The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister

by Banister, Manly

  Kor said, “We cannot be observed, so you can drop your disguise if you like. I have taken care of everything, just do not move from your position.”

  The dim ceiling light still glowed, its photo-vibrations altered to permit visibility within the zone of the time-stasis.

  Suddenly she smiled and sighed. The puffed masses dropped from her eyes. Her cheeks grew firm, young and healthy-looking. She quickly straightened her shoulders, Her sea-green eyes sparkled at him. Kor looked and yearned for her.

  “How did you know it was I?” she asked.

  “I recognized the technique of your disguise,” he said, dispelling the feeling that gripped him. “Sir Ten Roga must have taught you.”

  “He did. I know it’s an elementary change, but it’s the best I can do. Sir Ten said the Men can change their whole bodily structure at will, but he never demonstrated.”

  “True. A Man has full control over the individual molecules of his body-mass.”

  Soma became entirely practical.

  “Kor, I came here for one reason, to carry out the request you made last night, to convince the Trisz you are not the Man who attended my father’s reception. I am supposed to identify you for the Triszmen. I asked to come.”

  “I guessed as much from your opening words. However, I am glad you are here. There are a few things I must know from you. Was your father arrested last night?”

  “No. We had it planned in advance. Past horses were ready. He escaped into the desert to join the Organization.”

  “What organization?”

  “I cannot tell even you, Kor. Some day, you will find the Organization for yourself—if you live. I cannot entrust the knowledge to you…yet. If you can get out of this present situation—as by walking through the wall…”

  He shrugged the thought aside.

  “Tell me about yourself. You said you work on the staff of the Trisz Extrapolator. That can be very important.”

  She nodded vigorously. “I lead rather a double life. When I am not Lady Soma, I am Tasa Lanor, punch-card coordinator in the files section of the Extrapolator. It was as Tasa Lanor that I volunteered to meet you at the reception; you must have noticed that I kept my face hidden from the Thugs in the garden?”

  Kor said, “I recall that you did. Very well. What about the Extrapolator? I hear it is a machine that predicts the future.”

  “Machine!” Lady Soma laughed shortly, “it is a monster! A brain, really. It occupies an entire building. Four hundred and eight floors are devoted to the mechanism alone, two hundred of them below ground-level. Nearly a thousand floors are taken up with the technical staff, the clerical staff, the correlating division, the records division, the historical division, the traffic division, and scores of other divisions!”

  “Rather a complex device for the mere purpose of holding the People subject, isn’t it?”

  “You mean—oh, predicting riot, sedition and plot isn’t all the machine does! It’s a mathematical computer of the highest order, and it thinks for itself. It really does. I couldn’t name all the things it does, besides predicting the future. And of, course, it isn’t for Trisz use alone, either. It belongs to all the People. Anyone with a question about his future has the privilege of querying the Extrapolator. Many do. It’s a part of the Trisz…benevolence.”

  “I suppose the machine disclosed your father’s activities with the Lord of Set-loo?”

  She nodded soberly. “Yes. When border fighting between my father’s troops and the troops of Set-loo came to a halt, the information, with some other material, was fed to the machine. The civil authorities were excited by the machine’s response and took it to the Trisz. The Trisz ordered my father’s extermination along with yours.”

  “I am new to the ways of the world,” Kor mused, “I cannot understand why the Trisz do not act as pleases them. Why they do not deal with their enemies on the spot, as it were.”

  “The Trisz like to maintain an appearance of benevolence,” she replied. “There is a false semblance of self-rule among the People. The People are more easily kept in check if they do not realize too deeply that the Trisz are their masters. We still have our own law courts, that have not been tampered with, but these are only for dealing with the common run of crimes among the People. When treason is the charge, the Trisz themselves are judge and jury, and the trials are conducted in secret. An excuse has to be found for the arrest—even if the Trisz have to manufacture an excuse. Like the blaster they claim to have found in your quarters.”

  “That was quite my own fault,” Kor explained, “I was in possession of it. It is part of the story I have planned to tell at my trial.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “Do you know that they charge you with murder?”

  “I rather expected they would. I have my defense ready.”

  “It will avail you nothing. Possessing the blaster sealed off your last excuse, if anything else were needed. It is death to possess one illegally.”

  “Then it would do me no good to plead innocent of murdering that fellow on your father’s terrace?”

  “Nor the other one whose body was discovered in a deserted house. Did you kill either of them? I don’t believe you did!”

  She could not guess, Kor thought, that the second body she referred to was only a duplicate of the first. As long as the Trisz did not suspect it, he was sanguine enough to believe he might win his freedom. Extrapolating the problem had done him no good. He could abstract nothing encouraging. He could only hope. He said, “Soma, whatever you may hear in the future, I hope you will continue to believe my innocence, because such is the truth. On the other hand, I intend to confess to both murders!”

  She did not change expression. “I do not question the wisdom of your actions, Sir Kor. Through Sir Ten and the Organization, I have learned to trust Men implicitly.”

  Kor tried to question her further about the Organization, but Soma shook her head, smiling tightly.

  “I have my Oath, too, Kor. Perhaps, if the Trisz—”

  “Let me live?”

  “I was about to say, have misinterpreted the machine’s latest utterance concerning you.”

  Kor quoted the silly jingle. “What does it mean ‘die undead’? Can you tell me?”

  “The Trisz think they know what it means. They take it both literally and metaphorically. The opinion is that you will quite literally die. They applied the word ‘undead’ to the machine for a semantic break-down and got a complex variety of interpretations, from which they have made a tentative series of conclusions. Dead means no longer having life, as a dead person is one who was once living. Undead is not the opposite of dead, but is a condition of death. The result of a person suffering death is a dead body. A person suffering death and leaving no body is equally dead, but there is no ‘dead’ residue remaining. Do you see the implication?”

  “They expected the concentrated blast of six blasters to reduce me to atoms,” Kor put in. “It sounds reasonable, if we accept that reasoning. No body would be left. But that did not happen—disregarding the identity of the body. The dead man fell behind the stone balustrade and was covered from the blaster fire.”

  “Yes. So the Trisz knew immediately that you had escaped, if you were ever there. The fact did not coincide with the prediction, you see. They had their troops ready to close in on the Chapel to arrest you, knowing that if you did escape, you would go there immediately…as you did.”

  “I think I can guess my ultimate fate,” Kor smiled grimly. “I am to be fed to the atomic converters in the power section of the city. That is a popular form of execution for condemned criminals, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, looking at him. He noticed how dark her eyes appeared.

  “Well, what about the pots and pans? Gibberish?”

  She shook her head. “The machine never utter
s gibberish, but it frequently speaks metaphorically. ‘Pots and pans’ refers to the civil troubles the Trisz hope to prevent through their present action. The pots and pans departing idea is exemplified by my father’s escape into the desert—a prediction, you see, that was not accurately interpreted at any time, until my father departed.”

  A stream of flashing electrons cut across Kor’s consciousness. The time-limit he had set was expiring.

  Kor spoke almost cheerfully. “Time’s up! Now remember. You came here to see if I am the Man who was at your father’s reception.”

  “I am to report immediately after seeing you.”

  “You have already reported. There is a visio-audio spy device hidden in the filament of that lamp up there. It picked up the first words you uttered when you came in.”

  Soma’s face paled.

  “You mean they have been listening?”

  “They heard only your first words. How long do you think we have talked?”

  “Five minutes—ten? Oh, no, it must be longer than that!”

  “Considerably less than one-thousandth part of a second,” Kor told her with amusement. “In another thousandth of a second, the spy-device will become automatically re-activated, with none the wiser. Right now, we are outside of normal time. Before we go back, re-arrange your disguise, and when I speak to you, continue as you started when you entered. We will again be under observation.”

  Electrons swirled in a mad dance of sparkling motes. Kor searched, located, identified, nudged electrons back into their places.

  “I am sure I never saw you before, Madame,” he said respectfully.

  The woman Tasa Lanor shrugged, looking him up and down.

  “Nor could I be mistaken about you, Sir.”

  She turned quickly to the door, banged on it with both fists.

  Alone, Kor thought the matter over. He had no fear that the watching Triszman had noted his tampering with their spy-device. Their slow physical reaction would not have observed the momentary flickering of the screen image, nor was it likely that the interruption could have been noticed by the recording machines.

  At any rate, the situation was clearer to Kor than it had ever been. The Lady Soma had been a help in establishing the groundwork of the story he planned to tell the Trisz when he came up for trial. If the Trisz condemned him now, it would be in spite of his defense, and not because of it.

  Kor could visualize the sensation that was being made of his arrest. Every televisor screen in the city, if not in the world, would be keeping the People abreast of developments.

  Kor pondered his position, but no simple solution appeared. He was in an anomalous situation; he could leave any time he chose, but he dared not choose. He wondered if his act of recreating the charred corpse of the Thug had been a false move, but third order rationalization had seemed to call for it. He went over the logic of it again, by-passing the third-order parts to his superconsciousness. It came out the same: the artificial life line created by his premeditated actions crossed his destiny line at this juncture. He was precisely where he ought to be: in the power of the Trisz.

  He could not believe that his destiny led to death in the atomic converters. He stood, therefore, at a crisis. He had to find his way out of this impasse before Trisz judgment could be carried out against him.

  Desire is our scourge, Need is our blessing. The key lay in the ritual, he knew that. The ritual was the key to all things. Resolve is our armor; Will is our weapon… Faith… The ritual key could solve any problem when applied through third-order reasoning. But the problem still baffled Kor.

  Kor was moved to another and larger furnished cell and provided with personal toilet articles. Before settling down, however, he located the blaster behind the wall and rendered it useless. Thereafter, he settled himself to await the Trisz’ pleasure.

  Three days after his arrest, Kor was notified of his trial. The Triszman officer who came to his cell was stern-visaged as he read the charges for the prisoner’s benefit. Kor listened in silence, and permitted himself to be led away to trial before the Trisz.

  He faced his judge and accuser alone in a tiny chamber no larger than the one from which he had been taken, except that this room had a bay in one wall, in which the spindle-shaped Trisz vibrated a dull crimson, silent, inscrutable.

  Television cameras had followed Kor to his reception, had focused on his back as he entered the Trisz chamber of justice. He knew that now an excited commentator was on the screen, recapitulating the Trisz version of the case for the benefit of watchers. None would see what went on within the chamber; none would know the story Kor had to tell save the Trisz.

  He braced himself against the hopelessness of the situation. The thin, reedy, mental “voice” of the Trisz cut across Kor’s consciousness.

  “Man, you have heard the charges against you. Your own kind accuse you of dissidence, sedition, and treason against the Trisz. You are further accused of the murder of one Nar Dillon of the People, and of a Person unknown. You are charged as well with illegal possession of a blaster…a capital offense in itself. If you have anything to say before sentence is passed upon you, you may gesture for the recorders.”

  On one knee, Kor signed his reply.

  “I am innocent of these charges, O mighty Trisz—save that I did have in my possession the illegal weapon. Here is my defense:

  “I received an invitation from the Lord Roen Gol, who will attest to the truth of this statement, to attend a reception in my honor. This is a function well established in custom, as the mighty Trisz know. Scorning transportation the short distance to his Lordship’s residence, I decided to walk—”

  Kor told his story straightforwardly, without a falter. He had, he said, about half way to his goal, been set upon by two men, who overcame him and dragged him into a deserted house. There, he said, one of his captors stole his raiment, leaving his companion to guard him.

  “From their talk,” Kor explained, “I gathered that these two used this means to gain entrance to the estate in order to kidnap his Lordship’s young daughter, to hold for ransom from her father.”

  Vigorously, then, Kor signed an account of the fight he had had overpowering his guard. The blaster had been discharged in the struggle and his captor killed.

  So far, so good, Kor thought. The Trisz had not wanted to admit their puzzlement over that secondary corpse. So now they had an explanation, which could only puzzle them more.

  Kor went on to relate that he had hastened then to Lord Roen Gol’s residence and had seen a woman on the terrace, struggling in the grip of one who was dressed in the garments of a Scarlet Saint…undoubtedly his own. As he watched, the woman broke free and darted back inside.

  “As I stood there, O mighty Trisz,” Kor went on, “debating what to do, a sudden rain of blaster-fire whipped through the garden, engulfing the imposter in flames. My own captured weapon was also leveled. The noise of the blasters startled me, so that unconsciously I depressed the firing stud, and the weapon fired.

  “I therefore claim the benevolent protection of the mighty Trisz, and plead innocent, to the charges of murder against me. The one man died by his own hand as I fought in self-defense, and the other was murdered by those who were obviously his accomplices in the kidnapping scheme, angered at seeing him allow the Lord’s daughter to escape.

  “As for the charges of dissidence, sedition and treason, I can only plead innocent. And for possessing the blaster, I throw myself on the mercy of the Trisz, who can read from my mind the true occurrences as they happened.”

  The Trisz replied immediately. “Man, there is evidence in your mind that what you say may be largely truth. You are a clever dissembler, however, and have learned how to mask your deepest thoughts. The Trisz are willing to dismiss the charges of murder, but your association with Lord Roen Gol, a known treasonist, an
d your possession of the blaster convict you of the remaining charges. These are crimes against the Trisz, whereas murder is a crime against the People. Crimes against the Trisz are punishable by death.”

  It was only what Kor had expected, but he felt suddenly collapsed. Why had he played into their hands by taking that blaster along? Third-order reasoning had called for the action; third-order reasoning was never wrong. Kor bowed his head.

  “O benevolent Trisz,” he gestured. “I have but one further request to make.”

  “Speak, Man.”

  “I asked that my body be returned to the Institute for burial in that sacred ground.”

  The Trisz hummed thoughtfully. “That is impossible, Man. The course of execution is set by expedience and custom. You will die instantly and painlessly, in complete dissolution of your physical body. There will be nothing left to bury.”

  * * * *

  Kor paced his cell vigorously. He wondered how long he had before the execution. He had to discover something quickly, an unlikely probability here in this room where nothing had yet come to him. He carefully opened his mind and explored the blaster covering him. Somebody had discovered the damaged fuse and replaced it. He did not want anything premature to happen—like the unlooked for discharge of that weapon. He carefully nudged a few electrons and made the blaster useless again.

  Kor’s mind busied itself with his problem. In spite of the Trisz verdict, he had no feeling of the imminence of dissolution. He was in peril, certainly. But the future did not appear to hold death. If this were so, then deliverance was still to come. Kor seized upon this thought and submitted it to the third-order processes of his mind. He heaved a sigh and relaxed. Of course. The time had not yet come for his need to assert itself. At present, he was safer here than he could be anywhere else. He had only to wait—wait for the eleventh hour.