"Perhaps," she said.
The man did not seem to hear her. "So that's why I went and got like this. I don't care what I do now. This could be the last night of the world. A man has to do something."
"I know."
"It's all been known beforehand. Have you ever read the Bible? The Book of the Apocalypse? This is it. It was written down beforehand."
"I don't believe in that," she said.
"Oh, but you should." The man shook his head pityingly. Anna couldn't remember his name. He gave her a deep, searching look. "A person has to believe in something. If you don't, what have you got to live for? We all need help: you and me, my boy." He waved a hand, indicating the inclusion of the rest of the world. "Who's going to give it?"
Anna started to be honest and shake her head no but then she remembered. Yes.
"There is a man," she said, softly. "A person, I mean."
The man shook his head. "There can't be."
"Yes—I know him. I tell you, I do."
"You're lying!" The man reached over and clamped his hand viciously down on hers.
"Tell me you are!"
She shook her head. "He is my husband." Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"Alec Richmond."
"I've never—"
Her feet kept trying to move toward the door. In her mind, she kept seeing a sign, which said:
THEODORE MENCKEN
Agent
She had to find it—now!
She sprang to her feet and stood frozen for a moment, her head turning frantically, searching for an exit. Then she saw the door and, ignoring the man's heated protests, turned and ran. But he wasn't about to let her go. He came rushing after her. The eyes of everyone else swiveled to follow their progress.
He caught her at the door.
Holding her elbow, he shouted: "Tell me! How can he help us?" His eyes rilled with tears. "Please."
"Androids," she said. "Don't you know? They're going to do all the fighting for us. Your son—he won't have to die."
"I know that," he said, bitterly disappointed.
"You do?"
"It was on the news. Everyone knows that. So what? They'll kill all the androids—and then it'll be my son's turn." He let go of her arm
So it wasn't true. Alec couldn't help anyone. He was useless—a monster.
She turned and ran outside. The man did not attempt to stop her this time. He was weeping into his hands.
A public walkway ran past the front steps of the terminal. Anna leaped aboard. In spite of the lateness of the hour, the walkway was jammed. She tried to find herself. Where was she heading? People of all types and kinds blocked her view. Not just the usual midnight downtown scum—respectable people too. Well-dressed. As many women as men. Small children. No one seemed to be talking. At least, Anna could hear nothing. She noticed a high building and thought she recognized it. Another high tower. A billboard. The nightly headlines streamed here. In spite of herself, she read the words: "WAR... MOBILIZATION... WARNING... THREAT... ANDROIDS... ATTACK..."
Everyone knew. Alec couldn't help anyone. What had caused her to think he could?
In her mind, a single image dominated. A long dim corridor. A motionless walkway. Then a door. A sign. The words:
THEODORE MENCKEN
Agent
Again and again, as the walkway carried her into the night, she saw this sign. There was no way she could block it out. Nothing else seemed to matter. The words, over and over, were driving her mad. Suddenly, she realized that this was what had been bothering her all night. The itching inside her skull. She had to find that sign. When she saw it—really saw it with her own eyes—when she passed beyond it—then she could relax; she would be set free.
With a start, she realized she was riding in the wrong direction. She cried out, attracting stares. The walkway was carrying her along the edge of the waterfront, down toward the Marina, away from the towering downtown skyscrapers. The sign was back the other way. She had to find it.
She was maneuvering desperately, trying to find a means of escape, when she saw a cloverleaf ahead. She moved through it carefully, following the signs, and when she emerged from the scramble, she was turned in the right direction. She laughed at her victory. Any moment now. She bit her hand to keep from screaming.
Someone beside her reached out and grabbed her hand.
She turned to look. A young man—good-looking in a well-scrubbed way. But she didn't know him.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, leaning close in spite of the silence around them. He pointed at her fist between her teeth. "I thought—"
She removed the hand and said, quickly, "Thank you— I'm fine."
"But aren't you Anna Richmond?"
"I am," she said, after a moment's consideration.
His smile glowed. "I've always admired your tapes tremendously." He laughed hollowly. "Isn't it funny I'd meet you tonight—of all nights?" Then, in an entirely different tone: "Tonight must be the worst night ever."
Anna was barely hearing him. She had managed to reach the farthermost lane of the walkway where she could watch the streets and buildings as they passed. She was looking for the right place to exit. She could see the sign as clearly as if it were an inch in front of her face. "What is?" she asked, vaguely.
"I mean this war."
"Why? Don't you want it? Don't you think it's necessary?" For some reason, she thought everyone felt this way.
He laughed and held her arm tightly. "I know you're just testing me. I think the whole thing is crazy. Us and them—it would be so easy to live together."
"Would it?"
"Of course. They hate us because we're rich. We hate them because they hate us and because there are more of them than us. So the solution—I told you it was easy—is to spread the wealth around, share it. If everyone is equal, then no one has any reason to hate."
"But everyone isn't equal," she insisted.
"I meant materially."
"But that's just a symptom. It isn't a cause." Where had she heard these words before?
She sensed they were not her own. Oh, yes—Alec. Alec Richmond.
"I think it's worth trying. Anything new is worth trying."
"What's new about it? What about communism? That didn't work."
"Communism was a lie. Anyway, it was based on false premises. Marx...."
She let him run on. Since the words weren't hers, she saw no reason to defend them. His sincerity dazzled her. Suddenly, she heard herself saying—these words were not her own either: "I love it. War. The bombing. Shooting. Fighting. I think war is the perfect metaphor for human life." Maybe she was wrong—maybe these words were hers.
She could tell she had shocked him. But wasn't that the idea? The one thing she didn't need tonight was an admirer.
"But your tapes," he said. "I've seen them all. You can't feel that way."
"But I do."
"The tapes—"
"I was hungry."
"But you're rich. Your family—"
"A person can be hungry for a lot of things besides food. Admiration. Respect. Status. Maybe I just wanted to prove that I was as human as anyone else."
"But I could tell—I felt that you—"
He was not the right person to tell. Who was? Except Alec? She recognized that building there. Yes. It was the one that contained the sign.
But she did not get off the walkway. Darting ahead, she slipped between bodies, escaping the young man. The walkway carried her away. The building faded behind.
She rode for hours. Once more, she was fighting and fighting and fighting. Again, she was barely aware of what she was doing.
But—at last—she couldn't resist. The sign drew her onward. She looked up. The building loomed above her. She had arrived.
She sensed it was too late now for anything but moving ahead. She entered the building. The lobby was dark and empty. She found an elevator, entered, and allowed it to carry her up.
Then it was her dr
eam all over again. She saw the dim corridor. The motionless walkway. She moved ahead. In the pocket of her suit, she felt the slick plastic handle of the gun. It was a beam weapon. She placed her finger around the trigger. It was almost time now. She would knock. He would tell her to come in. And then... then...
She turned and faced the door. The sign read:
THEODORE MENCKEN
Agent
The sight—so familiar—made her want to laugh. Raising a fist, she stifled the urge. She removed the gun from her pocket. She pointed the barrel straight at the door.
Then she knocked—firmly.
But no one answered.
Gently, she called: "Alec? Can you hear me? Open the door. It's me—it's Anna."
Still, no answer.
She touched the knob. It turned easily and then—unexpectedly—the door popped open. Beyond, a small room was filled with yellow light.
She stepped inside and closed the door.
"Alec?"
Where was he? She searched the first room carefully, then went into the second. Nothing here either. No people.
Once more: "Alec?"
Then she went ahead, opened the last door, peered into the last room. The light was on here too.
She saw the body lying on the floor.
At first she thought it was Alec. She had killed him and then forgotten all about it and come a second time. Wasn't that funny? Or maybe this was a dream. She was being forced to relive the act again and again. This was her punishment. They were never going to let her wake up.
Then, stepping closer to the body, she realized it couldn't be Alec. It was a woman.
She turned the body over and looked at the face.
At first, she didn't know. It wasn't herself. Who was it? Recognition came slowly. She remembered a tall, tall building. An outside elevator made of glass. Eathen.
Oh, oh, oh, yes. Sylvia Mencken. She had a gaping hole in the center of her forehead. And she was dead.
Anna, kneeling beside the body, cradled the unused gun in her lap and rocked on her heels. She began to sing: "Sylvia—poor Sylvia—dead Sylvia—poor, lousy, dead, dead, dead..."
She started to laugh.
It wasn't so bad. Hey, her head didn't itch any more. She had passed the sign and now she was free. Alec was saved. Nobody was going to kill her any more.
She did laugh.
Then, suddenly, her body jerked stiff. She sprang to her feet, balancing on the tips of her toes like a dancer. She threw her hands high in the air. She screamed. She fell over.
On her back, she shook, trembled, twitched. She was fighting and fighting and fighting. He had promised. He had told her. The sign... the sign... the sign.... She had passed it.
Someone was laughing.
It was useless. She fought and fought and fought.
She lost.
Standing, no longer shaking, she reached down carefully and retrieved the beam gun. She placed the weapon gently into her pocket. Then she turned and went obediently toward the door.
She passed into the second room. Then the first.
Within her mind, a single image dominated everything. There was no room for other thoughts; resistance was inconceivable. A big house set high on a hill. Dawn. An eerie orange glow spreading across the surrounding countryside. The house was shaped like a square doughnut. At its center, not a hole—a plush green garden.
She had to go here. She had to enter that garden and then she would be free.
A man stood in the center of the garden. A narrow stream, flowing briefly. A high arched wooden bridge.
"Alec," she whispered. "Alec—I'm coming."
She stepped out into the dim and silent corridor and went to find the elevator.
Twenty-One
With the faint first light of dawn streaming across the naked flesh of his back, Alec Richmond sat on a bare strip of grass in his garden and sipped orange juice through a straw. Long ago, Alec had removed the glass dome from over the garden, preferring the natural light and heat of sun and moon and stars to their more demure and artificial replicas. Because of this, many of the more exotic varieties of foliage in the garden were now wilted, dead, or dying. Only the sturdy, experienced, native American varieties had managed painlessly to withstand the casual poisons which lurked within the local atmosphere, remnants for the most part from those ugly years before the human race had been forced to learn—however dimly— that nature could kill men as easily as men could attempt to kill nature.
He had chosen this open space deliberately because it was one of the few places in the garden that did not make him think of Anna. She had always liked trees and bushes, running water and high bridges. There was nothing like that here: just grass, a few decaying plants, maybe a worm or two.
He crossed his legs beneath him and continued to sip. The house was far enough distant so that if the phone in the living room decided to ring he could easily pretend not to hear it. He had already disconnected the garden extensions. He felt good now, clean, able to luxuriate in a degree of privacy he had not known in years and years, if ever.
It was a shame he had promised the general his new android model so soon. It must be well past six o'clock by now. Soon enough—probably before seven—his failure to appear with the promised designs would seem suspicious. They would try to call him—first at the office and finally here at home. By eight, their patience should be exhausted. He set eight-thirty as the likely time for them to reach the office. Before nine, they would reach him here.
But that still gave him three hours alone. And the war might well delay them too. As soon as he stepped through the front door, the tridee screen in the living room—which neither he nor Anna ever watched—had automatically blossomed into life, revealing a dull man who spoke with an unemotive voice. War had been declared. Hostilities had commenced. And on and on and on.
Removing the poker from its place on the fireplace hearth, Alec had driven the end straight through the tridee screen, coolly destroying—in a flash of sparks, a buzz of shorted wires—both the man and his voice.
From there, he had gone directly to the garden.
Alone. Three hours. Less now. What to do, what to do? How should he spend these final few hours? Should he simply sit and sulk and mourn for Sylvia? Or should he be more active: sit and curse and spit hatred at Cargill? Or what about Anna? He had barely given her a thought, despite Cargill's warning that she might be in great danger.
How lucky Anna was.
She had been permitted to meet and know her own father. If he happened to be—as Cargill asserted—something ugly and despicable, a monster who would calmly squash her underfoot without a second thought—well, that was really irrelevant; what mattered was that he was still her father.
What about his own?
At the government home, when Alec turned thirteen, the director, Mr. Eliot, had called him in—it was official procedure—and congratulated him on his birthday. Then, reading from what appeared to be—from the rear—an official state document, Mr. Eliot began to discuss Alec's own father. He had been, said Mr. Eliot, a mechanic and for years had worked on his own, repairing broken machinery, tending to the maintenance of cars and planes and other devices and gadgets. All of this was recorded (or so Mr. Eliot claimed) in the official state document. But the need for human mechanics was fast disappearing; machines could fix other machines far more efficiently than any pair of human hands. The profession moved toward obsolescence—it would soon be as unnecessary as ditch-diggers, bootleggers, or Indian scouts. So Alec's father had been forced to move farther and farther away from his real enemy—civilization. Eventually, in a cold corner of Alaska, he had met and married Alec's mother, who had soon died while giving birth under very primitive conditions to Alec. But, even here, work was scarce. Soon, there was not nearly enough to support a man and his son. Alec's father had been faced with a decision: he must choose between his work and his son. He could remain where he was—in the civilized world—and risk starvation. Or he cou
ld emigrate—to any primitive nation—and find his services well-required and his belly quite full. He would not be permitted, of course, to take his child with him if he left the civilized world; the law required the boy to enter a home.
"But," Alec had asked Mr. Eliot, unable to restrain himself despite the fear he felt for this man, "why didn't he retrain? Wouldn't they let him?"
They would but—he saw no other alternative—Mr. Eliot would cover this point quite bluntly. The fact was that Alec's father had refused retraining. The only open professions at that time—and the situation was little different today—were artistic and electronic. Alec's father had no interest in or knowledge of the arts, and he further rejected official denials that any such interest or knowledge was necessary. No. And, as far as electronics was concerned, he flatly refused that too. He didn't mind fixing machines—he loved the work in fact—but he wouldn't work any closer with them. It was a point of personal pride. In any man-machine relationship, Alec's father believed, one party must dominate—and he felt it had to be— and ought to be—the man. Perhaps this view was obsolete. He didn't know. But it was his view, and it meant enough to him that he was willing to sacrifice his son and leave his homeland forever.
"Where did he go?" Alec asked, boldly.
"Africa," said Mr. Eliot, peering over the edge of the official document. "Senegal. But—I warn you—don't try looking for him when you leave this home. You will be sorry—very sorry. You won't find him. He won't be there."
Alec had accepted this advice. For some reason he had known as soon as Mr. Eliot spoke that it was true. Anna had acted otherwise.
And she had been the one to win.
After that, Mr. Eliot had shown him the tridee photograph. A middle-aged man—but tall, strong, smiling. A black beard. Blue shirt and blue jeans. "This is your father," Mr. Eliot had explained, "the way he looked the day he left you with us. Don't expect him to be that way now."
Anderson, Poul - Novel 17 Page 15