Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer

by The invaders are Coming

  Adams of course was not taken in, and Libby was instantly angry with herself for trying to fake her way through the opening. Adams was laying for her. He had made up his mind already what he was going to say and think and listen to; any attempt to ignore the fact would simply debase her a little more. She knew her only hope now was to beat him to the punch and keep feeding him answers before he could get the questions out. And Julian was not there. Where in hell was he?

  "I guess you're waiting for Mr. Bahr," she said. Like a chimpanzee, she thought, just like a chimpanzee, sitting a-round wisely with his thin pale face framed by the thinning pale blond hair that he never seemed to cut. There were two technicians like chimpanzees, too, practically picking fleas off themselves in an effort to look like Adams.

  "Where is Bahr?" Adams asked.

  "He had an emergency investigation last night," she said. "He may be a little late getting here." "If he gets here at all," Adams said. "He would have notified me if he couldn't make it." I see. Silence.

  There was no clue as to whether she was supposed to sit down, or break down, or what, so she carried out the ritual of hanging up her coat, straightening her hair, deliberately showing off her figure a little because she thought it would make Adams feel uncomfortable.

  "I'd like to see your case history on Bahr," Adams said.

  "It's not quite up to date. I have some notes in my apartment."

  "Obviously," Adams said.

  "His latest Brontok," Libby snapped, flushing with anger at his insinuation, which was not actually an insinuation but a statement of fact. Of course Adams would know.

  "We can probably manage without anything from your apartment," Adams said acidly. "I want to see what you have here."

  "It's up to date as of two weeks ago," she explained, sliding her safe drawer open. "Mr. Bahr has been too rushed at work for scheduled analysis." Even before she got the drawer all the way open, Libby sensed that something was wrong. Something in the drawer had been changed. Someone had been tampering with her files. She hesitated.

  "Would you mind?" Adams said, goading her. She lifted out Bahr's file, trying to flip through briefly to see what might have been changed, or taken out, but Adams was on his feet beside her, lifting the folder out of her hands.

  She started to say something, and then let it pass, hoping that maybe if she played it dumb he wouldn't realize that she had spotted the tampering.

  Adams retired to the chair, leafing through the folder, pretending to study it. Obviously he was stalling. He knew what he wanted to find; he was just hoping to draw some comment from her by the long delay. She did not oblige him.

  Finally he looked up. "Are you familiar with the function of a DEPCO therapist?"

  "Certainly I am."

  "How would you define it?"

  "Helping people."

  Adams gave an impatient shrug. "All right, flood relief helps people, too. Is that what you mean?"

  "Helping them to adjust their emotions and thinking processes to living in the world," Libby countered. "Helping them gain insight into—"

  "Miss Allison, you've recommended Julian Bahr for six grade changes in the last four years. Do you call this adjustment? When you let a highly questionable individual accrue more responsibility and power with every up-grade? When you put more and more strain on a sick personality?"

  "He's my case. I think the diagnosis is my responsibility. And the treatment."

  "As long as you remain his therapist, yes, but when you become his agent—"

  "I'm still his therapist," she said.

  He raised his eyebrows. "Really? I thought this might have changed since his appointment as director of DIA." "It's only a temporary appointment."

  "Temporary. Of course. And he's still under treatment? Coming along nicely, too . . . am I right?"

  It took strength to control herself. "You have the case history there."

  Adams nodded sourly, and glanced back over the report. "No analysis, I see, after four years. Didn't you think he needed analysis?"

  "I wasn't able to convince the patient until recently." Adams dropped the folder on the desk with a thud, and her voice trailed off.

  It all sounded so weak. Even knowing in advance what Adams was going to ask didn't improve the story. She had fouled the whole job completely. She had been deluding herself, but she could see it now, coldly, unhappily. She had been used. Even the most impartial witness, reading that case history, could have seen that. She had twisted, bent, and sidestepped every principle, regulation, safeguard and normal channel in DEPCO to do Bahr's bidding.

  Therapist. She had a sour, nauseous feeling, and there was a dull, cramping pain in her thorax. For the first time she saw, in stark, uncolored light exactly what she had been doing. Somewhere, long ago, there must have been a reason, a sane, rational reason, but what was it?

  Twelve years of training, six years of hard-earned experience, and she had thrown it all out, a life's work, to play lover to a sick, ruthless brute.

  A Phi Beta Kappa concubine. . . .

  The phone was ringing. Adams picked it up. "It's Bahr. For you. See that he gets here." Libby took the phone, surprised to find her hands sweaty. She flicked on the local muffler so Adams could not hear.

  "Julian? Yes, I know you're late. All night? You knew you had this interview today." Damn him, damn him! "I meant what I said, Julian, if you don't come over for the prelim today, Adams will have an injunction against you tomorrow morning. This is 100 percent under DEPCO jurisdiction. Yes, you're damned right I'm looking after my own neck; if I lose my rating . . . That's what I said—by tomorrow morning. All right, I'll tell him, and Julian . . ."

  The phone went dead. She hung up, and she knew her face was dead white and that she was trembling all over when she turned back to Adams.

  "He'll be right over," she said.

  Back in the New York office after the night's itinerary to Red Bank and Trivettown, Julian Bahr had found a multitude of details to catch up on, progress reports to read, orders to give, field units to check out. He almost but not quite forgot the interview with Adams scheduled for nine. It was just that he could not force himself to assign it any priority until it crammed itself down his throat and demanded priority. There were so many other things, he thought, that demanded his attention far more.

  The office was running with its usual furor of activity and efficiency, reports neatly stacked on his desk, calls listed by importance. Certainly there was no suggestion of a conspiracy against him here, only the hollow spot by his side left by Carmine, and already he had determined, grimly, that there would never again, ever, be a hole like that.

  There was a huge piece missing in the puzzle, too, which Bahr could not understand at all. Alexander was still missing; there was no filed report on him. Surely if Carmine had picked him up he would have been held someplace at Red Bank, or at least somewhere in the East, but there was no sign of him.

  He scanned the reports. No further evidence of alien activity for four days, almost five. "Which seems to us fairly ominous," one of the staff men ventured, and Bahr nodded vehement agreement, slamming his fist angrily into his palm. It was like watching a huge and expertly manufactured time bomb which suddenly and inexplicably had ceased ticking.

  But the reaction to the Canadian landing and his speech-there had been plenty of that, and it was still growing, still building furiously. Seventeen reported landings across Federation America, every one tracked down and found to be a false alarm. A new set of directives emerging from the computers in the Caverns, almost hourly, to direct mass-control teams which had been mobilized to counteract the spreading panic, and still the panic spread, until the control teams were unable even to assign priority to segments of their own program. Five square miles of south Los Angeles going up in flames after a riot attack against an alleged alien stronghold in a tinderbox residential district.

  And frightened, helpless, desperate eyes turning, continually turning to Washington and New York to do som
ething, do something . . . anything.

  Carl Englehardt's report was there, a thick bundle of papers that would take four hours of careful perusal, but a quick scan was enough to see that Englehardt had known what he was talking about. He knew he had to see Cad quickly, at least talk to Carl, and then get the Joint Chiefs together again, though with the DEPCO thing hanging over his head . . . Damn DEPCO! It was already almost 10:00. He would have to move with great caution, but just as urgently he knew he would have to move fast, faster than DEPCO would ever allow him to move.

  He told his girl to get Libby at her office, and sent out a tracer to locate Englehardt, possibly for an appointment at lunch. Thank God there was one man left who did not quibble and whine and make excuses—one man he could trust to move and to get things done. . . .

  After the call to Libby he cursed, canceled two appointments and called his car. Down on the street he was stepping forward to the open door of the big Hydro when a plush black Volta spun into the curb. "Julian! Julian Bahr!"

  Providentially, it was Englehardt. "Let me drive you somewhere, Julian. You've seen my report?"

  Bahr nodded, but hesitated as the two men walking with him caught up.

  "You won't need them," Englehardt said smiling.

  "No, I guess not. Okay, boys, see you at the DEPCO building." He got into the Volta. "They'll follow us like wolves," he said as the DIA men got into the official car and moved out behind the Volta. Bahr looked at Englehardt. The man looked more tired, yet miraculously younger than three days before.

  "Why all the precautions?" he asked Bahr. "Is that customary?"

  "I was assassinated last night," Bahr said. "You hardly look it. You got the assassin, I presume." "No, no leads at all yet." He didn't care to advertise rot in his own back yard. "But something will turn up shordy." "And the aliens?"

  "Nothing. A couple more missing men are back, all with the same story. Things are just too damned quiet, I don't like it."

  "You've got my report now, you know what I can do,"

  Englehardt said. "If something stalls now, it could be very costly. It could end everything, in fact."

  Bahr rubbed his forehead, beat his fist against his palm with a loud flat sound. "I'm doing all I can to push it through."

  "Is that enough?" Englehardt asked. "You know 111 back you all the way—money, technicians, influence—but it's got to move, or we're lost."

  "I'm having trouble with DEPCO," Bahr said. "They want to pull me off the job until they're satisfied that I'm dull, normal and inert. By DEPCO I mean Adams."

  "You never impressed me as the sort that Adams would be likely to stop," Englehardt said.

  Bahr's jaw clenched savagely and his fist smashed against his palm. "Adams won't stop me," he said. "Not if I have to break his back with my bare hands. As long as I still have friends I can count on."

  Englehardt laughed. "I could tell you something."

  "What?"

  "A man as ambitious as you are really has no friends, only victims. If I were you I wouldn't count on anybody helping me for one minute after I lost complete control. In fact, if I were you, I might worry about my life, if I had no more DIA to protect it."

  It was Bahr's turn to laugh. "Killing is my game," he said, "and I always win."

  "Well, I think this is where you're going," Englehardt said as the Volta slowed in front of the DEPCO building. "I will see you this afternoon, Julian?"

  "You'll see me," Bahr said, and walked into the building.

  Bahr was smiling when he came into the office. He smiled at Libby, he smiled at Adams, he smiled at the technicians, and Libby thought he was drunk.

  "Sorry I'm late," he said. "Shall we get started?"

  Adams rose slowly. "This is a routine examination, Mr. Bahr. You realize that. There's nothing personal in it, but when an individual moves into a job as important as yours, there are just a few precautions that have to be taken for the public good."

  "Fine, that's all clear," Bahr said amicably.

  "All we want to do is ask you a few questions, and ask you to give us frank honest answers. Now."

  "If you don't mind, I'll call my office and give them this extension," Bahr said, "in case I have to be reached."

  "This is an unlisted number," Adams said. "We can't have any interruptions during the test." But Bahr was already at the phone, dialing quickly, still smiling, nodding. He gave the extension number and hung up.

  "I left orders not to be interrupted until I called back," he said. "So we won't have to worry about that."

  "All right." Adams frowned. "These questions are just to help us make a few simple evaluations on your personality, Mr. Bahr. I think it would be best to let the machine warm up, and let you get adjusted to it. Are you familiar with the polygraph?"

  "Who isn't?" Bahr sat sprawled in the surro-leather chair, let Adams fasten the apparatus with his thin bony fingers, although he would rather have had Libby do it. And then he waited through the usual pointless recounting of what they were going to do, until they thought he was ripe. He watched Libby maneuver into a position where she could watch the polygraph and still see him to cue in his suggested reactions. Bahr could feel his palms begin to sweat a little. Why didn't she throw out the first cue? Christ! She hadn't already sold him down the river?

  She rubbed her right ear, which was the first trigger, and Bahr could feel the automatic cue-word come into his mind as Adams began the questioning.

  It was simple at first, so ridiculously simple that he wondered why he had feared it so long, but then the questions, the questions, the questions began to blur and he grew tired, felt the weariness creeping up, and the boredom. It was the boredom that worried him. He'd made three complete runs so far, and obviously Adams wasn't getting what he wanted because he was already talking about still another repeat, and

  Libby, in her carefully inhibited way, was looking too pleased for things to be going too badly, even though Adams was scratching far afield of the normal questions looking for reactions to snap onto.

  Then the hooker came.

  "I've done my best," Adams said, shaking his head, "and I guess there just isn't any sense to making another run after three confirmations." He began to loosen the pressure belts, and Bahr gradually tensed, knowing something was coming.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Bahr," Adams said sadly. "I really am, and I'd do anything I could to keep from having to do this. Unfortunately, it's just one of those things that has to be looked out for in a job like yours. Otherwise, we'd wind up with people who are dangerously unstable, dangerous to us, and dangerous to themselves." He smiled unhappily. "Of course sometimes it's just a matter of situation, nothing really serious wrong with the individual's personality, but under emergency situations some people just naturally shift into an authoritarian mold. Sometimes pressure forces people into adopting a personality structure that is . . . well . . . dangerous to the society and themselves, and in fact they should be grateful, we should all be grateful that we can detect this sort of thing in time to . . ."

  "Hold it," Bahr said, jerking out of the seat and grabbing Adams by the shoulder, his big fingers digging into the man's frail body. "You're not railroading me," he roared. "You and your damned hutch of pink-eyed little rabbits. You couldn't, not even one lousy sonofabitch of you in all of DEPCO, do the job I'm doing, or even get into a job like it; you're not going to . . ."

  "Julian!" The stark urgency in her voice stopped him for an instant, and Libby tried to say something to Adams, but Bahr was angry now. The post-trance suggestions were overridden by this new threat, and his whole body seemed to swell with rage. He shoved Libby roughly aside and seized Adams with both hands, lifting him off the floor. "You queer! You lousy, pasty-faced queer, I'll flatten your face out on your own polygraph if you try to . . ."

  "Julian, stop it!" Libby's voice hit him again, and then something, something she said, hit'"him like a pail of ice-water.

  He dropped Adams, puzzled at the sudden change, unable to recall w
hat she had said, just a single word, that left his spine crawling with horror. He looked at her. She was shaking her head slowly, motioning him to bend over so she could whisper in his ear.

  "He did that deliberately to trigger you. Your PG was negative all three times; he had nothing on you until you grabbed him and started to open your moudi. Oh, Julian, why did you have to lose your temper?"

  Bahr stood silent, shaken by this, cursing himself a good deal more profanely than Libby had for not immediately realizing what was happening. He had promised to take his cues from her, but the minute there was a real threat—he just couldn't depend on anybody else.

  And now Adams had what he wanted. Violence. Ego identification with power and job. Animalization of peers. All the things Libby had warned him about, all spilled out in one stupid burst of rage.

  It wasn't much, not enough in itself to get him permanently downgraded or anything like that, but it was the chink in the wall, the one justification Adams needed to have him pulled off the job and taken under observation. Libby and post-trance suggestion couldn't help him much then, and once he was off the wall there would be no climbing back up. Not this time.

  This time there would be recoop and a labor battalion, sedation, his daily ration to supplement a fuzzy prefrontal, and all the other permanent, irreversible precautions to make him safe, stable, and happy.

  Adams got up slowly, shaken, white-faced, but glowing with triumph. "All right," he said in that saccharine-sweet voice of his. "All right. I think, Mr. Bahr, that that's all we need from you today. . . ."

  The phone rang, loud and insistent. Libby took the receiver. "For you, Julian. Your office. They say crash priority."

  "What do they want?"

  "They'll only talk to you personally." Then, into the phone, "Yes, yes, he's right here. I'll put him on."

  Bahr took the phone. He listened for a moment, and his breathing seemed to stop. "You're certain of that?" he said harshly. "The moon? All right, get the report, and every possible observer by direct wire to my office. Contact Engle-hardt and the Joint Chiefs for conference in my office in sixty minutes. Broadcast a Condition B on all channels. Then contact the Chief Executive and tell him to have a joint session assembled in Washington in . . ."—he glanced at his watch—"two hours."