Mission Earth 03 - The Enemy Within

by The Enemy Within [lit]

  "I know of a plot to introduce a new, cheap energy source on this planet, completely independent of your­self, that would be in total competition to you."

  Nothing else had gotten to him, really. The last word did. "By God! Inkswitch, the only good competi­tion is dead competition!"

  "Amen," I said devoutly, in keeping with this cathedral-like atmosphere.

  "We've got thousands of patents," he said, "on de­vices to make fuel more efficient. We buy them up and throw them in the permanently closed file. Why couldn't this new development have been put on regular chan­nels?"

  "It's more dastardly than any of those," I said. "It makes fuel cheap as dirt. And they'll have a monopoly on the device."

  "Who is this inventor?"

  "The name is Jerome Terrance Wister."

  "And he can't be bought off?"

  "I'm absolutely certain he can't."

  "And he can't be rubbed out the way some say my great-grandfather disposed of Rudolph Diesel? Into the English Channel in the dark?"

  "It's been tried."

  Rockecenter went over to his desk. The red desk lamps made his face pretty eerie. He punched a button. "Bury! Come over here."

  He gave his throne chair a punch so it swivelled toward the balcony. He looked down at me. "Inkswitch," he said. "While we are waiting for Bury, I may as well swear you in as a family spy. Raise your right hand. Repeat after me: I hereby do solemnly swear to utilize, support and keep sacred the following family poli­cies ..."

  I raised my right hand. What's another oath to an Apparatus officer? I repeated after him.

  "One: Competition strangles the free enterprise sys­tem. Two: The world must continue to believe that as long as D. J. Rockecenter owns everything, they are safe from destructive rivalries. Three: Governments must continue to understand that as long as they do as D. J. Rockecenter orders, they will have plenty of conflicts. Four: The banks must continue to know that as long as D. J. Rockecenter makes a profit, nobody else matters. Five: We stand for democracy so long as it doesn't get in the way of communism. Six: The population must be educated into the need of euthanasia and wholesale abor­tion, and cooperate in its own humanocide. Seven: Only what is good for D. J. Rockecenter is good for everybody. Eight: D. J. Rockecenter is the only family member that matters. And Nine: Trust nobody. I hereby faithfully swear to see that these policies are rammed down everybody's throat, so help me, Rockecenter."

  I had repeated it all.

  "Well, that's done," he said. "I can't trust anybody else to do it. I have to be sure."

  Bury came in at that moment. It was through another door. He appeared a bit haggard and worried.

  "Bury," said Rockecenter, sitting down at his altar desk, eerie in the red light, "Inkswitch here says some­body has been running around loose lately, inventing a cheap fuel. You ever hear of a Jerome Terrance Wister?"

  The family lawyer turned chalk white!

  I grasped the situation in an instant. Bury had never told Rockecenter about that incident! Bury thought the man was dead!

  But Apparatus training is smooth stuff. I said quickly, "I can't imagine how Mr. Bury ever would have heard of him. He's just an upstart student." I closed my right eye to Bury out of Rockecenter's sight.

  Bury stood there watching me like a Wall Street attor­ney sizing up the prosecution.

  "This Wister," said Rockecenter, "seems to be a dan­gerous menace to society. Invented a cheap fuel and refused to sell out." He turned to me, "Do you know any­thing you haven't told me?"

  I could feel Bury go tense. I said, "He's obviously going to demonstrate it in racing."

  "Ah," said Rockecenter. He stroked his chin and frowned. Then he lit up and said something I couldn't for the life of me work out. He said, "Bury! Speak of this invention to nobody. Hire this Wister a public relations man."

  "Yes, sir," said Bury.

  Maybe it was not a loud enough "Yes, sir." Rocke­center got up and walked very close to Bury. He said, "Ride this thing! Get on it and pump! Ride this until you (bleep) it all up. Understood?"

  I was a little bit jolted. The tone of voice! The pos­ture! The only thing missing was the lapel jerk and the "stinger" to be Lombar!

  Bury was even more haggard. "Yes, sir."

  That was apparently loud enough. Rockecenter drew back. He pointed at me. "Inkswitch has just been sworn in as a family spy. He's undercover as a Federal Investi­gator and I'm assigning him at once to this case!"

  Bury looked at me. He suddenly made up his mind. "I'm sure he'll make a marvelous family spy," he said. "It will be a pleasure to work with him."

  Bury was gone. I myself rose to leave. But Rocke­center was looking at his watch. "No," he said. "It will only be a few minutes."

  He walked to the balcony and opened the doors. The soft whirr of traffic came into the cathedral-like room. He waved his arm at the splendid arches.

  "You may think this too plain and unpretentious, Inkswitch, now that you're a family spy. But I'm a mod­est man. I do not need much. My foundation of doctors was just telling me the other day how pleased they were to have made me immortal. It's such a good thing for the world to have just one man own it forever. They couldn't possibly pay the inheritance tax.

  "When you came in, I saw that you were wondering why I didn't marry one of those girls. You've been so closely connected to the family—Aunt Timantha and all-that you really have a right to know and won't go wan­dering off getting close to any of my God (bleeped) rel­atives. I don't have to get married, Inkswitch. That foundation assures me that I'm going to live forever and I don't need any God (bleeped) son to add to the com­petition. You understand me, Inkswitch? So don't go being nice to any other family members. Got it?"

  I nodded but he wasn't looking at me. Evening was sweeping the city which, like the planet, he owned.

  He looked at his watch. He looked up. An ecstatic expression came across his face. "Don't you hear the harp music? It happens every day at this time. Now listen! Listen carefully!"

  He paused. Bliss bathed his face. "There! Right on time! There it was! Ah, what beautiful words: 'The one true God is Delbert John Rockecenter!'"

  He turned and rushed to his desk. He came back holding a pen and a piece of paper on a golden tablet. "Oh, I'm so glad to have another witness! Sign this attes­tation please."

  I signed but I felt the world was spinning around me.

  Audio hallucination! Paranoid schizophrenia! Mega­lomania!

  Just like Lombar!

  Delbert John Rockecenter was a stark, staring lunatic!

  I was working for TWO crazy men!

  PART TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chapter 1

  The next few days were a liberal education in how well a great and powerful organization like Rockecenter's, a juggernaut of efficiency, could (bleep) up a planet. I was overawed with admiration. No wonder Lombar stud­ied Rockecenter so hard! I took notes wherever possible so I could send them through and curry favor with my chief. Earth might be deficient and primitive in many of its technologies but the Rockecenter organization was light-years beyond anything like it in outer space. Five generations of diabolical cunning had made it what it was today: a colossus! A whole planet dancing to the tune of one psychotic man! Magnificent! Compared to this, Heller was a puny nothing! And I would launch the ava­lanche upon him!

  It started the moment I stepped out of Rockecenter's place of self-worship and back into the office of Miss Peace.

  "(Bleep)!" she said, raising her pretty head, "It's five o'clock and I'm overdue at the abortion clinic! You sure took your God (bleeped) time!"

  Discipline, tight schedules! That's what it takes to make a great empire!

  "Open up your God (bleeped) shirt!" she ordered. She had her hat and coat on. She was tearing through her desk, throwing things in all directions. "Where's the God (bleeped) stamp!"

  I had my shirt open. I was studying her every move.

  She found what she was looking for under a stale peanut-butt
er sandwich. What a cunning way to hide a secret stamp!

  It was a big disc with a handle and a trigger. She brought it up and, with a bent paper clip, shoved furi­ously at the changeable letters on the front of it.

  I could read what she was making it say: Rockecenter Family Spi. It had a date and initial space. How efficient!

  She started to advance upon me with such speed and fury, for a second I was alarmed. Her finger was on its trigger. "Are you sure," I began, "that 'spy' isn't spelled with a y, not an i?"

  "Don't you question codes!" she snapped at me. "When that light panel," she gestured toward a flashing board in the wall, "flashes purple with twelve dots, he means 'Sworn in family spi.' You ain't going to get very far, buster, if you start questioning him! Hold your God (bleeped) shirt out of the way!"

  Well, what could I do? A code is a code. I opened my shirt wider.

  She slammed the stamp against my bare chest and pulled the trigger. It stung!

  She grabbed a weird-looking stylus off her desk and, with her tongue gripped firmly between her teeth to the side of her mouth and concentrating very hard, she jammed the stylus into my chest and very laboriously wrote what must be her initials. She stepped back and threw the stylus over a peg on the coat rack.

  I looked down at my chest.

  There was nothing on it!

  Well, it wasn't up to me to question. Buttoning my shirt, I started to move toward the door with the huge teeth.

  "No, no, Christ!" she said in exasperation. "They've all gone home. Use this door!" And, muttering some­thing about new, unindoctrinated staff, she herself went through a side door. I followed but she was going so fast I lost her at once.

  I was in an ordinary office building hall, crowded with people going home. They sure kept tight schedules here. I made a note of the anxious strain on the faces as the employees sought to get away.

  Thinking perhaps I should report to Bury, I wan­dered through a rush hour of people quitting work, pour­ing out of building after building. What an enthusiastic tide of humanity! What a thrill to see how well they kept their schedule!

  By the time I had battered my way through the tor­rent to the Octopus Building, it was locked up tight!

  As I was now a dedicated Rockecenter employee, I realized I would now be expected to enthusiastically rush home. I did. Fortunately, it was not far, as the secur­ity men had taken the five hundred dollars I had had in my wallet, leaving me only with my gun and Federal I.D.

  After a bath to get the stench of antiseptic off of me, I spent some time in front of the mirror trying to see the stamp. Nothing there at all.

  I called a bellboy to take away the antisepticized clothes and he called the public health service which sent a special truck. I dug some money out of the mat­tress and tipped him five dollars. He was very grateful.

  As Utanc was nowhere to be seen, I had a huge and splendid dinner in my room, watched some TV and grate­fully went to bed.

  It had been quite a day, but I was duty bound now to be fresh and alert to report in at nine sharp the fol­lowing morning.

  Things were in motion now. Not even the Gods could help Heller!

  Chapter 2

  At 9:00 A.M. sharp, nattily dressed in a brand-new suit and slouch hat, I presented myself at Mr. Bury's spe­cial office.

  Nobody was there.

  I waited for some time in the hall.

  About 9:45, a janitor opened the door to clean the place up and I went in. I sat in the waiting room. About 10:00 a security team came in to check the offices and make sure they were safe. They didn't speak to me.

  About 10:30, the fourth assistant receptionist came in, turned off the burglar-alarm system, unlocked his bar­ricaded, bulletproof cage and sat down to read The Daily Racing Form.

  At 11:00, I approached him. "I think I'm supposed to see Mr. Bury."

  "Well, why cry on my shoulder?" he said. "Bad luck is bad luck." He went back to reading his racing form.

  At 12:00 I heard a tremendous rush in the hall. It sounded like a riot! Alert to my duties, I sped out. It was a horde of people pouring out of offices going to lunch. I almost got trampled in the stampede. Dutifully, I went to lunch.

  At 1:00 EM. I came in. The fourth assistant recep­tionist entered about 1:15. He eyed me with distaste. He went into his cage and pushed a button.

  Five security guards came crashing through the door, guns drawn. The fourth assistant receptionist was pointing at me. So were the guns of the security guards!

  "Wait!" I yelled. "My name is Inkswitch! I'm sup­posed to see Mr. Bury!"

  The chief security man pointed through the glass of the fourth assistant receptionist. "Is he on that wanted list?"

  It was hard to see what was going on because they had me with my palms flat against the wall, feet out­stretched.

  I heard the fourth assistant receptionist say, "No, he ain't on the wanted list. I can't understand it. Must be some mistake."

  "You got another list there," said the chief security guard. "Is that a hit list?"

  "Well, well," said the fourth assistant receptionist. "It's a note from Bury." He yelled at me through the glass. "Hey, you dumb (bleepard). You were due in Per­sonnel at ten o'clock! Can't you get anything straight? You're late!"

  The security guards rushed me over to an office marked:

  Personnel

  They dumped me inside and left.

  "Inkswitch?" said a girl. "You're not on the combat team list for Venezuela. What are you doing here? Don't you realize that government is supposed to be over­thrown by 4:00 P.M.?" It really caused an upset. The personnel manager himself came out to see what the flap was all about, snarling that he couldn't hear his favorite radio program with all this babble going on. He straight­ened them out. The Venezuela job had been turned over to the Russians. The staff looked very contrite that they had not been informed.

  The personnel manager pushed a button. Six differ­ent security guards rushed in. The personnel manager was pointing at me. "He upset the whole office!"

  They seized me.

  "Wait a minute!" I screamed—my voice was sharp­ened by them pulling my arms up behind my back and trying to lift me to throw me out. "I'm an employee! I was just signed on by Mr. Rockecenter himself!"

  They dropped me in a pile in the middle of the floor. The leading security man said, "I'll bet!"

  The personnel manager said, "You're on! Five dol­lars!"

  The leading security man said, "You're on! Rip open his shirt!"

  They did, with buttons flying about.

  A security man got out a strange-looking light. He shined it on my chest. I looked down.

  Glowing in fluorescent green was Rockecenter Family Spi with date and initials.

  "Jesus," said the leading security man. "You lose, Throgmorton."

  "No, you lose," said the personnel manager.

  They got in a dreadful wrangle. Somebody called the Psychiatric Department and a psychiatrist came in and told them they had both lost and were overreacting. He made them pay each other five dollars and then, sort of absently, took both bills and left.

  I found myself with a personnel consultant in a cu­bicle. She was punching out computer cards. It was very lengthy. She was taking the data from my Federal cre­dentials.

  Finally she pushed all the cards into a computer. She pressed a test button to recall the data to a screen. Nothing happened. The screen remained blank.

  "So that's that," she said. "You've been processed."

  "Wait," I said. "The computer screen stayed blank."

  "Of course," she said. "You wouldn't want to have your cover blown, would you?"

  I left.

  Mr. Bury's office door was ajar. I pushed it open and walked in.

  "Where the hell have you been?" he said. "They've been waiting for us for an hour!"

  We rushed out and got a cab.

  At last things were happening!

  Chapter 3

  As we rode along, blocked from t
ime to time with traffic jams, Mr. Bury seemed very quiet. Once in a while his eyes flicked at me.

  Finally, he spoke. "How much do you know about this Wister?"

  "Not as much as you," I lied. "I just saw you were taken aback so I covered for you." No use to have Bury gunning for me because I knew too much.

  "Hmmm," he said. "I don't like this way of han­dling this Wister thing, Inkswitch. The right way is usu­ally pretty tortuous but in this case, a direct hit would seem more like it."

  I stiffened with alarm. I did not have that platen. And I sure wasn't going to get myself blown up in a Vol­tar invasion. With the planet in this state, they'd wipe out every living thing on it, rebuild an ecology and colo­nize. That "every living thing" included me.

  How could I handle this? Ah. "Torpedo Fiaccola wasn't very lucky," I said.

  It was his turn to stiffen—and Wall Street lawyers are pretty expert at hiding their feelings—what feelings they have, that is, if any.

  "Jesus!" he said. He was looking at me in sort of shock. Then curiosity got the better of him. "Did the (bleepard) talk to you?"

  "No," I said. "Wister sent him to the North Pole. Probably all he can talk now is polar bear." It was time to take his mind off me. "It was Wister that collected the hundred G's, not Fiaccola."

  "JESUS!" said Bury.

  "Yes," I said, pleasantly. "Wister is using your hit money to finance this cheap fuel invention."

  "Oh, my God!"

  "I know," I said, "that you are thinking that if that got back to Mr. Rockecenter, he would do something awfully nasty."

  Bury was staring at me in horror. I might as well drive it home.

  "But, there is something you can tell me," I said. "Why is Mr. Rockecenter so dead set against having a son?"

  His face looked like a white prune.

  Finally he said, "He's impotent. Just a voyeur. He's been unable to perform for years."

  "Oh, come, come, Mr. Bury," I said. "Let's not squirm around. I stood up for you in his office when I could have let you have it to the hilt. Now admit that that shows you can trust me. There's more to this than that."