Limbo

by Bernard Wolfe

  “Come in,” a voice called.

  Theo stepped to one side to let Martine go first. It was a very large room, heavily carpeted with a deep-tufted rug of maroon, at the far end was a long low semicircular desk. Behind the desk, fingers on his temples, sat Helder, sniffing.

  “Marty?” Helder made as if to get up, rose halfway, then sank back in his chair. His hands, on a bureaucratic parade of their own, some parodying desk maneuver, transferred a stack of documents from the left side of the table to the right, then shifted them back again. “You?”

  The man’s face was ashen pale and yet there was a suggestion of some mottled darkness in it, like much-trampled slush, like rocquefort. He sniffed.

  Martine went over to the desk, saluted with a mock flourish. “It’s me,” he said. “Hail the prodigal steamroller.”

  “It’s really you.”

  Helder’s hands went up in mute protest, palms pushing away from him, it looked as though he was holding some round fat mucky thing and couldn’t find a place to throw it. “Oh no,” he whispered, his hands emphatically echoing the words. “It couldn’t be.”

  “Brother Helder,” Martine said, “I want to congratulate you on your twice-two-equals-foresight. It was the intuition of a natural-born bureaucrat that led you to keep your hands on. All God’s bureaucrats got hands.”

  “Impossible,” Helder said.

  Martine pointed a pedantic finger at Theo. “Observe, Brother Tambo,” he said. “Get this picture—martyr returns to gang up on his annotator, text rebelling against the footnotes. First time it’s ever happened—when did a Bible, a Bhagavad-Gita, a Koran, a Wealth of Nations, a Das Kapital, a Mein Kampf ever rear up and lunge at its Number One disciple? The word turning on the wordy! It’s an occasion, history’s being made before your eyes! Leave us all up-ass and cakewalk for joy and jubilee!”

  “Marty, Marty,” Helder said, sniffing heavily. “This is no time for jokes. I know you, you pretend to be cynical and wisecracking on the surface but underneath there’s a concern for the things that count—”

  “Not things that count like you,” Martine said. “On your fingers, always coming out with the logical right score. You swine.”

  “Marty! Marty! For once, don’t pretend to be so tough and calloused! You’re the only one who can help us now—”

  “I’m going to help you, all right.” Martine got up and walked over to Helder’s chair. “Get up,” he said. Helder stared at him for a moment, then got to his feet. “I am going to help you,” Martine repeated. He took hold of Helder’s tie just under the knot, gripping it with such force that Helder’s head was thrown back. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Brother Martine!” Theo said suddenly, leaping to his feet. “What have you got in your pocket?”

  “You stay out of this,” Martine said. “Keep your babyface out of men’s affairs—it wasn’t your notebook that was made the human race’s epitaph, don’t interfere, I’m warning you. . . .”

  He let go of Helder and signaled abruptly with his free hand to Theo, ordering him away. Theo backed off to the window. Martine took a tight grip on the gun in his pocket, slipped the safety catch down.

  “I’m through giving you alibis, you swine, do you hear! I’m going to put an end to the bloody farce and to you too—it’s only fitting that I should be the one who finally invokes the Assassination Clause against you. And if your little stooge there tries to stop me, I’ll plug him too. Gladly. It’ll help clear the air.”

  Helder’s shoulders sagged, he seemed to age ten years as he stood there looking at Martine and not believing what he saw. “You can’t,” he said, almost sadly. “You can’t do it, Marty.”

  “You’re telling me what I can and can t do? Pig! I’ll—”

  “No, no, Marty. You don’t understand. Harm me, do so much as take that gun out of your pocket, and you’ll never get out of here. There are men watching, Marty, twelve of them. . . .”

  “Twelve?” Martine said. “Oh, I see—the apostles.” He stepped back to the window seat and studied the two men, hand still in his pocket.

  But now Helder was not concerned with Martine: he was looking at Theo thoughtfully. “This does complicate matters a bit,” Martine said; nobody paid any attention to him.

  “Twelve men watching?” Theo said incredulously. “Guards?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Theo!” Helder burst out. “I’m sorry you’ve got to find out about it like this, but—put yourself in my place, man! Matter of fact, though, you are in my place—how do you think you’ve been getting around so easily when there’re people all over the place just dying to take a pot shot at you! You lead a charmed life, sure, but not that charmed, it takes some arranging. . . .”

  “I’m guarded too?” Theo said.

  “For months. All right! Sure, it’s defensism, it violates the Assassination Clause, I know that. But what’s the alternative? It’s a matter of simple logic—a leader’s function is to lead, that’s his responsibility, and he can’t do much leading if he’s full of bullet holes, can he? Never mind whether or not you think a leader’s got a responsibility to stay alive—our followers do think so, and they’re determined to guard us whether we like it or not. What would you have me do, guard myself against these guards? But, according to the letter of the law, that’s illegal too. . . . Call it defensism, call it anything you want, they won’t let you take a step without protection. They argue that the Assassination Clause is abrogated for the duration of the crisis, and I don’t think even you could give them a good argument to the contrary. Not after yesterday.”

  Yesterday. Four hundred plastic arms outstretched: Vishinu’s arm dropping: flashes, explosions: the officials crumpling, but Helder and Theo—

  “Ho,” Martine said. The two men turned to him in surprise. “I begin to smell something. Tell me one thing, Helder. Some fifty or sixty men got it yesterday, they stayed there like sitting ducks when Vishinu’s men took aim, but you, you knew enough to take a dive and pull Theo down with you. Tell me, please, how did you know when to take a dive?”

  Helder studied the floor for a long moment, looked up at Theo, then dropped his eyes again. He shrugged, sniffled. “All right,” he said. “That’s very smart of you, Marty—sure, I knew their arms were rifles. At least, I guessed they might be.” He turned away to avoid Theo’s eyes. “I mean, I knew they had these things. It occurred to me just in time, when they seemed to be taking aim so carefully, that that was what their pros might be. . . .”

  “I see,” Martine said. “While you’re at it you might as well complete Theo’s postgraduate course in Realpolitik. Tell us how, exactly, you knew about their arms being firearms.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Helder sounded peevish; he seemed suddenly tired too, he spoke with great effort. “They have spies. They’ve had spies for a long time. So we’ve been forced to use spies too—I fought it at first but the others prevailed, they argued that we had to be practical and in the face of the evidence I didn’t know any answer to that. We just spared Theo and others like him the full ugly knowledge of the situation, we knew they couldn’t take it: some of us were meant for responsible office and others for the much softer job of charismatic inspiration.”

  There was bitterness in his voice.

  “They always had better pros than they admitted, we knew that. So, for that matter, did we. They developed super flame-throwers, super rotary saws, super everything, while they kept on playing it humble and backward and losing the Games year after year. And we developed some pretty super models too, we could have won the Games this year if we’d thought it was good strategy to trot them out. Our timing was off. . . . Anyhow, we knew they’d developed the rifle arm. We got hold of a couple samples, we studied them carefully. As it happened, we already had one of our own in the works. Right this minute we’ve got them in mass production just as the Union has, although it’s all a super-secret. So it occurred to me yesterday, after Vishinu’s threatening speech, that what his athlete
s had up their sleeves—oh, excuse me, I’m a little upset—I got the idea that it might be wiser to duck, just in case. . . .”

  There was no gratitude in Theo’s eyes. “I see,” he said. “I am beginning to see. There are some footnotes you haven’t written yet.”

  Martine was grinning now. He was beginning to feel very good. “Say, I’m enjoying this,” he said. “The Hyphen between the Siamese twins is getting a bit frayed. Let’s kick it around a little more. . . . Are you going to pretend that you never took a so-called defensive step until you found out the Union had taken it first?”

  “Stop it, Marty!” Helder cried. “I’ve had about enough. . . . As it happened, we got a head start on one thing, they did on another; either way, the other side soon found out about the new development and caught up. . . . Oh, it’s a vicious, vicious circle, the whole thing. It’s even hard to remember exactly how it started, a half-dozen years ago, I’ve forgotten who started what. Something bigger than all of us was involved, pushing us, it ran away with us before we knew it. . . .”

  “Excellent,” Martine said. “You are aware, of course, that your pretty little speech could have been delivered by Vishinu, word for word? Undoubtedly has been?”

  “Don’t misunderstand,” Helder said. “Oh, he’d say those things, all right, but. . . . I don’t want to give you the wrong impression—he started it, the Union started it! At least I’m pretty sure. . . . It’s just that—once it got rolling everything moved so fast. . . .”

  “Our platform,” Theo said, “was commitment. Irrevocable commitment. But you didn’t mean it that way. You meant, if the others don’t play fair we take our irrevocable commitment back? It was irrevocable with strings, conditions?”

  Martine clapped his hands and did a few steps of a soft-shoe shuffle. “Mistuh Interlocutuh!” he shouted. “Brother Tambo done gone an’ fo’git his lines! He done throw de script away! He really ad-libbin’ some now! Wheah it say twice-two equal fo’ he fo’git de arit’metic an’ come sashayin’ an’ hifalutin all lickity-split an’ kerplunk down to de footnotes, Ah mean de footlights, an’ he say uppity as ole Brer Rabbit dat de multiplacatin’ tables done been abrogationed—”

  But he got no further. There was a blinding flash outside, the whole ozone turned incandescent: the atmosphere shimmied, space caught on fire. Then the dancing lights, shifting like anti-aircraft searchlights, like the Aurora Borealis, went off. Then danced again, the ether doing a hula. Subsided for a moment. Flared up still another time. And while the air ignited, was snuffed out, flamed again, there was an incredible booming explosion outside, some ultimate noise-maker at work, the earth heaving up a belching basso from its bowels—then another, then a third, then another. The building quaked, moving what seemed to be inches at a time: floor shuddered, walls seemed to jiggle.

  It went on for fully a minute. Air sporadically blazing. Staccato rumblings beating on the eardrums. The whole structure stricken with palsy. And they all stood, all three of them, rooted to their places, arms akimbo and mouths ludicrously frozen open.

  Then it stopped. For a moment longer they stood where they were, animated as scarecrows. Then Helder, first to snap out of it, rushed to the window; a second later he was joined by Theo and Martine.

  It was something to see: at several points around the city dense white mushrooms seething above the highest skyscrapers, symmetrical top-heavy alps sculpted of fleece and cotton batting, sprouting on the double like buds in a speeded-up zoological film. And in their wake, licking up around their bases, were sheets of flame—fires everywhere, giving off swirling clouds of black smoke.

  “Oh, no,” Helder said. “Oh, no.” It sounded as though he were saying a prayer.

  “Atom bombs,” Theo said.

  “Lots of atom bombs,” Martine said.

  He suppressed an impulse to giggle; something was breaking loose in him, he was on the edge of hysteria. They were, he thought, like three little boys way back at the dawn of television, sitting on the edges of their seats in the parlor and exchanging awed whispers about Hopalong Cassidy’s dead-eye marksmanship.

  “They’re using small ones,” Helder said. “Very small. Implosive type. Subcritical amounts of plutonium, probably.” He pressed his palms against the window. “It’s really fine glass,” he said irrelevantly. “They tell me it’ll stand up against almost anything. Keeps out the gamma rays, that’s one thing, besides it’s damn near shatterproof, they do something to the silica. Of course, we’re pretty high up too, the blast couldn’t be very strong this high up, that’s to be considered. . . .” He made a sniffing noise. “My sinus is bad today.”

  “People who live in glass defenses,” Martine said.

  “Glass? Defensism?” It was Theo speaking, he sounded remote, sleepy, almost.

  “Glass defense mechanism,” Martine said. “Not shatter-proof. You know, I was born on the day of the first mushroom.”

  A sound came up from his throat: maybe a giggle, maybe a hiccup, he wasn’t sure.

  A buzzing noise from the desk. Helder ran over and snapped a switch on the intercom box. “Yes?” he said.

  A clipped metallic voice: “Anderson calling in, sir.”

  “Anderson! What’s going on out there? Have you got anything on this?”

  “We’re getting a preliminary picture. It’s a systematic fifth-column operation—not many Unioneers actively involved, as we make it out, mostly Strip agents. They planned to blow up the capitol building too, they were setting a bomb on one of the lower stories but their man was nabbed before he could get it rigged up—a Strip citizen, one of the staff janitors, Negro, he’s talking now. . . . At least twelve limited-action bombs planted in L.A. All at key spots: the Neuro-Loco Institute, the Institute for Advanced Cyber-Cyto Studies, the Olympic Training Clubs headquarters, several prosthetics warehouses. They did quite a job downstairs too—three or four bombs were set in the power plants and whatnot, the Slot’s a mess. The pattern seems to be a concerted attack on all plants and research centers concerned with pros. No delayed-action radiation, our disaster crews can be mobilized without anti-gamma-ray gear. At least for above-ground operations.”

  “All right,” Helder said. “I see. Keep me posted.”

  “Yes, sir. . . . Just a minute, sir! Something more’s coming in now. . . . Yes. The ticker from New Jamestown says the same thing’s going on there. . . . And here’s one from Martinesburg, same story—they also got the Radiation Research Labs up there. . . . Oh, something else. It’s not just bombings. Uh, uh. There’ve been atacks on individuals too. On amps, wherever they could be found. Let’s see. . . . Yes. Amps have been attacked on the streets, in classrooms, in rest homes, even in their own houses. Pretty damned systematic. In these individual attacks the men aren’t injured, just their pros smashed. It seems to be directed against pros, no casualties except in the bombings. They’ve located some of our stock piles of pros too, they’ve been blown up too. . . .”

  “All right,” saig Helder. “They’re trying to immobilize us. Of course. Prepare a list of the installations and stock piles that’ve been hit as soon as you can. I want to get a full picture of the extent of the damage. At once. What about the fires?”

  “The boys think they’ll be able to get them under control, here in L.A. anyway, haven’t heard from the other cities yet. The disaster crews are out already.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  Helder switched off the intercom, sat down at his desk. He seemed to be lost in thought, fingers drumming on the blotter. Finally he nodded his head vehemently, three times, then reached for the intercom and pressed one of the buttons on its control board.

  “Yes, sir?” the machine barked.

  “Riley?” Helder said. “Now listen carefully, Riley. We can’t have any slip-ups. This is it. As of this moment we’re abandoning Plan A. Plan B goes into operation immediately. You know what to do. Send out the emergency B flash to all Olympic Training Clubs. Mobilization at the convergence points. Distribution of flame-
arms, rotor-arms, heli-arms, rifle-arms from the secret stock piles, as per schedule. Designated shock units advance to meet the Union forces. Only the designated ones, understand—this slow pincers movement from the coasts looks like a maneuver to draw our defense units away from home base to make things easy for the fifth column. Designated anti-fifth-column units begin their security patrols. Atom bombs supplied the demolition squads in no case to exceed the size and strength of those employed by the Union agents. The hundred thousand kiloton bombs to be kept in reserve for Plan D, check on this. All units in Union territory to be given the B flash, they’re to begin operations immediately. . . .”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Get going, Riley. Report back. . . . Oh, one more thing. Recall all personnel from the Victoria Dredging Project immediately. To be reassigned to fire-fighting and anti-fifth-column operations.”

  Theo had been listening to this conversation. He left the window now and approached Helder. “You even have plans?” he said.

  “Grow up, Theo!” Helder grunted. “Of course—they’ve got plans, we’ve got plans, it’s been that way for years.”

  “You even—have agents in the Union?”

  “We’d be in a hell of a fix now if we didn’t,” Helder said. “A lot of Strippers, even underprivileged Negroes, are surprisingly loyal to their country, Theo. To Immob, that is. Many of them living around the Union at strategic points this very minute. They’ll prove their loyalty pretty damned convincingly before the afternoon’s over, take my word for it. . . .”

  “You could have given them some reason for their loyalty,” Theo said. “All the discrimination—I tried to tell you, it was making a very bad impression in the East. . . .”

  “What could I have suggested—a few more anti-discrimination and fair-employment-practice laws? I did, but I got voted down. A lot of good all that crap does anyway—remember the old South, did the law ever do anything about lynchings there? . . . No, no, Theo, it wasn’t anything to be solved by decree. I’d hoped that with time, by patient education—it was a transitional period, people had to be changed slowly. . . .”