They found a pneumocar.
Seth Pell’s “apartment” was really a cottage, a unit affair aimed at convenience amounting practically to hedonism. Cameron had the key-combination. The tinted fluorescents went on automatically as they entered, and the aerothermo-adjusters began to murmur softly. DuBrose looked around the big, pleasant living room. He had never, been here before.
“Seth used this as a hideout,” Cameron said. “Here.” He went to a night battle scene on the wall.
As he approached, rhythmic motion rippled across the panel. The white streaks of rockets flared up, two by two; the pulsing of scarlet-tinged smoke clouds throbbed gently. Cameron watched the scene, waited briefly, and whistled a few bars. The wall opened.
Cameron took out two vibropistols, handed DuBrose one, and walked to the other end of the room. “It’s not a duel,” he said. “Let’s say it’s a trap. Just in case. Ridgeley would catch up with us sometime, and this is the first time we’ve been away from crowds since I got to Low Manhattan. Stay the room’s length away from me.”
DuBrose nodded. He balanced the pistol. He had never fired one in his life, but that wouldn’t matter. Aim and press. That was all. He glanced at the doors.
Cameron had opened another panel, and then a safe behind it. Finally he switched off a force-shield. “Nothing, I guess,” he said, hunting through papers. “I didn’t expect to find much here.
Seth seldom brought work to this hideout.”
DuBrose studied the room. It was a unit, well furnished, with none of the bad taste that had marked Pastor’s magpie eerie. Thousands of books filled the shelves, both ancient and modern; and there were cases of ribbon-volumes, recorded on wire tape. A pillow on a low relaxer still held the impress of Pell’s head.
“Seth told me once that he was a misogynist,” DuBrose said.
Cameron nodded. “I suppose he was. He didn’t make many friends. You had to earn his friendship. You’d think he’d have been an antisocial type. But he wasn’t; he adjusted surprisingly.”
“He liked his work.”
“Seth would have adjusted to any kind of work. He was—” Cameron pulled out a book, examined it, and thrust it back. “He had a theory that wars were inevitable. He said they were extensions of the individual life pattern. Most people go through a series of personal wars, emotional, economic, and so on. A maturing influence, if they survive. Perhaps not strictly necessary, but Seth thought inevitable, according to the general pattern of existence. Survival of the species and self-preservation—the main factors. Reflected, in petto, by individual wars and by national ones.”
“That sounds like a morbid philosophy.”
“Not if you don’t expect happy endings. Ben, when this war with the Falangists is over, that won’t bring the millennium. Seth would have said that each war is a hammer blow forging a sword into shape. Tempering it. It works that way on the individual, when the sword isn’t spoiled or broken.
Perhaps it works that way with the race. A people who’d always lived in Utopia wouldn’t have much survival value. Your gun, Ben.”
DuBrose didn’t have to elevate the muzzle more than an inch. He kept it aimed steadily at the sturdy, bronze-haired figure standing by the door. Ridgeley’s brown-and-black uniform was spotless; the lapel insignia gleamed under the tinted fluorescents.
DuBrose studied the man. Neckless, compact, very strongly muscled, but built for speed as well as strength. There was nothing to mark the courier as an envoy from another time-period. Unless that glowing exultation deep in the black eyes meant anything.
Ridgeley held no weapon, but DuBrose remembered the cryptic, glittering gadget the courier had once aimed at him.
Cameron said quietly, “I don’t know your potentialities Ridgeley. You might be able to kill both of us before we could kill you. But you’re in danger of cross-fire. You’re between DuBrose and me.”
Ridgeley’s face was impassive. “Why, you might kill me,” he said pleasantly. “I admit that possibility. But I like taking risks.”
“You intend to murder us?”
“I’ll try to, anyhow,” the courier said. DuBrose moved his pistol a little. Ridgeley wasn’t infallible. By this time the scanner was focused on him. Did he know that? In any case, he himself had admitted that these odds might be too heavy.
A man from the future wasn’t necessarily a superman. He had his own limitations.
“I’ve an ace up my sleeve,” Cameron said. “So don’t begin till we’ve finished talking. I think I can make you change your mind.”
“Do you think so?”
“First—what about trading information?”
‘There’s no necessity.”
“Will you tell me what you want?”
Ridgeley didn’t answer, but the quizzical mockery darkened behind his eyes.
DuBrose watched the courier with one eye and Cameron with the other, trying to anticipate a signal. None came. He could feel perspiration trickling along his ribs.
“DuBrose and I both want to stay alive,” Cameron said. “So do you. This particular combat can come now or later. Is that right?”
“Why not now?”
“Because it may not solve anything. Do you know what happened to Dr. Pastor?”
“No,” Ridgeley said. “I’ve been out of touch lately. I thought it wiser. Pastor—wasn’t he working on the equation?”
Yes—the courier had his limitations. DuBrose watched, trying to find some clue behind those impassive features, while Cameron explained what had happened to Pastor.
“So that’s the immediate danger,” he finished. “We might kill you. You might kill one or both of us, or both. Pastor’s still free, somewhere. Do you see the latent trouble?”
Ridgeley apparently had already made his decision. “Pastor must be killed. The Secretary of War might fail. In that case . . . yes, he’s the immediate problem, Cameron. There’d be little satisfaction in killing you if Pastor destroyed the world afterward.”
“Hold on,” DuBrose said. “Don’t you know whether or not Pastor used his power—is going to use it—that way? Unless time’s a variable—”
“I don’t know,” Ridgeley said. “So I can’t take chances. I’ll see you later.”
He backed out of the room. DuBrose moved forward and closed the door. The window ports were one-way, so privacy was insured.
“We’re letting him go, chief?”
Cameron was rubbing his forehead. “We’d better. He might do the job for us—get rid of Pastor.
And that must be done. A gun battle now wouldn’t have meant a final decision. Ben—he said he didn’t know.”
“What? Oh. That was odd. If he’s really from the future, if he’s mastered temporal travel—he ought to know.”
“Yes, he should. At least he should know whether or not time’s inflexible or whether there are temporal probability lines. Mm-m. Let’s try Kalender.”
Kalender said there were now five scanning rays impinging on Daniel Ridgeley, and that the courier was heading by copter northwest. Also a technician, studying the equation, had suddenly giggled, shrunk to nothingness, and vanished. Microscopic examination revealed nothing but a pinpoint hole in the floor. Presumably the technician had dropped clear to the center of gravity.
There had been three more cases of straight insanity as well.
Cameron switched off the beam and nodded at DuBrose. “Try Eli Wood. See how he’s getting on.
Perhaps I’d better stay out of range.” The director listened closely from his vantage point.
Wood’s mild face was ink-stained, but his placidity seemed unruffled. “Oh, Mr. DuBrose. I’m glad to see you. I thought of trying to reach you at Psychometrics, and then—well, you said this was highly confidential.”
“It is. How’re you doing?”
“Nicely,” Wood said. “It’s fascinating work. But it’s much more complicated than I expected.
Sometimes it’s necessary to work on two or three problems simultaneously,
in view of the temporal variation. If I could have access to some integrators—”
“Head for Low Chicago,” DuBrose said, in response to a nod from Cameron. “We’ll authorize you to use the Integrators. You can have a staff—”
“Fine. I’ll need men, too—trained men.”
DuBrose hesitated. “Won’t that be dangerous? For them, I mean?”
“I don’t think so. I simply want certain problems solved fast. I’ll give them the material to work on. And I’ll want some mechanics. There are a few changes I’d like to make in an Integrator. I’ve worked out the method, but I don’t know how to rig wires.”
“O.K. Any idea when you’ll be finished?”
“I can’t tell yet.”
“Well—go ahead.”
“Oh—one more thing, Mr. DuBrose. I’ve never been to the Integrator rooms. Will it be all right if I smoke there? I can’t work very well without my pipe.”
“It’ll be all right,” DuBrose said, and watched Wood’s calm face fade away. Cameron chuckled.
“He’s the right type, I think.”
“What about those helpers he wants?”
“They won’t go insane. It isn’t their responsibility. They delegate that to Wood. Well, let’s head for Low Chicago ourselves. I want to see that mutant boy—Van Ness? If we can get some information about Ridgeley out of him, that’ll help.”
“It won’t be easy. He’s badly disoriented.”
“I know,” Cameron said. “But we’ve got to fight Ridgeley some time. I’d just like to know why—that’s all!”
DuBrose nodded, thinking that if the courier’s motivation could be discovered, a good many problems would be automatically solved. However, matters seemed to be approaching a climax.
From now on, these final steps would, at least, be extraordinarily interesting. It would certainly be exciting—
But it wasn’t. It was routine.
XII.
Wars are not won by battles. Before the battle must come grueling, intensive preparation, in which every contingency must be planned and charted. In this particular case the unknown quantities had to be found, and there were many of them. Item: Who was Ridgeley? What did he want? What powers did he possess?
“We can’t find out through his War Department record,” Cameron said, studying graphed psych-lines. “He’d built up an assumed personality for that role. We’ve got to study his environment, his actions and reactions—and Billy’s very useful on that score.”
DuBrose watched the mutant, sleeping quietly under hypnosis, an encephalogram charting his brainwaves. “We’ve found that temporal anchor, anyway.”
It was merely a sea anchor so far, with guided hypnosis to aid. The radiation-pattern of Van Ness’ brain had showed distinctive variations under certain stimuli. By leading the mutant to concentrate his EPT upon the time-sector they wanted, by checking, on the chart, the stimuli that distracted him or, conversely, helped him to focus, it had been possible to learn something of Ridgeley’s past—in the future. But it was always necessary to allow for a margin of error, due to Van Ness’ confusion over duration. Thus there were blanks and snarls in the story; some of these could be straightened out by applying the yardstick of familiar experience, but when that failed, the unknown x had to be supplied.
It took days.
Meanwhile nothing had been heard from Dr. Pastor. Cameron had finally decided to use guards.
Low Chicago was on alert. Only the most necessary warmen were allowed into the cavern that teemed with guards and specialized technicians. In the Integrator rooms, Eli Wood and his staff of co-ordinators worked at top speed, though the mathematician did not seem to be affected by the tension. Puffing thoughtfully at his pipe, he wandered through the forest of huge semicolloid mechanical brains, making notes on his cuff when he couldn’t find a pad, and occasionally discussing his progress with Cameron and DuBrose.
“Won’t we need machines?” DuBrose had asked once. “To utilize the equation once we crack it, I mean? Some sort of transmitter—”
“Probably,” Wood said. “Though I’m not sure even of that. You see, this thing is working out as a group of variable truths, so very variable that we can’t anticipate what we’ll need to harness it.
That mental case of yours—he used mental energy, and he neutralized gravitation. I might find one basic, arbitrary truth that would presuppose the transmission of controlled variable-truths through the medium of a lead pencil or a block of iron. Or a hair follicle,” he added, blinking mildly.
“But you’re getting it?”
“Why sure. However, the counterequation is way beyond me. I might crack that too, but it would take months.”
“Can we wait months?” DuBrose said, and answered his own question. “No. We’ve a chance now to smash the Falangists. Their chief weapon is controlled use of the equation. More of those bombs of theirs have penetrated our shields. If they launched an all-out invasion now—”
“Their robots might win,” Cameron broke in. He stared at the huge Integrator pulsing softly in the distance. “That was their plan. The bombs were nothing. They were aiming at the technicians.”
Wood said, “There can’t be more than a hundred top men in this country. Electrophysicists, electronic engineers—and so on. Men who are trained to think up fast countermoves—”
“It’s a technological war,” Cameron agreed. “Once they drove our best technicians insane, we’d be as helpless as the blood-stream without a liver. In a position where we needed new ideas fast—we’d go down. Because the men who could supply those ideas would be insane.”
“Even when we crack the equation, though,” DuBrose said, “it’ll be deadlock.”
“Yeah—We’ll be on even terms with the Falangists again.” Cameron moistened his lips; without a counterequation, there would be no help for him. The psychic assault had not halted. An hour ago, in his office, he had watched a lighted cigarette crawl out from between his fingers and loop up his forearm like an inchworm, burning his skin as it moved.
DuBrose was watching the director. “We’ll manage it,” he said. “Somehow. There’s got to be a way. We’ve enough resources—”
Cameron nodded. “I finally got Kalender to stop all research on the equation. All but yours, Wood. So that’ll save some technicians—but the top ones are either dead or insane already.”
DuBrose said, “We can’t get back the dead ones, but we can cure the others. Just show them the solution to the equation.”
“Not quite as easy as that, Ben—but that’s the cure. They went insane because they couldn’t shoulder their responsibility. If we can make ’em realize there is no more responsibility along that line, they should snap out of it fast.”
“Well, I’ve got to get back to work,” Wood said, rekindling his pipe. “All this, you know, is a form of fairy chess in which the rules aren’t clearly stated.” He blinked at the great Integrator.
“Amazing things. I don’t understand—” He went off, shaking his head thoughtfully.
“He’ll crack it,” DuBrose said confidently.
“Yeah. When? Let’s look up Billy.” Flanked by guards, they returned to the psychometrics sanatorium and another session with the mutant. Bit by bit, more notes were being added to the file on Daniel Ridgeley.
Van Ness could be no more than a spectator. He saw duration, but he was a psychotic case himself, and had the reactions, though not the vocabulary, of a child. He would answer questions and tell what he saw, but no more than that. And. while he had learned to identify Ridgeley easily because the courier’s protracted duration-line was perceptible to him, a chronological charting was obviously impossible. He skipped; in one sentence, Ridgeley would be seen as an infant, in another an adolescent, in a third, a mature adult, and in a fourth, an invisible something suspended in what must have been a pre-birth incubator, though it seemed extraordinarily complicated.
And very slowly, very faintly, the picture of Ridgeley’s own world began to swim out
of the clouded vistas of time.
It took shape. Like a land seen from above, fog-shielded, peaks and rises gradually emerged from that misty dimness. It was possible to assign a tentative chronology, too, by making Van Ness describe Ridgeley’s appearance thoroughly. Lines of experience appear and deepen on a man’s face as he grows older.
Routine. Tedium. Anxiety, as the days dragged past and the status quo held. Dr. Emil Pastor stayed invisible. Cameron’s hallucinations continued, till he allowed DuBrose to dope him whenever that drastic step was necessary. The insane technicians stayed insane. M-204, in his sanatorium, was still Mohammed and remained afloat a few feet above his bed, ignoring the undignified force-feedings as he passively ignored everything else.
Unofficially, GHQ moved to Low Chicago. A concentration of equipment and men began to flow into the cavern city. No one knew what might be necessary, but everything was made as available as was possible.
Ridgeley, they learned from the scanners focused on the courier, was moving through the country, sometimes by copter, sometimes afoot, using something resembling a directional compass. He was obviously trying to locate Dr. Pastor. When he did, GHQ would know it.
Cameron came in one day nervously excited. DuBrose looked up from the papers on his desk, automatically expecting trouble.
“Anything wrong?”
” Found Pastor yet? No? Well, listen in on this. I’ve got an idea.” He used DuBrose’s visor to get Eli Wood. The mathematician, as quietly imperturbable as ever, nodded at them from the screen.
“Morning. We’re coming along nicely. I just found out that people ain’t. According to that particular truth, it’s quite accurate. We’re reaching the end, incidentally.”
“And you’re still O.K.? But I can see that you are. Listen, Wood—check with me. How does this sound? We’re assuming that Ridgeley brought the equation with him when he hopped back through time. He gave it to the Falangists. Well, the mutant Van Ness is giving us some of Ridgeley’s back-ground, and he comes from a remarkably advanced world—technologically speaking. The equation is used there. I can’t pump out too much from Van Ness, but I gather it’s a war weapon—not the one, just one of ’em. Wouldn’t the counter-equation, the nullifying factor, have been known to Ridgeley’s contemporaries?”
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