Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  A Washington television newsman called it, “The night God shook his fist at the world.” Patrick Honor had another way of looking at it.

  “It was the Rogue’s first death rattle,” he told his companions. “He should never have let us in there. We really shook things up. We’ll have to be more careful next time—we don’t want to destroy the earth along with him.”

  “Next time?” Dorothy gasped. “You don’t mean to say there’s going to be a next time!”

  “Has to be,” Honor replied. “But next time, we go in force.”

  Damage to the White House had been light and contained within a few rooms of the Presidential Apartment. Except for two mild cases of smoke-inhalation among the White House staff, no injuries were incurred and the daily routine of business was hardly interrupted.

  The carnal resolution of President Jack Wilkins was attempted again, and achieved, later that morning. On this occasion, Dorothy was the “guide,” Milt Clinton “body-guarded,” and Honor and Barbara “escorted.”

  Wilkins returned from the experience more thoughtfully somber than ever, and commented to Honor, “I wish I could have gone through this 30 years earlier.”

  “You still have a lot of effectivity left in you,” Honor assured him.

  “Yes, I know,” the President replied, “but I believe I could have prevented a lot of hell from loosing itself on this world.”

  “There’s a lot of hell yet ahead,” Honor reminded him.

  “Yes, I see your point,” Wilkins replied. He called a full Executive Council that afternoon, visited the Justice Department and the Supreme Court later that day, and scheduled an address before a Joint Session of Congress for June 18.

  Meanwhile, Honor and his small group were moving in their own directions. Barbara and Dorothy resumed their “geometer-scan” activities while Honor and Clinton began a down-to-earth search for one Ruahl Bey Singh.

  “I believe Singh is focalizing for the Rogue,” Honor explained to Clinton. “I feel certain, also, that he was sabotaging Wenssler from the very beginning . . . or, at least, leading him deliberately along a road of certain doom.”

  “But why would the Rogue need a human ally?” Clinton argued. “And, even allowing that he does, what makes Singh the likely candidate?”

  “I don’t know all the answers,” Honor admitted. “There’s just a vague realization in the pit of my mind and . . . well, I realized it last night when we were behind the mirror-image. The Rogue is sheer subjectivity. Nowhere, not from any direction during all the time we were in there, did I get a tug of objective faculty. The truth hit me then like a ton of bricks. The Rogue is self-conscious, yes, but his self-consciousness is an imposed factor.”

  Clinton’s face was screwed into a dark frown. “Damn, I don’t get that, Pat,” he admitted.

  “You will,” Honor assured him. “Look, Milt, have you ever seen a hypnotist work? Hypnotism works through the imposition of one person’s will upon another person’s subjectivity. It is merely conscious suggestion cast into a subconscious medium.”

  “I understand that.”

  Honor shrugged. “So, think of Singh—or someone like Singh—as the hypnotist and the Rogue as subjectivity.”

  “Why someone like Singh?”

  “Because he’s the perfect bland quality,” Honor replied, grinning. “Remember what I told you about wave-makers? Any action, good or bad, sets up a reaction within the Rogue. In this universe of self-will, the Holy Joes who run around preaching ‘thy will, Father’ are just trying to co-exist with the Rogue, whether they know it or not. The real Rogue, Milt, are the religious fanatics who are offering up their objectivity for the Universal Subconscious to focus upon.”

  “But surely Singh isn’t the only religious fanatic in the world, Pat. My God, I can name you a dozen right off the top of my—”

  “I’m speaking in a personal reference, of course,” Honor said. “I am saying that Singh is probably responsible for all the unhappy events in our particular sequence. You’re right, though, there could be a million ‘Singhs’ scattered about the world.”

  “Do you know what you’ve just done?” Clinton fumed. “You’ve geometrized our problem. Instead of one enemy, now, there are a million!”

  Honor was frowning, deep in thought. “There is still the one enemy, Milt,” he replied. “It’s that vast pool of human error in which we’re all immersed. Somehow we’ve got to sever the tie that binds us to it. Somehow we have got to destroy the Rogue . . . or else neutralize him.”

  “And how the hell do we do that?”

  “We’re going to geometrize him with Truth,” Honor said.

  “My God, it just hit me,” Clinton declared softly.

  “What?”

  “What it all boils down to, that’s what. It’s the war of the Godmakers.”

  Honor smiled. “Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way.”

  “It’s the only way to look at it,” Clinton avowed. “Some are trying to build one God . . . others are trying to build another. It boils down to a construction war.”

  “Every war is a holy war,” Honor quietly observed.

  “Yeah, well, I’d say we need a bunch of recruits!”

  “Wilkins and the girls are working that end,” Honor

  reminded him. “You and I have an intelligence job. We have to find the enemy’s forward post.”

  “Now that’s a job I understand,” Clinton replied.

  “There’s a juicy looking bunch,” Dorothy said excitedly.

  “Ummm, I love student groups,” Barbara agreed. “But there’s an awful lot. Maybe we should concentrate on smaller numbers.”

  “Nonsense. There’s a very strong field here, lots of tensions. Just made to order. Let’s try a—”

  “Strong, yes,” Barbara objected, “but not erotic. It’s some sort of protest meeting, I’d say.”

  “There’s a strongly libidinal undertone to that protest, Barb. Let’s at least ripple through. How about the blonde there? The one with the big buckets.”

  Barbara giggled. “The big what?”

  “Buckets, jugs, whatever they call ’em.” Dorothy was giggling also. “She has an itch right in her—”

  “Okay,” Barbara said quickly. “Let me try. Oh yes, you’re certainly right about that. It’s the boy on the platform. She’s thinking . . . she’d like for him to . . . oh, naughty naughty, Blondie. Let’s see, just a light psychic goose in the . . .”

  “Perfect!” Dorothy squealed. “She’s moving toward the platform!”

  “Hit the boy, quick! . . . well, gosh, you didn’t have to hit him right there, Dotty.”

  “It’s lifting and looking, isn’t it? Ah! That’s a good resolution, kiddies! Quickly now, Barb, triangulate the field, let’s get them all to swinging.”

  Moments later Barbara sighed and said, “Well, I’d call that swinging. I hope the newspapers are kind to them.”

  “You know better than that,” Dorothy replied. “I can see the headlines now, six inches high: SEX RIOT AT COLUMBIA. Everybody in the country will hate and envy them.”

  “Oh well,” Barbara philosophized, “someone has to carry the burdens of freedom. Who better than the young?”

  “I’m carrying a bit of a burden myself right now,” Dorothy said, “and I’m not all that young. Come on, let’s find another field. God! I don’t know how many more of these I can take. This is no job for a red-blooded girl.”

  “You’re getting downright lecherous,” Barbara commented, smiling secretly to herself.

  “Call it holy, holy, holy,” Dorothy replied. “Come on, let’s see if we can convert Princeton.”

  “Did you get the numbers?”

  “The net is to the tenth nine, high,” Dorothy said. She scowled, rippled her libido, and added “. . . and it’s tearing me up.”

  Barbara was laughing almost hysterically as they swirled toward the Princeton geometer. Recruiting was such fun.

  The evening of June 16 saw a surpris
e Supreme Court announcement in a long-pending Arkansas case, with a historic decision which seemed to strike at the very heart of traditional American morals. In a broad reaffirmation of the individual’s constitutional rights and freedoms, the language of the decision ranged far beyond the considerations of the case at issue, the challenge of an illegal-cohabitation law. In throwing out the Arkansas statute which forbade a man and woman to live together except in marriage, the court went on to strike down virtually all “morals legislation” which abridged the rights of individuals to choose their own code of moral ethics.

  The major statement of the majority decision asserted that “. . . legal coercion and manipulation of the individual conscience can be viewed only as an imposition of unwarranted force upon the free will of the individual. For the state to decide, therefore, what is good and what is evil for the individual is an abridgement of basic human rights and a serious erosion of human and national dignity.”

  On the morning of June 17, the pastor of a large interdenominational church in Washington, which numbered in its congregation the President of the United States, issued a call for “a new search” in man’s religious involvement, stating that, “No plan of human redemption which has at its roots the cruel and inhuman torture-murder of one of God’s chosen can have any validity for any rational man. Personally, I feel nothing but shame and degradation for mankind as a whole whenever I think of the cross, and I feel only a consuming anger whenever I am confronted with the insane concept of original sin.”

  These developments, unleashed upon an already stunned American public and seemingly in concert with an epidemic-like outbreak of campus orgies, produced a traumatic null in American thinking. Other national governments, aware also of a rapidly growing unrest within their own borders, sat in a quiet stupor and wondered which way America would swing the rest of the world.

  On June 18, Patrick Honor summed it up thusly for the Godmakers: “The Rogue is reeling. The mantle of error has not been ripped asunder, but the cracks are showing everywhere. Be alert, now. Watch for the counterattack.”

  6: The Plan

  It was early morning, June 21. President Wilkins walked across his office and stood with hands clasped behind his back, staring gloomily out the window. He sighed and said, “I’ve made all the waves I can think of, Pat. I guess the rest is up to you, and I’m hoping you can do your bit soon . . . before the waves completely engulf the nation.”

  “The action-reaction is going great,” Milt Clinton observed drily. “The country’s turning on itself like a pack of wild dogs.”

  “We couldn’t expect the Rogue to just roll over and die quietly,” Honor said.

  “I didn’t expect the nation’s police to use bayonets on our citizens, either,” Wilkins muttered. “They did, you know. Last night. In Philadelphia.”

  “I heard about it,” Honor replied. “But those weren’t cops. A cop doesn’t know one end of a bayonet from another.”

  “Same difference,” Wilkins sniffed. “That militia was there at the expressed desire of the Mayor. That made them his police. Same thing.”

  “I’ve, uh, been wondering if we weren’t, uh, overdoing things a bit,” Clinton said. “The iron-curtain countries are going completely ape, Pat. You inject a taste of freedom into an environment like that, and . . . well, blood just simply has to flow in the streets.”

  “It’s better than having the oceans run red,” Honor argued. “We don’t stand a chance against the Rogue if we don’t play the plan to a close count.”

  “I wish I understood this plan a bit better,” Wilkins complained.

  Honor shrugged his shoulders and went over to stand beside the President. “It isn’t all that complicated, sir,” he said. “It’s simply military tactics. Divert the enemy with a few probes around the flanks, then a sweep right up the middle as soon as his back is turned.”

  “How many, uh, probes will be required to turn his back, Pat?”

  “Well,” Honor grinned and looked out the window. “I’d say he has his hands pretty full right now. Look, sir . . . ” Honor paused to light a cigarette. “Every human act that serves to move the race off dead center is another step forward for the Godmakers. Good or bad, every action demands a counter-action. It’s the response to challenge that’s built into every human mind. Pass a law, that’s a challenge. You’re challenging somebody to go out and break it. Repeal a law, that’s another challenge. Try to do something—anything —good or bad . . . someone will rise up to oppose you. And that’s fine, it’s great, it’s what life is all about. There isn’t any good and evil, Jack. There is just growth and decay. Grow, and you’re building the image . . . decay, and you’re building the Rogue. We grow through action and reaction.”

  “I’d still like to see this thing brought to a head,” Wilkins murmured.

  “So would I.” Honor exhaled a lung full of cigarette smoke. “And all I’m waiting for now in Singh. We have to find him. He’s my ticket into the Rogue.”

  “I don’t understand that part, either,” Wilkins said.

  I told you that we’re going to sweep up the middle,” Honor replied. “Singh’s the middle, the broad boulevard to Rogueville. I’m going to pop right up through his geometer, and I’m going to be taking Dottie’s and Barb’s numbers with me.”

  “I still say it’s a suicide attack,” Clinton growled. “There has to be a better way.”

  Honor doggedly shook his head. “It’s the only way,” he insisted. “I’ve got to go in there with numbers, and it has to be with numbers which the Rogue can’t possibly assimilate.”

  “Numbers of ecstasy,” Wilkins sighed.

  “That’s right. If I can get enough expansion, I can shake that dead universe of his like it’s never been shaken before.”

  “Once more around the horn now, Pat,” Wilkins said slowly. “Exactly what will this accomplish?”

  Honor sighed. “I’ve told you ... I’m hoping to destroy the Rogue. I don’t know if I can accomplish that much, but I’m going to try. At the very least, I would hope to introduce such disarray to his field that it would be shook loose from ours.”

  “And the net effect of all this?”

  “Well, the immediate effect would be a great leap forward for mankind, even if I had a minimal success. If I knock him out entirely, I’d say this old world will be in for a fantastic pace of evolution. We might hit our true potential in a matter of a few generations.”

  “And suppose you don’t destroy the Rogue.” Honor shrugged. “If I fail completely, then the world, as we know it, has but 81 days to live beyond September 14th.” His eyes brooded on the President. “That’s the full significance of Wenssler’s list, you know. It’s a countdown to the Rogue’s complete domination of the earth, and then . . . well, the image beyond the image might decide to just abort the entire endeavor.”

  “Suppose you find your, ah, minimal success.”

  “Then it’s just a reprieve. The Rogue will be temporarily disarmed. Another geometric progression will begin.”

  The President sighed. “And it will start all over again. Another stretch toward Armageddon.”

  “That’s about it,” Honor murmured. “Only not such a long stretch, this next time. I’d say, probably, the numbers would come up again just about in time to catch Angie’s grandchildren. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” Clinton asked interestedly.

  “Unless some real gung-ho Godmakers should fall out of our efforts here. It could happen, you know. If we can just win a reprieve, we might have the real Godmakers nestling in our loins right now.”

  Wilkins sighed again, in heavy sibilance. “Well, Pat, sounds more impossible every time I hear it,” he said, “but with these stakes . . . well, I guess I just can’t afford to stand in your way.”

  “I didn’t know that you were, sir,” Honor said, watching him curiously.

  “The message beat you here by about a minute and a half.”

  “What message?”

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p; Wilkins scowled. “The message that your hour has come. We’ve found Singh.”

  Honor and Clinton exchanged glances.

  “Wenssler checked out of Bethesda this morning,” Wilkins continued. “Your man Jarvis, Milt, trailed him out to that farm in Virginia. He called your office just as you and Pat walked out the door. The call was transferred here. I took it. Singh and several other Hindu types came out of Wenssler’s lab to greet him. Jarvis says it was a very chummy reunion.”

  Without a word, Clinton stepped to the desk and dialed the mobile operator, then added a coded leader for hookup to the mobile equipment. He got an immediate connection, spoke briefly through the telephone, then hung up and turned to Honor with a grim smile.

  “Jarvis says they’re all in the lab,” he reported. “A couple other cars should be joining him any minute. He says something is going on inside that lab, something involving high voltages. Says he can hear stuff humming from 200 yards away, lights are flashing and dimming, all that bit. I told him to maintain the watch and stay the hell out.” Clinton was moving toward the door. He broke the stride and looked back at Honor. “Well, come on,” he said, in light confusion. “Aren’t we going out there?”

  Honor’s eyes were lifted in a thoughtful examination of the ceiling. “Where are the girls?” he asked quietly.

  Clinton glanced at his watch. “They should still be home.”

  Honor said, “Yes, they are. I just crossed Barb. They’ll wait for us there. We’ll pick them up on the way.”

  “I don’t think that’s a . . . ” Clinton squirmed in agitation. “Why take the girls, Pat?”

  “Part of the plan,” Honor muttered. He turned to Wilkins. “You’ve got 45 minutes. Put the nation on disaster alert. Get as many people as possible out of the cities, but give us a ten minute lead . . . we can’t afford to get plugged in here. Then you take Angie down to the War Room and you stay there. You might get on the hot line and warn the other nations, also, for whatever good it will do.”