The Micronauts

by Gordon Williams

  “Nonsense. I will simply not tolerate this kind of hysterical conjecture— ”

  “Conjecture? Right then—will you authorize a Budget appropriation for a complete world census?”

  “If you hold a census, people expect to know the result. What if this damned projection is correct?”

  Eisentrager blinked mournfully. “In that case, the ants and lizards will get their world back.”

  “Kurt—if I ever hear you expressing those kind of negative thoughts again, you will be retired instantly!” The Commissioner stood up, his face flushed with anger. He then made a weary gesture and came around the marble desk. “I’m sorry, Kurt, I have a lot on my mind. 1

  don’t like suppressing information, but that report would cause panic. As soon as the Supreme Council session is over, we’ll have an interdepartmental session on it. Agreed?”

  ‘‘If you say so, Commissioner.”

  When Eisentrager had gone, he sat down, drumming his fingers on the cold marble. Some things Kurt had said sounded familiar—particularly about the ants getting their world back. George Richards was always using slick phrases of that sort. Where they in collusion?

  His buzzer signaled.

  ‘‘There’s an officer from the Department of Finance who insists on seeing you,” Schumann said. ‘‘His name is Larson; he says it is urgent and confidential. Shall I tell him to apply for an appointment?”

  ‘‘Wait a moment.”

  He switched into the internal spy circuit, pressing numbered buttons which gave him a view of the outer reception room. At the guard’s desk was a young executive he remembered seeing among Geetanjli’s staff at a Budget meeting.

  “I’ll see him—make sure he has been searched.”

  He was standing when Larson entered the long, low room. He remembered the facial tic.

  ‘‘You have two minutes, Larson. I hope it isn’t something you should have put through channels.”

  Less sure now that he was doing the correct thing, Larson put his aluminum case on the desk, then decided it might scratch theCommissioner’s marble and put it on the floor. When he straightened up, his face was red. ‘‘I have just come back from New York, sir,” he stammered. “I was over there doing one of our irregular audits in the Procurements Office. First off, I discovered a discrepancy in titanium deliveries— ”

  ‘‘A discrepancy? You’re wasting my time with crap like that?”

  ‘‘It’s more than one discrepancy, sir. Somebody has been stealing WFC equipment and materials. I only went back fifteen months, but I found internal losses to the value of nine million marks.”

  THE MICRONAUTS

  The Commissioner walked around his desk and put his hand on Larson’s shoulder. Stress was a major occupational hazard among the Geneva secretariat—the tic was a sure sign. “Walk with me to the cinema, Larson,” he said sympathetically. He waited until they had gone through Schumann’s office and then the guard’s room, walking along the brilliantly-lit corridor. “Nine million marks? That’s an awful lot of stealing, Larson. How sure are you?”

  “I have all the documentation here, Commissioner.” Larson held up the aluminum case. “There are procurement requisitions, stock release authorizations, cargo manifests, delivery signals—I couldn’t show them to anyone else because it obviously involves people at a high level, sir.”

  The Commissioner stopped. “What do you mean— high level?”

  “None of the missing stuff could have been taken without the knowledge of somebody pretty high up in SRP, sir.”

  The Commissioner looked up and down the long, empty corridor. “Are you seriously telling me that SRP executives have been conspiring to steal nine million marks’ worth of WFC materials—not food?”

  “Yes, sir. It has been very cleverly done—on a systematic basis.”

  “Any names?”

  “Well, sir, I hesitate to— ”

  “You’ve gone too far to hesitate, Larson.”

  “Chief-Coordinator Richards either knows about it, or somebody has been forging his authorizations, sir.”

  The Commissioner drew his hand down his nose and over his mouth. For a moment, he looked old and indecisive. A flicker of doubt crossed Larson’s face. Maybe he had made a mistake, maybe he should have gone to Richards—everybody knew he was the most ambitious man in the building.

  Then the Commissioner took his arm.

  “Come on, son, we’re going to the movies. Stay close to me and don’t let that case out of your hands!”

  1 :

  .

  C

  The only sound was of an unseen baby, crying . . .

  There were eight people in a large salon with a high, ornate ceiling, four men in dinner jackets, four young women in revealing gowns. The youngest man was obviously their guest. The facial gestures of the women were surprisingly lewd.

  They sat at a giass table. Four naked girls served each guest, plates piled so heavily food spilled onto the glass.

  The youngest man’s face became puzzled and then horrified as they started to tear wings and legs off whole chickens, wolfing into white flesh, cramming their mouths, swilling down glasses of wine. Through the glass table, he saw entwined legs, groping hands . . .

  Still the only sound was of a baby crying . . .

  A farmer walked across a harvest field in blinding sunshine. His heavy boots sank into dry, baking soil between thin patches of wheat. He pulled off an ear and rubbed it between his palms. Blowing away the chaff, he was left with a few wizened grains. As he stared across the blighted field, tears formed in his eyes...

  The child went on crying ...

  In the deserted surburban street, all seemed normal—neat villas, parked cars, trim gardens—but with uncut lawns. The door of one house lay ajar. Inside, it was a typical suburban home, mass-produced paintings of rural scenes on the walls, coats and hats on a coatrack.

  In the lounge, three people were sitting on a sofa. On

  the TV screen flickered news pictures of fighting crowds. On top of the TV set, two dead goldfish cocooned in white fungus were floating in a glass bowl. The faces of the father, mother, and teenaged daughter were gray and emaciated . . .

  On and on went the child’s crying .. .

  A smiling politician stood on the back of an open truck that stopped in a city square. He waved his arms in genial greeting to the crowd. Smiling broadly, he began to hand out small, black loaves, shaking hands with the people. Those at the back pushed forward. Four armed soldiers stood up beside the politician. A little girl scrambled on the ground for a loaf. A man punched her face and tore the loaf from her hands. The angry politician pointed him out and the soldiers shot him in the back. As he fell, another man snatched the loaf. The crowd became desperate, faces drawn with hunger. A man tried to climb into the truck. A soldier shot him in the face from six inches. Somebody threw a brick. The politician’s face turned to a snarl. The truck pulled away. The demented people tried to chase it. The politician ordered the soldiers to fire at them. They turned back, to fight like wolves for any loaves in sight.. .

  The child’s crying became louder...

  Down the sloping rear of a hydraulic truck, corpse after corpse slid into the communal pit...

  Suddenly the youngest man stood up, overturning the glass table, showering food and plates and glasses onto the floor. He easily evaded their drunken lurches and ran out of the salon. A beautiful girl, naked to the hips, moved through the greasy debris on all-fours, trying to cram white meat into her mouth. One of the men poured red wine on her back and shoulders...

  And still the only sound was of the crying baby ...

  “Didn’t you like it, Commissioner?’’ asked the anxious Mazzini, following them into the corridor. “Those were only the pre-credit sequences—the hero joins WFC and becomes a pioneer of marine-agriculture—we have some very good stuff with sharks— ”

  “I thought you might have,” the Commissioner said drily. “My only worry is the food orgy.”<
br />
  “I think we’ve been careful to show them as elitist pigs. We even thought of making them cannibals.”

  “Don’t start any trends!”

  Half an hour later, the Commissioner put down the last of the documents Larson had brought from New York. “You’re right, this needed the collusion of top people. Four hundred solid-circuits leave the microelectronics factory at Leipzig, yet only two hundred reach the Stellar Probe at Houston—and nobody complains?”

  “Houston is held up so often on components deliveries they were grateful for two hundred circuits out of the blue.”

  “Right. Get onto Leipzig for a copy of the original procurement authorization. Make it a routine stock enquiry; we don’t want to cause ripples at this stage.”

  “There’s something else, sir. There was a man at Kennedy Airport, some kind of professor, he used this word Arcadia which occurs on some of the documents. His name is Bruce. I ought to report, sir, that he bribed the airport staff with meat to— ”

  “Bruce? Bob Bruce?” snapped the Commissioner. “Tall, wild gray hair?”

  “Yes, sir I felt it was my duty—”

  “You did right, Larson. Bruce used to be very prominent in this building—never mind—you get onto Leipzig.”

  “Yes, sir.” Larson began to put the documents back into his attache case. “No, leave those with me,” the Commissioner said quickly.

  When Larson had gone, he buzzed Schumann.

  “Madelaine—you have any close friends in the office of Special Research Projects?”

  “One of my dormitory girls works there—Annalise Koberstein.”

  “Would she be impressed if she met me?”

  “She has your photograph pasted onto her wardrobe, she— ”

  “Tell her to come to your office—say you have a bar

  THE MICRONAUTS

  of chocolate. Don’t tell her she is meeting me. After that, get me Khomich; he’ll be at Army Brigade HQ in London. Then find out where George Richards is—I don’t want to speak to him, just his current location.”

  He sat back, a faint smile showing his elation. The stealing of nine million marks in materials was no delusion—just what he needed to discredit Richards once and for all.

  The trial would be fully networked. The death sentences would show that nobody was above the law. And the public would go on revering him, the one man who stood between them and anarchy, ‘‘The great protector.”

  That afternoon, he managed two lengths underwater in the little lake beside the ghost village. As always after a trip into the Scheduled Zones, his ears were still buzzing with the faint roar of unaccustomed noise. And, as always, the sadness he felt as he floated on his back in the warm water was almost tangible. That same blue sky stretched over all the crumbling cities and all the hungry, frightened people and here he was, totally alone by choice, yet full of nostalgia for the world he had abandoned.

  That was when he saw it, at least two hundred feet above the lake meadow, a lone buzzard soaring gently enough to be hanging on a string. So good was his vision he could see the five fingers of feathers at the tips of the brown-barred wings.

  Bruce began to paddle quietly to the bank. This was the first time he had known a buzzard to come so far south from the remote areas where many predators had escaped the toxic cycles, and he wanted it on film for the long winter months when he would be truly alone.

  He did not bother to dry himself before pulling on his ragged denim shorts and thong sandals. He began to walk toward the decaying buildings of the dead village.

  At first, he thought it was the same buzzing—he stopped and pressed his ears to clear them of water.

  No—it was a motor!

  He started to run. Any noise created by human agency meant danger in the Outlands.

  By the time he reached the loft above the old church,

  the car was stopped at a trench he had dug across the track road leading to the village. It carried no markings or registration plates, a battered old Mercedes from the seventies.

  One man was in sight, standing in front of the car. He had a cropped head. He was wearing army clothes. He seemed puzzled by the ditch.

  Bruce took his bolt-action PS 656 hunting rifle from its canvas case and clipped on a magazine. The man beside the car had all the signs of an army or police deserter—without ration cards, they had nowhere to go but the Outlands. And with nothing to lose they were deadlier than any wolf pack.

  When he saw the butt of a pistol sticking up from the man’s waistband, he raised the rifle and cocked the bolt. In the telescopic sight he saw a square, pink face; it seemed familiar.

  The first bullet hit the dusty track to the left of the man’s black boots. The second bullet raised a spurt of dust a few inches to the right of his boots.

  Incredibly, the man merely hesitated, then started walking toward the village—holding his hands above his head.

  The third bullet was close enough to throw dirt on to his black boots. He stopped.

  ‘‘Professor Bruce?” he shouted. ‘‘I have a message for you. Can I speak to you?”

  Bruce stepped forward into the sunlight at the gap in the stone wall. He cocked the rifle again.

  “I- can hear you.”

  ‘‘I have a message from Commissioner Towne.”

  ‘‘Why didn’t he use the radio?”

  ‘‘He wants to see you.”

  ‘‘He can go to hell. So can you. Turn around and walk back to your car and drive away from here.”

  ‘‘Look, Professor, my name is— ”

  This time the bullet screamed past his head.

  His shrug seemed to admit defeat. He turned back toward the old Mercedes.

  When the car was out of sight on the old main road

  heading west for Vaasa, Bruce put the rifle back in its canvas case and climbed down the shaky wooden ladder. As his sandaled foot reached down from the last rung, something hard touched his bare back. He looked over his shoulder, his foot still in the air.

  “Don’t move, sir,” said the fresh-faced young Englishman holding the pistol. “Please keep your hands on the ladder.”

  The car engine stopped and he was then allowed to step off the ladder and turn around.

  “Staff-Commander Andrei Khomich, WFC Security Department,” said the burly man he had been shooting at.

  “Khomich ‘the Butcher’?”

  Khomich nodded. His arms were strong and hairless, his presence aggressively physical, not a tall man, but one who seemed to fill a great deal of space. The absence of emotion from his face was more intimidating than any scowl or sneer. He looked along what had been the village street. “You will get dressed and pack whatever clothes you need for a journey to Geneva, Professor Bruce. The Commissioner wishes to see you.”

  “Why did he send you? He can speak to me on the radio.”

  Khomich shrugged. “He knew you would refuse to come to Geneva. Please hurry with your preparations. I want to be back in Vaasa before dark.”

  “So you’re the dreaded ‘Butcher’ Khomich mothers threaten their children with?” Bruce drawled contemptuously. “Well, this may be a new experience for you, but I am not trembling at the knees. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Khomich looked him up and down. His small, blue eyes seemed amused. “What do you do up here on your own, Professor—talk to the butterflies and rob the bees of their honey?”

  “Look, damn you— ”

  “We are leaving in ten minutes. Is there any water here?”

  Bruce snorted. “Don’t you recognize that wet stuff in the lake? No—I suppose all your liquids come out of plastic bottles.’’

  Khomich turned to the young Englishman. “Fill the containers, Captain Robinson. Look out for hostiles.’’

  “Yes,’’ Bruce jeered, “it must make you jumpy, out here in the wilderness without a whole company of apes in helmets to protect you. Why did the Englishman say I was under arrest?”

  “You are charged with food-b
ribery at Kennedy Airport.”

  “That young creep with the twitchy cheek! He did put in a report! My God, every time I meet one of my own species, I feel better disposed toward tapeworms.”

  Khomich nodded slowly. “You gave a child food and bribed officials to let the mother fly to Europe—yet you renounced a high-level position to live up here. You have a bleeding heart for one child, but the rest of humanity can rot for all you care—is that it?”

  “They’ll rot without my help—if all you policemen don’t execute them first. Excuse me.”

  He walked away quickly, catching Khomich off guard. He caught up with Bruce as he was entering the door of a low stone barn. When his eyes adjusted from the brilliant sunshine, he saw rows of glass tanks on trestle benches, some brightly-lit, some in darkness. He bent down to peer into one of the tanks.

  “Bugs? Is that what you do up here?”

  “Yes—to you they would be just bugs."

  “What are they to you, Professor— friends? You prefer them to people?”

  “I prefer them to bureaucrats and policemen.”

  Khomich watched him topping up large glass containers connected to the tanks by plastic tubing. Then he went up the rows, pouring a brown, treacly substance into saucers on the mossy floors of some tanks, into others dropping pieces of what Khomich realized was bad meat.

  “This is research of some kind?”

  “I’m trying to learn how these bugs communicate.

  It’s infinitely more rewarding than communication with my own species.”