would have been corrupt enough without my intervention.

  Freeport was already rotten before I began to adjust things to my satisfaction. But today, with a few notable exceptions, Freeport is not just corrupt but is so in a way that will prove useful to me.

  “Because, you see, 1 have absolutely no direct influence on Freeport’s government at all. No matter how venal, how ignorant, how self-serving, they would never tolerate any interference from a Visitor. The few potential collaborators among them would be quickly found out and silenced.

  “But the mob is not so fastidious. And that is why I work through them.”

  “You seem,” Jack said, “to get along with Oswald pretty well.”

  “You know nothing about it,” Dwight said. “Oswald objects to me a great deal. He thinks I want to share his power. That’s not true, but why disillusion him. At the same time, he is envious of Kline’s relationship with me, and that makes him vulnerable. On the one hand he’s afraid I’ll supplant him somehow. On the other he’s covetous of the favors I do for Kline. His uncertainty and confusion, along with his greed and fear, put him right where I want him.

  “He thinks he’s hard, but he’s soft. His reputation notwithstanding, he’s been touched. Not by me, not directly. But he has his weaknesses, and these have been fed and encouraged, by Kline, at my urging. It’s a kind of insurance. If Oswald were to try to denounce me, reveal what little he knows of my activities, he would have to face an investigation into his own activities, and he knows that his secrets, his special weaknesses would certainly be discovered. ”

  “Why are you telling us all this?” Sally asked.

  “Sheer ego, Miss Greenstreet. And because I get a certain amount of satisfaction out of making you uncomfortable. Think about this. Organized crime and city government, no matter how intertwined, are at bottom natural enemies. But look what I have done in the last two years. I have used crime to soften up government, which naturally has the upper hand, and I’ve used government to bolster crime, thus striking an unnatural balance.”

  “Just for the fun of it,” Jack said.

  “Absolutely not. There are very practical consequences. When I give the word, and it will be very soon now, Kline and his mob will make a play for complete freedom, complete control of the economic elements on which he depends. There will be assassinations, revelations, black-mailings, a general upsurge in street crime, a calling to accounts of all the favors he’s paid over the years.

  “It will be futile, of course. He doesn’t know that, though I have encouraged him. He sees himself as the baron of a feudal state. It can’t happen, not even here.

  “What will happen is this. As soon as Kline moves, the police and the government will retaliate. After all, they are the barons of this feudal state, and they don’t want their power structure threatened. And where does that leave Kline? Doing exactly what they seek to prevent, threatening the existing power structure by revealing its corruption— more assassinations, officials exposed to force their removal, others called on to pay back favors, and so on. He’ll have committed himself too far to back off.


  “And Freeport’s government won’t be able to back off either. All hell will break loose. The government, exposed to the population as the rotten thing it is, will fall. The few uncorrupted officials will not be able to prevent it. The citizenry will turn its back on the government, and Kline will be unstoppable.

  “But Kline’s victory will be his undoing. Without a government to vampirize, without trade, commerce, other sources of community income, what can he steal? Kline and his organization will start to hurt within a very short time. That is critical. The time must be short, and it will be. There will be an undeclared but open war between the establishment and the underworld, and if it can be brought to a head quickly enough, it will bring all of Freeport to the brink of a social collapse that could well leave this city a ghost town. ” “That’s an awfully elaborate scheme,” Sally said, “if you just want to drive us away.”

  “That’s not what he wants at all,” Jack said. “If it were, the war would already have started, and he’d be fueling both sides.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Dwight said. “What I want is a sudden and sharp panic among the general population. I want the mass of the citizenry to reject both Kline, and Oswald and what he represents. I want those few good men in government to become desperate, not to despair and give up. When this war errupts, I want them and the average citizen to see a chance of restoring peace. Which they will.”

  “With a little help from you,” Jack said.

  “Exactly. Northampton has established a reputation for iaw and order.’ We have no crime in Northampton.” “Not counting the fifth column,” Walter said.

  “Of course not. It’s invisible. And who else would Freeport turn to? The United States Military, such as it is now, is too far away. Another city? Another police force? There’s only Northampton.

  “I’ll step in,” he said, glancing up at Lewis, “along with other officials from Northampton, in friendly response to Freeport’s loud and public request for aid. And we’ll set things to rights. By the time anybody anywhere else begins to act, either to save Freeport or to stop us from interfering, it will be too late. We’ll have complete control of the city— a bit damaged, perhaps, but intact, and not abandoned. Neither your human politics nor our bureaucracy will be able to touch us. Given a fait accompli, our bureaucracy will back us one hundred percent, and human government will be helpless.”

  Dwight stood up, and Lewis moved to the side to give him room. Dwight flexed his shoulders, stretched his arms in a comfortable and familiar way, as if he were talking among friends.

  “It’s getting late,” he said. “Pedro, 1 commend you on your infiltration into this dangerous group. And on your quick action. Had you not assisted in their capture, these three might have been killed, and I would have been denied the not inconsiderable satisfaction of this little discussion.

  “But 1 have indulged myself perhaps a bit too much already. Guards, take them away.”

  File Twenty-seven: Saturday Morning

  Jack, Sally, and Walter were taken, still handcuffed, to a large but unfurnished office on the same floor, and there left. After a moment of silence, Walter started cursing in his own tongue.

  “Can you get these handcuffs off?” Jack asked, interrupting the flow of invective.

  “Sorry,” Walter said, “it’s just that I brought Pedro into the organization, and into this job. Stand back to back with me.” Jack did so. In a moment he was free.

  “Just push on that large button,” Walter said, presenting his cuffed hands to Jack, “and twist the joint between the two cables to the right.” The metallic bonds went limp and slid off his wrists. Jack did the same with Sally’s cuffs, and they were free.

  “It’s locked, of course,” Walter said, rattling the handle of the only door. “Why didn’t he just kill us out of hand?” “Because we can tell him things Annette can’t,” Jack suggested. “This scheme of his depends on everything working at just the right time. The resistance, and the fifth column, could still thwart his plans.”

  “He’ll get what he wants from Pedro, damn him. He had me completely fooled. How could I have been so stupid.” “It’s not all your fault,” Jack told him. “Remember, I trusted Lewis, and look where he is now, standing at Dwight’s right hand.”

  “Turning Annette in must have gotten him a lot of brownie points,” Sally said.

  “But he wouldn’t have done that,” Jack said, “if he hadn’t been a loyalist all along.”

  “Like Pedro,” Walter said, “just waiting for the right moment.”

  “Their timing was pretty damn good,” Sally said. “And what are we going to do now? What the hell does it matter, anyway? If there’s that much crime and corruption in Freeport, then maybe we deserve to be taken over by Northampton.”

  “No,” Walter said, “that’s not the way it is at all. Oh,

  sure, Freeport is rotten but Dwight’s been working on the

  city for two years. He’s taken every advantage, magnified every weakness, amplified every fault. Without Dwight and his machinations, Freeport would be no worse than many other cities have been before we came.”

  “But now—” Sally started to say.

  “Even now,” Jack said, “without Dwight’s mastery of subliminal TV propaganda, his scheme wouldn’t stand a chance. ”

  “Yes, but he’d done it, he’d gotten to the whole city—”

  “He has, but it’s not Freeport’s fault, it’s not our fault. As bad as we are, we do not deserve what’s going to happen to us.”

  “But, dammit—” Sally started to say when the door opened.

  It was Pedro. He stood in the doorway, his gun drawn, looking from one to the other.

  “Come to gloat?” Walter asked sarcastically.

  “Not yet,” Pedro said, his voice quiet. “You should be glad 1 acted so quickly, and as I did. You heard Dwight, if we’d put up any show of resistance whatsoever, we’d all have been shot down.”

  “Well,” Sally said, “you certainly saved your life, didn’t you?”

  “And yours,” Pedro said.

  “So what do you expect us to do,” Walter asked, “thank you? I’d rather be shot dead then subjected to the interrogation that’s in store for us.”

  “There needn’t be any interrogation,” Pedro said.

  “You’re just going to shoot us,” Sally said.

  “I’m not doing it, am I? You can’t reveal anything about me that Dwight can’t find out in his own way. And if I just wanted you to be caught, I wouldn’t have to be here at all right now. I took a chance, back there at the stair, I’m going to take another one.” He turned his gun around and handed it to Walter.

  Walter took the gun suspiciously, his eyes boring into Pedro’s, his fingers working at the trigger.

  “What I want,” Pedro said, “is to finish the job we started. If you let me live, I mean to see that we do just that.”

  “I guess,” Walter said, “it was a pretty clever move on your part after all.” He gave Pedro back his gun.

  “About those photos,” Pedro said, holstering his weapon, “how safe are they really?”

  “I mailed them to a guy named David Mallard,” Jack said. “He’s one of those uncorrupted exceptions Dwight mentioned.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Walter said, “and 1 think you’re right. If we can expose this plot of Dwight’s, then Mallard should be able to clean up the rest of the mess.”

  “That is to be hoped,” Pedro said. He went to the door and looked out into the hall. “I know where the explosives and guns are.”

  “Then let’s move,” Jack said.

  Pedro led them through deserted corridors to another office where their weapons and demolition equipment had been unceremoniously dumped on a desk. But before they could rearm themselves, an inner door opened and Lewis came out, carrying one of the heavy guard weapons.

  “Just take it very easy,” he said, “and you’ll all live another hour.”

  “Another stray sheep
returned to the fold?” Walter asked.

  “Yes, but you misunderstand. My fold is my people, not you. I thought Pedro was a little too good to be true.” He turned his heavy weapon on Pedro and fired, but the shot missed. Jack and Walter grabbed their guns from the desk and both fired at once, striking Lewis in the face and chest. His gun went off again, into the desk, and then he fell.

  “If anybody’s nearby,” Walter said, “they’ll have heard that.” He picked up a package of explosives. Sally grabbed her gun and the other three packets, then they hurried from the room.

  They found their way back to the stair where they had been captured, but when they reached the top they found that it had been bricked over. They couldn’t get up into the transmitter loft this way after all.

  “Now what?” Pedro asked. Walter took out the floorplan and examined it quickly.

  “From what this shows,” he said, “and from what we’ve seen, I’d guess that their main studio is over here.” He pointed to a large space further toward the front of the building. “If that’s true,” he went on, “it would make sense for them to have a direct means of access between the studio and the transmitter, don’t you think?”

  “That symbol,” Sally said, pointing to a crossed rectangle near the edge of the supposed studio. “That’s not quite the same as the one here, but it could be a stair or ladder, I suppose.”

  “The only thing to do,” Jack said, “is to go and find out.”

  The large room did in fact prove to be a broadcast studio. It was so packed with heavy electronic equipment that the doorway by which they had entered was partially concealed from the rest of the room. They did not go in all the way, however, but hesitated a moment, hearing voices coming from within.

  Jack dropped to his knees and cautiously peered around the comer of a large, gray metal cabinet. The center of the room was clear, surrounded by consoles, desks, large videotape drives, and other equipment only Abbot would have recognized. A half dozen technicians sat at various consoles, and four guards stood at their ease where they could see everything but not be in the way.