“All right, Mr. Bahr. But I warn you—”
One of Bahr’s aides stopped them in the corridor. “There’s a Mr. Whiting from DEPCO here to see you, Chief.”
Bahr scowled. “Too busy,” he said.
“He has an AA priority. And he says it’s about this alien business.”
“What office of DEPCO?” Bahr said, stopping suddenly.
“Foreign affairs. It’s about those broadcasts.”
Bahr relaxed. It was not Adams’ office. He was not eager to talk to anybody in DEPCO right now, but an AA priority was hard to sidestep. “Ask him to wait. I’ll be up as soon as I can.”
He turned into a small white room. The polygraph operator was ready, and a sterile tray rested on the desk. “All right,” Bahr said to the doctor. “Bring Cullen in.”
Two DIA men led Cullen into the room, a grey-haired man of about sixty with a wrinkled, haggard look, stooped and squinting as if the glaring white walls hurt his eyes. He was leaning heavily on his two escorts, obviously on the verge of nervous collapse. His eyes had the raw, unnatural brightness of amphetamine-induced wakefulness.
Bahr motioned him to the PG seat, held out his wallet with ID card showing. “I’m Julian Bahr, Dr. Cullen. Director DIA. We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Please,” Cullen said dully. “Let me sleep. I’ve been questioned for days, I can’t think any more.”
“We’ll be as brief as possible,” Bahr pressed him. He nodded, and the technicians strapped one of the Gronklin polygraph receptors around Cullen’s chest.
The old man shook his head feebly. “Let me alone! I can’t answer any more questions.”
“Who’s been asking you questions?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Somebody. My mind is a blank.”
Bahr’s jaw settled grimly. “Your name is James Cullen?”
Cullen did not answer.
“Dr. Cullen, I have some idea of what you’ve been through. If what we think is right, more than forty of your colleagues are going through the same thing right now. Don’t you want to help stop that?”
The old man shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know anything. I’m tired. I don’t remember what happened.”
“We’ll help you remember.”
“Does my family know I’m safe?”
Bahr’s fist clenched at the digression. “They’ll be told. Now just answer yes or no to my questions.” He eased back in his chair and rolled the polygraph paper ahead. “You are a professor of Vanner-Elling principles at the University of Michigan?”
Again Cullen did not answer. Bahr smashed his hand down on the desk, noticing with satisfaction the sudden change of blood pressure at the noise. “I think you’re tired,” he said solicitously. “I think you’d better have a little stimulation.”
“Please . . . .”
“Just a little adrenalin and amphetamine. You’ll feel like a new man.” The technician clamped Cullen’s arm down, deliberately missing the vein twice. In a minute Cullen’s heart was thumping desperately against the chest constrictor, his eyes blinking rapidly. “Have another dose ready in case he begins to doze off,” Bahr said.
Cullen was really quite co-operative after that, and his memory became remarkably clear, at least in places. There were aggravating holes in his story, but the pattern was clear enough.
He had been abducted from his home in Ann Arbor sometime Sunday night. He could not remember how, nor what his captors had looked like. He did recall, vaguely, a long ride somewhere in some sort of vehicle, a strange room, and blindingly bright lights.
And the questions . . . .
“Who was questioning you?”
“I couldn’t see. Just a voice. An odd voice.”
“A human voice?”
“No. Definitely not . . . not what I heard.” The old man hesitated. “It didn’t make sense, but I was sure it was a tik-talker.”
Bahr’s eyebrows went up, and he glanced excitedly at the technician. The electronic tik-talker, which converted punched tape patterns into speech sounds, had first been developed for long-distance speech communication, particularly useful when scrambled signals were necessary. Scrambled voice, bouncing off a fluctuating ionosphere, was likely to emerge from the descrambler as a series of moans, pops and whistles. The tik-talker reduced speech to a burst of seven pulse characters, reassembling and unscrambling them at the receiving end. It was quite reliable, but the speech itself always had the tonal curiosities of electronically sliced language, and was easily identified by anyone who had ever heard it before.
“You’ve heard a tik-talker before?” Bahr asked.
“We’ve used them at the Center. For distant communications and translation purposes.”
“And what were the questions like?”
Here Cullen was very clear. He had been asked hundreds of questions about his work at Michigan, especially with regard to the Vanner-Elling equations and their current application to controlling the psychological and economic stability of the country since the economic collapse of the crash in 1995. He had been asked about the poll-taking functions, the work of the machines in outlining production schedules and anticipating psychological soft-spots in various segments of society.
He had refused to answer questions on one very highly classified project, and was given repeated low-voltage electro-shocks until he passed out. He could not remember being reawakened. His next recollection was wandering in confusion through the downtown Los Angeles streets until the police picked him up for vagrancy.
He also refused to tell Bahr what the project was, or anything about it, even though Bahr threatened him with more amphetamine. Cullen knew about security, and nothing short of a BRINT unrestricted examination would have gotten topsec information out of him. Bahr made a note on the spot to give Cullen a type 4 background check as soon as things quieted down; Bahr did not like people to refuse him anything.
The following six men, far more co-operative, had also been picked up, as far as they knew, from their homes on Sunday night by unidentifiable captors. There were two sociologists, a biologist, two linguists, and one of the few physicists in the country still working on physics. They had all been questioned intensively about their respective fields, never seeing their questioners and all confirming the curious sing-song of a tik-talker intermediary. One of them had been indiscreet enough, after two hours of electroshock, to divulge certain information about a topsec project he was connected with for DEPCO. It showed on the PG, of course, and Bahr made a note to frighten as much information out of the man as he could about DEPCO research plans before turning him over to DEPCO for prosecution.
This procedure was not ultimately carried out, due to the subject’s suicide sometime after the interview, which annoyed Bahr considerably. Bahr did not as a rule allow people to change his plans for him.
But the pattern was unmistakably clear, when all the data had been gathered. All seven men had been abducted by someone, taken somewhere, and systematically drained of information, then dumped in widely distributed areas in a state of confusion and extreme nervous exhaustion.
Bahr slammed the folders shut and went down to the room where the repatriates had been herded after their interrogation. Dr. Petri was hovering there, anxiously awaiting permission to administer sedation. Bahr shrugged off his protests, and nodded to the two DIA men standing guard at the door. One of them was a tall, heavy man with a crew cut and a hard, convict’s face; he returned the nod briefly, and straightened his shoulders automatically when Bahr came into the room.
The repatriates looked up apathetically as Bahr put a heavy foot up on a chair and faced them. “All right, we’re through questioning you for now,” Bahr said. “When Dr. Petri is satisfied that you’re in good medical shape, you’ll be released.” He watched the sagging heads, heard the tiny sigh of relief around the room. “However, you will be kept under full security surveillance.”
It was the equivalent of house arrest. The sagging heads jer
ked up again in protest.
“But you’ve already questioned us,” Cullen said feebly.
“Obviously you must realize that under the circumstances we can’t assume that anything you’ve told us is true,” Bahr said.
“But surely the polygraph records . . . .”
“May mean nothing at all. I realize that we’ve never found Occidentals who could beat our polygraph system, under suitable drug treatment. Unfortunately, the results are inconclusive with Orientals, who have a different notion of truth, and particularly with yogis, who can control their sympathetic system.”
Cullen was sitting up now, his face red with anger. “Mr. Bahr, we have certain legal rights.”
“As of now, Dr. Cullen, you have no legal rights,” Bahr said sharply. “Until proven otherwise, we are forced to assume that your abductors were alien creatures who are engaged in the first steps in an invasion. You men have been in contact with those aliens . . . the only ones who have lieen in contact with them. From the manner in which you were abducted, it seems obvious that the aliens are able to penetrate our cities without detection, either in disguise as humans, or by using and controlling humans. All right, you add it up. If your abductors have techniques of mind control I hat we don’t know about, you men may be dangerous pawns. We can’t take the risk that you’re not.”
He paused for it to sink in. “Now, if you have that straight, we’ll get on. You will be released in the custody of Mr. Yost.” He indicated the hard-faced man with the crew-cut. “You will be responsible to Mr. Yost for everything you do or say. You will answer no questions and make no statements. If I find a single quote, admission, or good guess in any of the TV-casts, Mr. Yost will be in charge of improving your understanding of security.”
Yost led them away to the recovery room. Bahr had seen the spark of grudging admiration in Yost’s eyes, and he smiled in satisfaction. Yost was a former 801st lieutenant who had been in a Texas penitentiary for rape, assault, and a dozen other crimes of violence before he had volunteered. In Texas he had been a prison bully; in the 801st he found his calling, and had toughened his guerrilla platoon, and subsequently his DIA field unit, into a sharp, violently dangerous force. Yost believed in only one thing—power—and to him Bahr was power. He was afraid of Bahr, and hated him, but he was willing to obey him to the point of death. Bahr knew this, and depended on it. He recognized the advantages of a subordinate whom everybody feared and hated, who would do his dirty work for him.
And he was quite sure that by the time the repatriates were released, they would have transferred their hate and fear permanently from him to Yost.
He pushed back his chair and went upstairs to where the committee from DEPCO was waiting.
The Department of Control, the sprawling, multi-faceted, interlocking bureau which held the ultimate, final and definitive executive power of the Vanner-Elling Stability Government in its hands, was a love organization.
It had taken Julian Bahr several years and hundreds of contacts with DEPCO men at all levels of importance, from top-level executive sessions with the Joint Chiefs right down to the most casual contacts at cocktail parties, to realize the fundamental truth of that fact and, realizing it, to fully comprehend its implications. Libby Allison had denied it vigorously, and just as vigorously (if unconsciously) proved it in armed battles and bed-talk with Julian. He had heard it from the lips of high DEPCO officials who had no idea what they were admitting, and he had heard it from other DEPCO men who recognized it for what it was and still admitted it.
DEPCO was a love organization. Everything they did had love overtones. Inevitably, it clouded their judgment. Equally inevitably, it entrenched them with incredible firmness in the position of power they had held since Mark Vanner had set up his equation-control on a government-wide basis after the crash. It was exceedingly difficult to attack love as an institution and get very far with the attack.
To Julian Bahr the whole concept was difficult to comprehend, and utterly impossible to understand. Bahr instinctively preferred hate and fear to love, but now he knew that he had to have wholehearted, unquestioning co-operation from DEPCO. Therefore, he had to love them. While his elevator rose the six stories to the conference room where the DEPCO committee had been waiting for him, Bahr tried valiantly to think of a single reason to love the organization which was doing everything within its power to wreck his life.
He couldn’t find a reason.
Love was necessary at times, of course, sometimes even pleasant, refreshing, comforting. Sometimes he thought he really did love Libby, and suffered violent pangs of guilt at the way he always seemed impelled to fight her, to try to dominate her. He wished he didn’t have to depend on her faking his Stability Rating, because if she had just been a good-looking girl maybe he could talk to her frankly the way he once had talked to certain prostitutes before the custom of installing tape recorders in hotel rooms and houses.
But Libby was still a therapist who worked for DEPCO, and there were some things you couldn’t tell your analyst oven when she was sleeping with you.
He found the DEPCO committee waiting patiently, still smiling in a fatherly fashion after being kept waiting four hours on an AA conference priority, still greeting him warmly, still accepting him, still loving him. The leader of the group was a tall, blond-haired man with pale blue eyes, trying to hide the lines of worry on his forehead as Bahr entered the room.
Bahr shook his hand and smiled through his teeth, and then he saw Paul MacKenzie sitting at the side of the room, unconcernedly cleaning his fingernails, hardly looking up when Bahr sat down but taking everything in, spying. Bahr felt his shoulders and neck tighten.
“All right,” Bahr said. “Sorry to hold you up, but I had some important work in progress. Now let’s have it. What do you want?”
The leader of the delegation cleared his throat. “I’m Whiting, Mr. Bahr. We’re really sorry to cut into your time like this; naturally we realize that you’re extremely busy, but to be perfectly frank, Mr. Bahr, we’re alarmed.”
Bahr said a silent prayer for control, and smiled at Whiting. “About what?”
The DEPCO man seemed embarrassed. “About the way the DIA is handling the investigation of these . . .” He hesitated, obviously striving to avoid saying the word. “. . . These incidents that have been occurring.”
“You mean the alien ships that have been landing?” Bahr said.
Whiting winced. “I don’t think you realize the magnitude of what’s happening here, Mr. Bahr. We have just received a machine run of certain samplings taken in Continental United States and other parts of Federation America, plus two field units from Europe. Our prognostic curve . . .” He opened a portfolio and laid a graph in front of Bahr. The DEPCO man’s hands were trembling. “Mr. Bahr, these curves indicate that there is a very fast-growing panic spreading in the country, centered in rumors of alien landings. This morning there was a closely-averted riot in Los Angeles, and another in St. Louis. Our sources indicate that foreign news-listening is up by a factor of ten in the past week.” The DEPCO man spread his hands helplessly. “Naturally, our social-control techniques were devised to handle panic-emergencies, but nothing of this magnitude has ever happened before, not even during the late crash years. If this were to explode into a full-scale panic . . . .”
Bahr scowled. “Why are you coming to me, Mr. Whiting?”
“Because of the leaks, Mr. Bahr, the security leaks. The foreign news nets are getting information and the people are listening to them. Your cover stories from BURINF are simply not selling. And the foreign network implication that you are trying desperately to cover up is just fanning the flame.”
Bahr shrugged impatiently. “We had one really bad break,” he admitted. “That was the ’copter chatter intercepted by the Canadians.” He glared at MacKenzie. “There haven’t been any leaks since then, and there won’t be.”
Whiting frowned. “But, Mr. Bahr, six hours ago Radio Budapest was broadcasting a detailed descrip
tion of an alien landing in northern British Columbia.”
Bahr slammed his fist on the desk and jerked to his feet, sending the chair crashing against the wall. “What did you say?”
“He said the news is out,” MacKenzie said from the side of die room. “It’s all over the country.”
Bahr swore viciously. “Then there’s a leak somewhere between DIA and BRINT. We’ve kept it so tight that . . .” He broke off, turned to an aide. “Tell them to get ready for a complete news blackout on all frequencies. Tell them to get those foreign nets jammed. Every news story that goes out will have to clear with me personally.”
Whiting of DEPCO sat staring, his face going white. “Mr. Bahr, you can’t do that! A news blackout now would be the last straw!”
Bahr swung on him. “You idiot, don’t you recognize a war when you’re staring one in the face? That’s what we have on our hands—war, deliberate psychological war! Whatever this alien is, we know practically nothing about him, and he knows everything about us. We can’t even guess what his next move might be. He’s landed here, he may have been monitoring our TV-casts and newscasts for years. He’s interrogated our key personnel. Everything he has done has been perfectly geared to touch off a generalized fear reaction.”
“But the people . . . .”
“The horse is already stolen, why try to lock the barn door?” Bahr snapped. “If the only thing the people will believe is the truth, then that’s what we’ll give them. The truth.”
“We can’t give them the truth,” Whiting said in the stifling silence that followed.
“Why can’t we?”
“Because the one thing our society simply cannot face is an alien invasion,” Whiting said. “It will tear our society out by the roots.”
“Why?” Bahr said harshly.
“Because we have absolutely no defense against an alien invasion . . . none whatever . . . and the people know it.”
“Nonsense. We have weapons, we have technology,” Bahr said.
“They won’t do us any good, against an—alien invader,” Whiting said. “Not in the face of fear. We don’t know exactly where that fear is rooted, basically—probably in the pre-crash drive to space—but the fear is just as strong now as it ever was.”
The Invaders Are Comming! Page 10