by Various
[Illustration]
"They can do it," Maria said simply. "Zale, these people have become absolutely dependent upon their computers. They aren't going to let their entire creed be wrecked by one Martian."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked simply.
"Come with me--now," she said, once more gripping his hand. "A group of us want to talk to you, to find out how you have done it."
He looked at her, found her adorable in her earnestness. He said, "And if I play guinea pig with your friends, then you and I...?"
"Of course--as soon as there's time," she told him.
"You are a little bundle of fanaticism, as well as of sex," he told her. "I should think at least, since you seem to have such an inside track, you could manage to get my recall deferred."
"That's just it!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I see everything, I hear everything--yet I can do nothing. Papa thinks I'm merely a foolish female creature and his attitude blocks me at every turn." Lindsay realized again how fundamentally frustrated she was, wondered if she would ever find a completely satisfactory release.
Lindsay decided to play along. "All right," he said. "Shall we go?"
"Thanks, darling," she promised. "We'd better go separately. There will be a blue copter-cab waiting outside when you leave." She leaned across the table to brush his lips briefly with hers, squeezed his hand and glided off.
* * * * *
He wondered, while he waited for the check, just how foolhardly he was being, allowing himself to be summoned to a meeting of palace conspirators. It could very easily be a trap, whether Maria knew it or not. It could be a ruse to add fuel to the fire being lit under him for his recall as a legate persona non grata on Earth.
"You haven't forgotten our date, have you darling?" The voice was throatily reproachful above him and he looked up in surprise at a glittering female figure, who seemed to be clad entirely in blazing brilliants.
She was tall and blonde, her hair an ocean helmet of gold, sprinkled with gems. Her face was beautifully boned, with broad cheeks and forehead pierced by a decided widow's peak. Light green eyes slanted upward beneath brows like the wings of some tiny graceful bird. Nose, lips and chin gained fascination from the perfection they skirted but just escaped. Face, arms, upper bosom and shoulders wore the even tawny golden tan that only some blondes can achieve.
Her figure, ashimmer with gems, was lithe of waist, firmly full of breast and pelvis, moved with the enticing grace of an Indonesian temple dancer as she slipped into the seat Maria had so recently vacated.
"Sorry, your highness," he said with a look of honest admiration. "I didn't know we had a date."
"We have now," she stated. She laid a handbag solidly encrusted with diamonds, emeralds and rubies on the table, said to the dwarf waiter, "Bring me the usual, Joe--and give Ambassador Lindsay another of whatever he's drinking."
At any other time, Lindsay thought. He said, "I regret this more than you'll ever know, my dear, but I've got a copter-cab waiting for me outside."
"It will keep." The girl pouted prettily, then leaned toward him and said huskily, "We'll have just one here. Then we can go to my place. It's just outside of Biloxi, almost on the Gulf. We can watch the dawn come up over the water. We can--"
"Stop twisting my arm," said Lindsay, trying to keep his thoughts in focus. Who had sent this girl and why? And what, he wondered, awaited him in Biloxi.
He got up, tossed a twenty-credit note on the table. "This will pay the check," he informed her.
"Not so fast," said the houri, rising with him. Trying to ignore her, he headed toward the door as fast as he could.
She kept after him and his ears burned as he plunged out into the night, saw the blue copter-cab waiting with its door open at the curb. But when he tried to plunge toward it he was halted by an arm whose sharp-faceted jeweled adornments cut his adam's apple. He gasped but the girl got in front of him, waving her bag.
There was a faint popping noise as the door closed and the copter-cab swiftly and silently darted away. Stunned by the swiftness of events, Lindsay was utterly incapable of resistance when his decorative tormentor thrust him into another vehicle. As they took off he said, "I suppose this is the prelude to another assassination try."
"Night soil!" said a familiar voice. "What the hell do you think I just saved you from, boss?"
* * * * *
Lindsay uttered one word--a word which, he thought later, was singularly revealing as to his native flair for diplomacy. He said, briefly and succinctly, "Huh?"
"Listen, my fine unfeathered Martian friend." She sounded like a primary school teacher addressing an overgrown and somewhat backward pupil. "Somebody fired a glass bullet at you from that cab."
"How do you...?" he began helplessly.
For answer she turned on the copter-cab light, revealing the back of a uniformed chauffeur, and showed him her handbag. There was a slight tear in one side of its begemmed surface and, when she shook it, bits of glass fell to the floor. "Careful," she warned when he reached for the bag. "It was probably packed with poison." Then, "Can you think of a better shield than diamonds?"
He said, "Ulp!" Unquestionably, now that she had revealed herself, this glittering creature was his slovenly office Nina. Seeking desperately to recover what had at best been a shaky boss-secretary relationship, he said, "Where are you taking me?"
"Out of the city, boss," she informed him. "We really are going to my place in Biloxi. You're much too hot a property to be allowed to wander around loose. Two tries in less than twenty-four hours."
"Then Maria..." he said, wonderingly.
Nina picked his thought up crisply. "We don't know whether your little playmate put the finger on you consciously or not. But she did it. Some of that sweet little crew she pals around with are desperate. They don't believe they can lick the computers and their only hope is to foment incidents that will lead to an interplanetary war. Nice kids!"
"But why pick on me?" he asked. "From what Maria said tonight I'm their one hope of beating the machines."
Nina shook her head at him sadly. "And you're the best brain our Martian cousins could send us. Here it is in words of one syllable. Maria's mob wants war. They believe they can light the powder train by arranging the assassination of a Martian Plenipotentiary.
"Meanwhile your speech yesterday and your fouling up Doc Craven's computer this afternoon, and whatever you did at the tennis tonight, have the Computer crowd screaming for your recall before you upset their little red wagon." She paused, added, "Naturally Maria's crowd wants to have you killed before you become a mere private citizen of Mars. Once you're removed from office you aren't important enough to cause a war."
"Good God!" said Lindsay as the double pattern became apparent. Then, curiously, "And just whom do you represent, Nina?"
She eyed him steadily, mockingly for a moment. Then she said, "Let's just say for now that I represent the Model's Union. We don't want any wartime austerity wrecking our pitch. Will that do?"
"I guess it will have to," he said. Then, plucking a diamond-and-emerald necklace from among the half-dozen about her throat, "You certainly didn't give poor Anderson much for his money."
"Stop it!" she snapped. "Do you want my eyes to swell up again? In a way what happened tonight was all your fault. Fernando and I were going to keep close tabs on you but you fouled me up with your beastly remark about my business at Doc Craven's and then put poor Fernando out of commission by getting mixed up in that riot at the Colosseum. I barely made the Pelican in time."
He thought of giving Nina the receipt from Zoffany's in his pocket, decided not to take the chance. So he said, "Is Fernando working for the Model's Union too?"
"Stop trying to be funny," she told him. "Night soil! You make me so damned mad. Letting that little tramp Maria nail you."
"At the time there wasn't much alternative," he said. Then, eyeing her closely, "How come you're mixed up in UW politics? I thought models were strictly for fun and games
."
Nina said matter-of-factly, "I won top model rating when I was seventeen. I still hold it and I'm twenty-six now. A girl can get tired of being and doing the same thing--even in my profession. Besides, I've got brains. So I try to use them."
"How come you decided to be my secretary?"
"We drew lots and I lost," she informed him.
* * * * *
The copter dropped by searchlight to a flagged terrace in front of a dark cottage just off the beach. "Thanks, Bob," said Nina. "Tell the boys to stand by with their guard beams up." Then, to Lindsay, "Come on, boss, let's get out of this heap."
She walked swiftly toward the cottage, pressed something. Soft lights came on, revealing a charming simulated wood dwelling in the fine antique Frank Lloyd Wright tradition. She ushered him into a delightfully gay bathroom looking out on the water, said, "Wait here while I get this armor off."
Lindsay felt a slight qualm as he considered what being a top model at seventeen must mean. And then he thought, Why not? Certainly he had no claim on Nina's morals. He doubted if anyone had a claim of any kind on her.
She emerged, looking unexpectedly like a young girl in simple clout and cup-bra, which exposed most of her gorgeously tanned body. Her hair, innocent of jewels like the rest of her, was clubbed back simply with some sort of clip. She lit a cigarette and said, "Now--how the hell are you fouling up the computers?"
"I'm not," he told her promptly. "At least not in the case of the tennis match. I just happened to know something about Pat O'Ryan the people who fed facts to the computer didn't."
"That goon Pat!" she said. "He's so damned dumb."
"You know him well?" he asked with a trace of jealousy.
"I know him." She dismissed it with a flick of her cigarette. "It's a good thing you knew judo too, boss. But what did you do to him that fouled up the match?"
"While he was out cold I gave him a shot of whiskey to bring him 'round," Lindsay told her. "He didn't know about it and I didn't tell him when he informed me about his grain-alcohol allergy. So for once the computer didn't get full facts. And I had them."
For the first time Lindsay basked in a smile of approval from Nina. She said, "And then you had to mess me up at Doc Craven's so I couldn't sit in on the match."
"I'm sorry about that," he said sincerely. "You might brief me so I don't do it again."
"Well...." She hesitated. "I don't want to set myself off. It's not uncommon among us--models. You see, we're proud of our careers, not like the two-credit whores who wear glasses and harnesses. And it hurts us when someone refers to our work as business. You see, there's nothing really commercial about it. So when you--"
"But how the devil was I to know you were a model?" he asked her.
"I know," she said illogically. "But it still made me mad." Then, frowning, "But if the computer was wrong because of incomplete knowledge at the Colosseum, what was wrong at Doc Craven's?"
Lindsay said, "I'm damned if I know."
"We've got to know, with the president ready to put Giac to work."
"I meant to tell you about that," said Lindsay.
"Don't worry," Nina informed him. "Your table at the Pelican was wired."
"Why are you against computers?" Lindsay asked her.
She dropped her smoke in a disposal-tray, said, "Never mind why--let's just accept the fact that I am. And not for Fernando Anderson's reason either. He just wants power."
"And what do you want?"
"Me?" Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Why, I just want to have fun!" She extended her arms and flapped her hands like birds. Then, again reverting to seriousness, "I wish you'd tell me everything that went on at Doc Craven's yesterday. Dammit, his office wasn't wired."
Lindsay went through it, as nearly word for word as he could, then did it again when no answer was quickly forthcoming. Nina listened, her perfect forehead marred by a frown. Finally she said, "Let's take a dip. It's almost dawn."
She removed what clothing she wore and Lindsay did likewise. They felt the refreshing caress of the cool Gulf water on their skins--but that was all the caressing there was. Nina, unlike Maria, was all business despite the near-blatant perfection of her charms. Back in the bathroom she said, "The only thing I can think of is that stigmata business. Why should you imagine a mark on your mother's forehead?"
"Because she had one," he told her bluntly. "It was not unattractive--my father used to call it her beauty mark."
Nina ran long slim fingers through her water-dark hair and said incredulously, "You mean blemishes are not removed automatically at birth on Mars?"
"Why, no," said Lindsay, surprised. "It's entirely up to the individual--or the parents."
"And Doc Craven asked no questions that would lead to the truth?" the girl asked, blinking. When Lindsay shook his head she suddenly grabbed him and kissed him and did a little dance of sheer joy. "It's simply too good to be true! Two computers fouled in one day through missing information!"
"You're right, of course," he admitted. "But I'm damned if I see how it does us any good."
"You idiot!" she shook him. "It clears the whole situation. It means that the computers cannot give accurate answers according to the symbolic logic tables unless they get full information. And you have proved two breakdowns in the inescapable human element--the information feeding--just like that!" She snapped her fingers. "It means we've got the whole computer-cult on the hip. I could kiss you again, you big goon." She did so.
"Cut it out," he said. "I'm not made of brass."
She said, "Night soil," amiably. What he might have done he was never to know, for a buzzer sounded and Nina moved quickly to a wall-talkie. She said, "All right, Bob, you say he's clean?" Then, a moment later, "Better let him in and say his piece." And, to Lindsay, "We've got company. Dmitri Alenkov--met him?"
Lindsay frowned. "You mean the Soviet chargé d'affaires? I met him at the reception last week. Dreadful little lizard."
"Dmitri might surprise you," she said enigmatically.
Lindsay almost said night soil himself in exasperation. Instead and peevishly he asked, "Is there anybody you don't know--intimately?"
She laughed. "Of course," she said, "I don't know many women."
* * * * *
The Soviet diplomat entered the bathroom. He was a languid mincing creature whose decadence glowed around him like phosphorescence around a piece of rotted swampwood. He said, "I hope I am not intruding."
"That depends," Nina told him. "I'd like to know how you traced us here so quickly."
"My sweet," said the Russian in intensely Oxford Esperanto, "you and your friend's"--with another bow toward Lindsay--"little affair at the Pelican was witnessed this evening. When the two of you departed together, heading eastward, and Ambassador Lindsay could not be reached in his apartment...." He paused delicately.
So this, thought Lindsay, was a descendant of one of the Red Commissars whose fanatic and chill austerity had terrorized the free world of a century ago. Lindsay knew something of modern Soviet history, of course. There had been no real counter-revolution. Instead the gradual emergence of the scientists over their Marxist political rulers had been a slow process of erosion.
Once computer rule was inaugurated in the North American Republic and swept the Western World, the scientists had simply taken over real power. The once-powerful Politburo and its sub-committees became obsolete.
Alenkov was stressing this very point. He said, "So you see, we, the best blood of Russia, are forced by these machines to live the lives of outcast children. Naturally we resent it. And when, after so many long years of waiting, we learn that one man has succeeded in foiling the computers where no man has succeeded before, we want to know his secret. We must have it."
Nina spoke first. She said, "Dmitri, the secret, as you call it, has been right there all along for any of us to see. It just happens that Ambassador Lindsay fell into it head first."
"Thanks for the 'Ambassador' anyway," Lindsay said drily.
Alenkov's brows all but met in the middle of his forehead and his mouth became a little round O under the twin commas of his mustache. He said, "I see."
He left shortly afterward on a note of sadness, rousing himself only to say to Lindsay, "Ambassador, you are a very lucky man." His eyes caressed Nina's near-nude figure.
"That," Lindsay told him, "is what you think."
When he had departed Lindsay suddenly realized he was exhausted. He sank back in a contour chair and let fatigue sweep over him. But Nina paced the bathroom floor like a caged cat. Finally she went to the wall-talkie, gave a number in a low voice.
She pushed some sort of signal button several times, then swore and said, "Better not sleep now, boss. We're cut off."
It brought him to with a start. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Somebody or something is jamming our communicator."
She opened a concealed cabinet, apparently part of the bathroom wall, drew from it a couple of light but deadly looking blasters, and tossed one onto the contour chair in front of him. "You know how to work one of these things?" she asked.
"Better drop the weapons," a quiet voice said from the doorway behind them. "You haven't got a chance."
The speaker wore the light blue tunicall that was the summer uniform of the Army of the Republic of North America. His cap and shoulder-boards were bright with silver lace and he held a singularly ugly little automatic weapon cradled across one forearm.
Nina and Lindsay dropped their weapons. But the girl's back was up. Her slanting eyes crackled green fire as she said, "What right have you bastards got to come busting in here without a warrant?"
"Sorry," said the officer with chilling courtesy. "As it happens we do have a warrant. Remember, Miss Beckwith, this cottage is not United World's soil." He tossed an official looking document which Nina caught, motioned a couple of his men to pick up her weapons.
"All right," she said after scanning the warrant. "What do you want?"