Power, The

by Robinson, Frank M.

  Outside, the silent city and the bright-eyed automobile bugs gliding quietly down the Drive.

  “Do you think, William, that the cows would have an opportunity to set up a union?”

  Tanner didn’t answer.

  “It’s getting late,” Grossman said. “Maybe we should go home.”

  “Yours?”

  “You have no place else to stay, have you?”

  “You don’t think Anna will object?”

  “Anna will do as I say, William.”

  “You know this is a dangerous thing for you to do, don’t you, Karl?”

  “So? I do not care to stand by and watch this thing happen.”

  “Is your house being watched?”

  “I do not think so—and I have tried to make very sure.”

  Tanner felt like laughing. How sure was sure? He turned off on a side street and concentrated on watching the street signs so he wouldn’t miss Grossman’s house. But in the back of his mind there was a slight, nagging doubt. He had talked a lot to Karl because he considered Karl safe. But no matter what test he ever devised for Karl and the others, he could never really be certain that Karl was really …

  Karl.

  12

  IT was late Monday evening but not everybody had gone to bed. The weather was hot and sticky and he could feel the electric uneasiness that preceded a thunderstorm. There was the low jumble of voices from people rocking on their front porches and the whispers of those sprawled out on the grass, staring at the stars and praying for cool air.

  He parked in front of Grossman’s home. The physicist opened the door and led the way to the large, fragrant kitchen.

  “Anna and the boys must be in bed, so we will be quiet. But maybe a glass of beer and a sandwich would go good, eh?”

  He nodded and Grossman opened the refrigerator door and set dishes out on the table. “We have salami and wurst and some good American cheese—try it on the pumpernickle. Cold beef and mustard and … William, have you ever tried this creamcheese cake?”

  “With beer?”

  “It is not so bad as you think.” Still looking in the box, Grossman tried to set the plate on the table. He didn’t quite make it and the sound of china shattering on the linoleum was loud and ugly. He held up his hands. “Anna will wake up now but she does not mind a snack at night.” He winked. “I do not think she will be too angry.”

  Tanner started to butter a slice of bread. “I’ll make up a sandwich for her—pour a little oil on the troubled waters.”

  A light clicked on in a room down the hall and there was the sound of slippers padding heavily on the worn carpeting. Anna Grossman waddled into the patch of light in the kitchen doorway, her heavy features still thick with sleep.

  Grossman closed the icebox door and turned towards her. “I have brought home Professor Tanner, Anna. He will be staying with us for the night.” He smiled and nudged a chair with his foot. “We were thinking we would have a little something before turning in and …”

  His smile faded. The heavy, stolid expression on Anna’s face hadn’t changed. There was no welcoming smile, no angry frown, no look of recognition written there at all.

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  Grossman looked a little grim. “I did not mean to waken you, Anna, but in any case we do not argue in front of guests.”

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Anna! As your husband, I command …”

  “My husband died five years ago!”

  Tanner stepped forward. “Don’t you remember me, Mrs. Grossman?”

  Her eyes flicked at him coldly. “I have never seen either one of you before in my life. Now get out of here before I call the police!”

  Grossman was breathing heavily. “Rudolph! Frederick!” There was an immediate scurrying down the hall and two sturdy boys about twelve years old popped into the kitchen. “Your mother is sick—you will take her to her room.”

  They edged back towards their mother, hostility etched deep in their faces. They didn’t recognize Grossman either, Tanner thought. Hart must have found out that the physicist was doing some investigating. And now Karl was going to pay the price.

  Grossman started to crumble. “Anna, I—I do not understand. I am your husband! I …” The stern expression on her face didn’t change and he turned to the boys. “You know your own father, boys … .”

  “Pop died a long time ago,” one of the boys said coldly. “He got killed in a car accident.”

  Anna Grossman threw open the kitchen door. “Frederick, go next door and get help! Rudolph, call the police!”

  The neighbors wouldn’t remember either, Tanner thought. It wasn’t going to do any good to stay and try and bluff it out, the neighbors would hold them until the police arrived and then the fat would really be in the fire. He’d be racked on a murder charge and they’d get Karl on a charge of breaking and entering.

  “Come on, Karl,” he said gently. “Let’s go.”

  The big man slumped in a chair. “My family—I have lost my family!”

  Tanner grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him savagely. “They’re not going to remember you, Karl, no matter what! Hart’s made you pay and if you stay here you’ll be playing right into his hands!” He turned and started running towards the front door. Whether Grossman followed him or not was up to the physicist. But he could hear loud voices next door and he knew that this was his last chance to leave.

  There were footsteps behind him and when he got into the car, Grossman slid in beside him. The lights were on in the houses on either side of Grossman’s home and two men had started running towards the car. He gunned the motor and they roared away.

  He drove for a few minutes and then glanced casually at the quiet shadow sitting next to him.

  Before, Grossman had always impressed him as being a big man, fat but with a thick layer of muscle beneath it. Now Grossman suddenly struck him as being small and pudgy and weak and curiously empty. Like a paper milk carton, firm and solid when it was full, and light and flimsy and easily crushed when the milk had been poured out.

  Adam Hart had won another round.

  Midnight, Monday, and the rain had started to pelt down, huge drops that mixed with the dust on the windshield and made oily smears that the wiper couldn’t get rid of. It had been an hour since Grossman had had anything to say and Tanner hadn’t prompted him. They had driven around the city and he had let the scientist talk when he wanted to and had kept his own mouth shut when he hadn’t wanted to.

  “William? You have not asked me why I am willing to help you.”

  “That seems rather obvious.”

  “It is not entirely because of Anna or the boys.”

  Tanner didn’t say anything. The only thing that would help would be to let Grossman talk it out.

  “Have you ever seen a water dowser, William?”

  “I once had an uncle who claimed he could dowse for water.”

  “That is something most people do not believe in. But I saw it done once, a long, long time ago, when I was a young man and had just come over to this country. I worked in Nevada for a year and there was a man in town who made a living that way. It worked. The willow twig actually moved and when they dug, they found water. And do you know what I thought, William?”

  “No, I don’t, Karl.”

  Grossman cranked the window down a little and let the wet wind blow through the car. “I thought of all the poor fools that did not have the talent to dowse and had to go out and make their mistakes and perhaps dig dry holes and do a lot of work before they found it.” He was silent for a moment. “I want to help you, William, primarily because I do not want to see the poor fools kicked out and the world turned over to the water dowsers.”

  They drove in silence for a few more miles, then Grossman said, “You have a plan?”

  “That’s right, Karl. I’ve got a plan. Our problem is one of survival. We’ve got to smoke Hart out, to threaten his survival. To place him in
a situation where his own reactions will be the tipoff, where he’ll have to show himself to get out. Like I did with you this afternoon. Only that time the results were unintentional.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to try and kill each member of the committee, Karl. When I do not succeed—that will be the tip-off.”

  “But that is murder!”

  “Not exactly. The situation is in two parts. My part is to try and kill the suspected party. I make my plans, there is no backing out, and I will not be able to stop halfway. If Hart read my mind, he would read only murder. I’ll set up the situation and then tell you what it is. It’s up to you to solve it, to stop it at the last minute. But you’ll never tell me the solution, I’ll never know it.”

  “And what is to stop Adam from reading your mind and knowing it is a false situation?”

  “Perhaps he could, but he couldn’t read the solution. It would still be up to him to get out of it, unless he had absolute faith in your ability to prevent it. And I doubt that an organism keyed to survival would have that faith.”

  “And what of my own mind?”

  “I’m gambling on the element of surprise. The chances are he would be far too busy concentrating on the threat at that precise moment to pay too much attention to you.”

  A little of Grossman’s strength had flowed back into him, a little of the milk had been poured back into the carton. He turned the idea over in his mind and Tanner could sense Grossman’s intensely logical brain examining it from every angle. “It is rather risky.”

  “I can’t deny that.”

  “And if you or I should slip in the case of an innocent person?”

  “Then we’re murderers.”

  He drove back into Chicago and the Near North Side, looking for a cheap hotel to spend the night. Before they turned in, Grossman said, “When you find out who Adam Hart is, William, what do you intend to do about it?”

  He was surprised at how readily his own answer came. “Kill him, of course. And if I don’t succeed, I’ll shout his identity from the roof tops. Some place, Karl, somebody will believe me. Maybe two or three, maybe more. The story will spread and I think that will be the beginning of the end of Mr. Adam Hart.”

  They went up to the room and he flicked off the lights and placed a chair to one side of the window. “You want the first shift, Karl? Four hours on, four hours off. I think you’ll have a warning if … anything … tries to reach you. Wake me up immediately.”

  Grossman took the Beretta and sat in the chair. “Who do we try first tomorrow?”

  The first guinea pig, the first one they would eliminate … . He picked one out of thin air. “Professor Scott. He could help us quite a bit on the rest, once he’s eliminated.”

  He got into bed and tried to push a thought into the back of his mind, the nagging thought that kept reminding him he could never quite be sure of Karl, or of anybody else. Just before he dozed off, Grossman stirred in his chair by the window and said:

  “You know, William, I do not think we will succeed. We are too much like dogs—plotting to capture the dog catcher.”

  13

  PROFESSOR Scott.

  A seventy-year-old eccentric who wakes at eight in the morning, when the sun strikes through the bedroom window and lances across the thin blankets he uses even in the summertime.

  He gets up and dresses slowly; his underwear drapes loosely on his bony hips. He’d be the last to admit it but morning is hard on him and he sits on the edge of the bed a minute to build up his strength. Then he walks into the bathroom and lathers the weathered angles of his face with a brush that smells of rot and has lost half its bristles. His razor is an old-fashioned straight-edge. The flashing metal shakes momentarily in his hand, then steadies when he brings it into contact with his face.

  He shaves and finishes dressing and toys with the simple breakfast the housekeeper has prepared—flaccid oatmeal and toast spread with marmalade. He spends an hour with the morning paper; his mind is still keen and it’s only occasionally he forgets a story five minutes after reading it. Then it’s slowly out the door for a short walk in the park, where he will relax on a bench and soak up the sunshine and speculate with humor on the shortcomings of the younger generation.

  A vigorous man growing old, sitting in the sun and watching the days flick by, thinking each morning is just a little chillier than the one before, that each walk to the park takes just a little more out of him.

  Or is it all an elaborate front designed to fool the peasants?

  Tanner stretched uneasily behind the wheel of the car.

  Did Scott actually bound out of bed with the reflexes of a thirty-year-old, run an electric razor around his jaw, take a needle-spray shower, and then settle down to a breakfast of sausage and fried eggs and steaming black coffee? Had the housekeeper been … indoctrinated … so she wouldn’t tell? When Professor Scott creaked down the front steps was it just Adam Hart mimicking the actions of an old man?

  It was possible. But then anything was possible.

  It was a scorching day, the sun a blazing plate in the clear blue sky. The kind of day when the firemen open the hydrants and the asphalt feels sticky and a lawn can turn from green to brown between sunrise and sunset. It was midafternoon and most people were down by the beach, or trying to sleep off the heat in sweat-soaked hammocks and porch swings.

  The curving walks in the park were almost empty. A little boy, his short pants soaking wet, was playing with the drinking fountain, holding his thumb over the spout and seeing how far the squirting water would go. A couple were on the tennis courts, the thunk of the ball against the racket breaking the puddling stillness of the afternoon.

  And there was an old man walking slowly past the empty benches, searching for one in the shade.

  Professor Scott.

  The old suit that was just a shade too big now, a straw hat, and a rolled-up copy of the paper under his arm. His back a little hunched with age, his walk a tired imitation of his once-jaunty stride.

  An act?

  Tanner turned the key in the ignition and started the car. Professor Scott wouldn’t find a shady bench on that side of the street; his favorite spot was in the full glare of the sun, the wooden seats and the metal armrests too hot to be comfortable. Sooner or later the old man would have to cross over.

  And when he did, the moment of decision would be upon him.

  The old man suddenly stopped and glanced towards a shady spot under the trees, a dozen yards away, on the same side of the street. Tanner held his breath. Scott had to cross the street; if he didn’t, it would be all off. The plan wouldn’t work later in the day, the park would be too crowded.

  Professor Scott obligingly continued straight ahead.

  Tanner felt a little sick and nervous. He eased the car away from the curb and let it glide slowly down the tarry street that paralleled the sidewalk. The essential element of surprise. Professor Scott didn’t know what was going to happen—and neither did Adam Hart.

  But he shouldn’t think about it. That would be dangerous.

  Action.

  Blankness.

  A few feet more and the sidewalk ended at an intersection. Beyond the junction there was only one walk and that was on the opposite side of the street.

  He leaned heavily on the accelerator and glanced quickly around. The empty park and the deserted benches, the little boy at the fountain and the tennis players hidden from view by a curve in the road.

  No witnesses.

  Professor Scott was stepping off the curb, preparing to cross the intersection at a diagonal.

  Sweat was making the palms of his hands slippery against the plastic steering wheel. The car was leaping down the street now, its engine roaring in the quiet afternoon.

  The old man had stopped and was looking up, startled.

  The perfect target:

  One slip and I’m a murderer, Tanner thought. But it’s too late now to stop. I couldn’t stop if I wanted. Grossman … But I mustn’t think … .

>   Professor Scott was turning to run, his face a mask of fear. He had dropped his paper and his straw hat had fallen off and was rolling into the gutter.

  Let’s see you change now, Professor! If you’re Hart then you’re off balance, there’s nothing you can do to stop this car. Let’s see you suddenly leap for the curb, let’s see you sprint down the street with a thirty-year-old’s muscles. And if you do then it’s going to be all over. You’ll have lost the game! But if you can’t run faster than a hobble, then please God let Grossman do his share … .

  And then it occurred to him that if Scott was really Scott, he could just as easily die of heart failure from fright or overexertion. Sudden panic clutched him by the throat.

  He was in the intersection now Professor Scott was past it but still in the middle of the street, his legs working frantically.

  Oh God …

  He was a split second from murder. Then a blue sedan shot out of the intersection and smashed into his trunk. There was the squeal of tires and the scream of tearing metal and then the impact threw the two cars together like the arms of a collapsing V His car jumped the curb and rocked to a rest.

  The sun and the heat and a moment of startled quiet. He frantically worked the door handle, then put his shoulder against the panel and forced it open. A huddled form lay in the street fifty yards away. They were off to a great start, he thought. They had wrecked two stolen cars and nearly killed a man.

  But the problem of who was Adam Hart had been decreased by a factor of one.

  Grossman got out of the blue sedan and hurried over. “William, is he …”

  “No, probably just fainted. Give me a hand here.”

  “All right, but I think we … Watch out!”

  The truck was speeding and Tanner got out of the way just in time. Then he realized it wasn’t after either him or Grossman, that somebody else had been the target for the day. It could have missed the fallen form of Professor Scott; it actually had to swerve out of its way to hit him.