He felt heartened. The letter made him feel acceptant too. Acceptant of all the current complications, acceptant of the fact that this—everything—was temporary.
There were a few inquiries from advertising agencies, routine work. And a brief card from Vic. All it said was, “Don’t blame me if it’s catching.”
But no word from Green, the one who had started the avalanche. Arnold couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him for that—but he had to contact him. He reached for the phone. He stopped, turning to Blake.
“May I?”
“Of course.” He looked hurt.
Arnold dialled Green’s university number. A secretary answered.
“Professor Green? I’m sorry, he’s abroad.”
“Abroad?”
Arnold felt a dead weight descend on his soul. It seemed typical of the little professor’s caginess. He had refused to come straight out and sponsor him. But he could start a chain of events which could land him, Arnold, in this present mess. And now calmly sail off out of it. Or was it—
Was it Jay’s men at work? Was he, in fact, even speaking to Green’s secretary? Or to one of Jay’s plants? How could he know.
“But didn’t he leave any message? Or forwarding address?”
“Dr. Green is currently attending the International Congress of Applied Psychology in Rio de Janeiro.” The voice was cool.
“Who is calling?”
“Arnold Ash.”
“Mr. Ash? Why didn’t you say so? Hold the line.”
There was a click, then Professor Green’s voice came through. His accent sounded more pronounced on the telephone.
“Hello, Arnold. Glad you called—”
“Hello, Professor,” Arnold began. “I—”
But Green’s voice cut across his. “This is a recorded reply. I made it in case you called while I was away. Well, what do you think of all that’s happened? I’m sorry that Security got hold of you. You shouldn’t mix with political undesirables like me. I knew something was afoot, so I rushed out my paper before they could stop me.” A chuckle came over the line. “They can’t put a D-order on a learned society’s proceedings. Well, they can—those lunatics can do what they like—but they can’t keep track of everything. I beat them to it. Now, my boy—”
“Stop, the line’s tapped!” Arnold said urgently, before he remembered that no warning could be of the slightest use. He moved to replace the receiver, then realized that that wouldn’t have served any useful purpose, either. Even if he cut the message off, the tape could still be got hold of.
“When you get back,” the message went on, “you’re bound to find yourself tagged by M.I. I’ve been through it all myself. My words are probably being heard by wire tappers right now. When you’re listening to me, I mean. So what I’ve got to say is as much for their benefit as yours.
“I haven’t skipped the country. I’ll be back. But I won’t say I was ungrateful for the excuse to duck out. I can’t help you at this juncture. I might only complicate matters. Don’t underestimate Security. But don’t overestimate them either. They’re powerful, but they’re not all-powerful. People know you exist. And by now they know what you’ve got. Perhaps they haven’t got a clear idea yet. Your main task is still to come—teaching them to use the power. I know it’s all confused now, but it will break through, because what you have is more powerful than all the security claptrap in the world. So, don’t weaken.”
There was a pause, then a click. The message had finished.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tompkins moved in with Arnold. Blake made the request and, when Arnold demurred, apologized for the intrusion but said that the alternative would be his removal to a larger apartment. Of course, the Department would pay the rent. Arnold gave in. He was finding out fast that it was no use arguing with these people.
And Tompkins, quiet efficient Tompkins, proved of real assistance. He sifted the mail and religiously filed it against Arnold’s further use, with a shrewd assessment of priorities. Many letters came in from individuals interested in learning the use of the power. There were thousands by now. It would have taken a considerable office organization to have handled them all properly. Tompkins sent each one a duplicated letter to the effect that Mr. Arnold Ash was recovering from a slight indisposition and would contact them at the earliest opportunity. Some of the letters contained money, but nowhere near enough to have financed a programme on the necessary scale. Tompkins, at Arnold’s request, paid it into a separate account against the day when it would be needed.
The weeks passed and there was no sign of that day dawning. Arnold sat back and relaxed, or tried to, quietly enjoying the spectacle of a security agent handling the secretarial side of his endeavours.
Blake disappeared from the scene, but two plain-clothes men were always on duty in the courtyard. They peeled off and followed him at a discreet distance wherever he went. If he got near crowds one of them moved quietly to his side. In his own area he attracted a few nudges and glances. There must obviously have been comings and goings at the flat during his absence, attracting attention.
But interest in him was waning. The statement that Blake had prepared had been the last item of news, however false, that the papers had been allowed to print about him. It was ironical, at the very time when he had achieved a breakthrough, that he should be walled up like this. But, in the circumstances, he was grateful. When he went further afield nobody seemed to recognize him, and he blessed providence for having bestowed on him an unremarkable face.
Not that he went far abroad; only to a theatre or two, to the stereos, to an art gallery. When he went to a bar one of the plain-clothes detail would sit with him—gravely drinking tonic water or ginger ale. Even when he went to the men’s room his shadow went with him, standing by with a strenuous air of unembarrassment till mission was accomplished. The whale thing had its funny aspects. Arnold wondered what would happen if he picked up a girl. But he didn’t try it.
Slowly, starved of solid nourishment, the affair Ash began to die a natural death. The letters ebbed away to a trickle.
Until a month after his return from Woomera.
Arnold was coming from the theatre. He hailed a cab and got in, together with the inevitable shadow. The shadow was a stolid middle-aged man who had, Arnold felt, been disappointed in the choice of entertainment. He would have probably preferred a girlie show to the Ionesco revival they had just left.
They had gone some two miles or so, when the cab stopped and the driver turned around. He shone a powerful torch in their eyes so that they could see nothing of his face. But they could plainly see the snub-snouted gun in his hand.
“Not a sound out of you or I’ll use this. Now get out, the pair of you.”
Arnold looked inquiringly at his companion, who shrugged. They got out.
They were in a narrow yard. It looked like the loading space of a store. Another torch, and a dim figure behind it, appeared from the shadows. The figure went over and frisked the security man. from behind, removing a gun. Then he moved quickly. The security man gave a quiet groan and collapsed in a heap.
Arnold made a protesting move forward.
“Don’t move. He’s all right. Just a stun needle. He’ll come round in half an hour. Now, get back in the taxi.”
There was nothing else to do. Arnold climbed back, accompanied by the second figure, who said, “Sorry to inconvenience you, but get down on the floor. And don’t try anything silly, unless you want the stun needle yourself.”
The journey took only fifteen minutes—to wherever it was. Arnold got no clue from his prone position, only the time by the luminous dial of his watch and a succession of flashing lights as the taxi threaded its way through the metropolis.
They came to a halt in a place where no lights shone.
He was bundled down steps and along a passage. It opened into a brilliantly lit room. When Arnold got his eyes back into focus after the darkness he could see that the room was large and comforta
bly furnished. Besides the normal appurtenances of a sitting-room it contained two divans. It looked like a genteel bed-sitter of the Kensington or Knightsbridge area.
One of his captors was standing in front of him. He didn’t look like a thug. In a dark green suit and a light grey overcoat, unbuttoned now, he looked, if anything, like a professional man, an accountant or a scientist.
“What do you want?” Arnold demanded.
“What you found out at Woomera.”
By his voice Arnold recognized that it was the second of the two men, the one who had dealt with the security man.
“I didn’t find out anything at Woomera.” He remembered the press handout. “Except routine details for my article. It was only—”
“Let me make myself clearer,” the man interrupted. “We want the facts on Dr. Fisher.”
“Who are you working for?”
The man smiled.
“For ourselves. We, my associate and I—he’s putting the taxi away, nothing like having something to fall back on in hard times, eh?—are an international information service. Our facilities are available to any interested nation or body. Sit down, Mr. Ash, and I’ll explain. Would you like a drink? Scotch?”
“Thanks.”
“You see, the problem in this modem world is lack of intercommunication. Everybody’s such a specialist that nobody knows what’s going on in related fields. We fill in the gaps. But some information we give free. I’ll tell you, for instance, that we know you treated Dr. Fisher by a new method. We know something of what that method is. We know you learned things from Dr. Fisher. In short, you’re carrying information that we need.
“Now, excuse the initial melodrama—believe me, I don’t like sticking needles in people—but we want that information. We’re prepared to offer two thousand pounds for it.”
Arnold couldn’t help laughing, if nervously. It was put forth like a legitimate business deal, with not a hint of illegality.
“Well?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have the information you’re looking for.”
“No? Well, we believe otherwise. If only for the very close attention that dear old Colonel Jay’s department is paying you.”
“Oh no, this is too much of a vicious circle! You’re quite right about Colonel Jay, but don’t you think he could be making a mistake—just taking unnecessary precautions?”
“Could be. But we don’t think so. Our work, like any good sales service, has to go on probabilities. You know what they say, if everything in business was a certainty everybody would be in business and there’d be no customers. No, we work on statistical probabilities—on hunches, if you like, though I prefer the first term=—and, Mr. Ash—” for the first time a hint of menace crept into his voice—“we back our hunches to the hilt.”
Arnold wondered whether the last word had been deliberately chosen. In any case, he didn’t like it.
The other man returned, shedding his cab driver’s coat. Without it, he too could have stepped from the pages of a men’s wear magazine as an example of What the Well-Dressed Young Executive Should Wear. He was shorter and swarthier than his accomplice, or partner, as they preferred to call each other. He rubbed his hands.
“Well, how are matters proceeding?”
“Mr. Ash is proving rather resistant, I’m afraid. He suggests that our market survey is inaccurate.”
The other shook his head sadly. “Well it’s the only survey we can possibly go on.”
“That’s what I told him. We’ll just have to convince him that we have to come to terms.”
Arnold interposed. “What happens if we don’t.”
“Well, first we bring pressure, physical pressure. If that fails, we shall have to break off negotiations—finally.”
He looked meaningly at Arnold.
Arnold felt as if something cold were exploring his spine. They could be bluffing, of course, but he didn’t think so. Spies who could talk so unemotionally of their trade, weighing its profit and loss, could just as likely treat spilled blood—his blood—as no more than a regrettable red entry on the wrong side of the ledger.
“We’ll give you twenty-four hours to think it over,” the tall one told him. “Meanwhile put out of your head any ideas about escaping. One of us will be on guard all the time, and we guard our assets carefully. Of course, any time in the twenty-four hours that you want to come through with the required details, you have only to say the word and that will end all this inconvenience. Which, needless to say, we regret as much as you do.”
“Don’t worry,” Arnold told him with more show of confidence than he felt. “I’m used to this kind of thing by now.”
Next morning, after politely expressed hopes that he had slept well and after a breakfast of ham and eggs, toast and marmalade: for which Arnold felt little appetite, the tall one of the pair passed him a morning paper.
He looked it over.
“Don’t you notice anything?”
“How do you mean? I don’t see anything special.”
“Exactly. It doesn’t mention your disappearance.”
“Should it? News of me is under what they call a D-order, I believe.”
“Perhaps, but it shows that you are still under it. You will agree that it confirms our market assessment of the information you possess. Not much, but say a point in favour?”
“It could also mean that I’m no longer newsworthy, that whatever information I’m supposed to have is of no real account.”
But he fancied he knew the real motive for the man’s comment—to underline the fact that he was isolated, at their mercy.
The short, swarthy one spread his hands.
“Surely, you wouldn’t expect us to believe that, Mr. Ash? I do think your viewpoint is unrealistic. Why do you refuse to accommodate us? A noble, but utterly mistaken, sense of patriotism?”
Arnold shrugged.
“Or fear of the consequences? That’s the usual cause of reluctance, we find.”
Arnold weighed up the little that he had gained from the sick man’s mind. Surely those facts could be of little consequence? And he remembered what Jay had said about the larger enemy.
“I’m prepared to tell you all I know.”
“You are?” said the tall one. “I’m relieved to hear that. Now, details of Dr. Fisher’s anti-acceleration research.” His companion took out a notebook.
“The main project is a hydraulic cabin.”
The tall man looked at him searchingly.
“We know all about the cabin. We also know that research on it was abandoned twelve months ago. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I didn’t know it was abandoned.”
“Let me be more specific. We want details of the Mark Seven pressurized suit. What materials are the cell linings made of?”
Arnold strove to recollect in precise form things which he had only seen out of the corner of his mental eye.
“An alloy.”
“What alloy?”
It was like trying to remember the precise geography of a dream—and just as futile.
“I don’t know.”
The note-taker put down his pen. Arnold’s interrogator breathed heavily.
“Mr. Ash, that won’t do. That won’t do at all.”
“I tell you, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it’s a case of not wanting to remember. We don’t have unlimited time for this operation, so let me make the situation quite clear. I don’t like to be brutal about it, but if full answers are not forthcoming you will be tortured. Even if you want to be a hero, the odds are that your heroism would be unavailing, because in a large percentage of cases torture does not extract the information.
“Everybody in this business recognizes the fact. Agents and possessors of information are expected, of course, to resist to the death, but if a man cracks that does not make him a candidate for a treason trial. Now, if you give the information voluntarily, there is still no proof that you have done so. But—I’ll be q
uite frank—the odds are Jay’s men would soon elicit the proof. Alternatively you can be tortured. But there is a third way.
“Threats of torture are not held to be extenuating circumstances. But there are forms of torture which leave no physical traces. Such as an ultrasonic machine. This merely tortures the brain cells. It would take dissection to prove—or in your case, to disprove—any damage. In fact, we don’t possess such a machine, but we could fill you in with details.”
Arnold tried to speak, but his lips were suddenly dry. He had lived in the sub-world of security long enough for the edge of reality to be taken off everything, so that his kidnapping the night before had seemed only a part of a bad dream from which he would shortly wake. He had thought that this pair would soon realize that he possessed nothing of use to them. But now he saw with alarming clarity that it was as they said—they had to follow a hunch… to the end, even if the end proved negative. Negative for them and finally, irrevocably negative for him. It was logic of the same insane order as the logic of nuclear deterrence. But it was the only logic possible in the circumstances.
He forced himself to speak.
“Haven’t you got some sort of truth machine to establish that I’m telling you all I know?”
“Why should we budget for expensive apparatus to establish negative results?”
“Well, truth drugs, then.”
“There are truth drugs. There are also immunization jabs. They’re required treatment for all agents these days.”
“But I’m not an agent.”
“Aren’t you?”
Arnold slumped. Like Colonel Jay’s wars, the larger insanity seemed to be made up of cells of smaller, but equally incontestable, insanities. Then an idea occurred to him, and he cursed himself for not having thought of it before.
“You can prove the extent of my knowledge easily enough. You claim that I got special knowledge of Dr. Fisher’s mind by telepathy. Very well, I admit I did. I know a lot about Dr. Fisher—his childhood, his love affairs and—all right, his work. I know that what I know are almost entirely the personal things, the guilts, the anxieties, the things that caused his breakdown. A few other details came up too, clinging to those personal things. I know that what I learned is no more than what you obviously know. But you can put it to the test. One of you can search my mind just as I searched Dr. Fisher’s.”
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