Hand-in-hand they walked, each wrapped for a time in his own thoughts. Then, all at once, Charley said, ‘You don’t have to hang around me, Nick. Let’s cut the cord; you go back to Kleo – she’ll be glad to see you. I know women; I know how fast they get over being mad, especially at something like that, where what menaces her – in other words, me – is gone. Right?’
It was probably true, but he did not answer; he had not as yet found his way out of the tangle of his own thoughts. What, in toto, had happened to him today? He had discovered that his boss Earl Zeta was an Under Man; he had joined with Zeta in drinking alcohol; they had gone to Charley’s – or Denny’s – apartment; there had been a fight, and he had gotten out of there with Charley, rescuing her, a complete stranger, with the help of his bulky, strong boss.
And then the business with Kleo.
‘Are you sure the PSS doesn’t know about your apartment?’ he asked Charley. In other words, he thought, have they picked me as a suspect, yet?
‘We’re very careful,’ Charley said.
‘Are you? You left that pamphlet in your coat for Kleo to find. That wasn’t very frosty.’
‘I was all unhooked. From slipping the Purple Sea Cow. I never do things like that, usually.’
‘Do you have any more on you? In your purse?’
‘No.’
He took her purse from her and looked through it. It was true. He then searched the pockets of her coat, as they walked along. True of her coat, too. But Cordon’s writing also circulated in the form of microdots; she could have several of them on her, and, if they picked her up, the track boys of the PSS would find them.
I guess I don’t trust her, he decided. After she let that happen with Kleo. Obviously, if she could do it once—
He thought, then. Probably the tracks are watching the apartment, monitoring it in some way. Who comes in; who goes out. I came in; I went out. So, if that’s the case, I’m listed.
So it’s already too late to go back to Bobby and Kleo.
‘You look so grim,’ Charley said, in a merry, what-the-hell voice.
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I’ve crossed the line.’
‘Yes, you’re an Under Man.’
‘Wouldn’t that make anybody look grim?’
Charley said, ‘It should fill you with joy.’
‘I don’t want to go to a detention work camp on—’
‘But it’s not going to end that way, Nick. Provoni is coming back and everything will be okay.’ Holding his hand, she swung her head, cocked it, peered at him birdwise. ‘Cheer up, and stand up straight! Look happy! Be happy!’
My family, he thought, is broken and by her. We have nowhere we can go – they’d find us in a motel easily – and—
Zeta, he thought. He can help me. And the responsibility, to a great extent, is his: Zeta set off everything that’s happened today.
‘Oh,’ Charley said, blinking as he tugged her to a ped overpass. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the United Front Slightly Used Squibs lot,’ Nick said.
‘Oh, you mean to Earl Zeta. Maybe he’s back at the apartment, fighting with Denny. No, I guess Denny must have gotten away by now; anyhow, that’s what we thought when you were driving, because of that one sight of him on the roof. Oh, good; now I can enjoy some more of your driving ability. Do you know, as good as Denny is, and he’s really good, you’re better? Have I told you that before? Yes, I guess I did.’ She seemed rattled. And, all at once, ill at ease.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked as they entered the up-ramp which would take them to the fiftieth level lot where he had parked his squib.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid Denny will be looking there. Hanging around, skulking, watching. Just watching.’ She snarled out the word, savagely, startling him – he hadn’t seen this side of her before. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t go there. You go alone. Let me off somewhere, or I’ll just take the down-ramp and—’ She made a whisking motion with the flat of her hand. ‘Out of your life forever.’ Once more she laughed, in the manner that she had always before. ‘But we can still be friends. We can communicate by postcard.’ She laughed. ‘We’ll always know one another, even if we never meet again. Our souls have meshed, and when souls have meshed, one can’t be destroyed without the other dying.’ She was laughing uncontrollably, now, virtually hysterically; she pawed at her eyes, giggling through her flattened hands. ‘That’s what Cordon teaches and it’s so funny; it’s just so goddam funny.’
He took hold of her hands and lifted them away from her face. Her eyes shone with brilliance, star-like eyes fixed on his own, searching deeply into his, as if obtaining her response not from what he said but from what his own eyes showed.
‘You think I’m nuts,’ she said.
‘Beyond doubt.’
‘Here you and I are in this awful situation, and Cordon is going to be executed and all I can do is laugh.’ She had ceased, now, but with visible effort; her mouth trembled as it held the laughter back. ‘I know a place where we can get some alcohol,’ she said. ‘Let’s go there; then we can really get blurfled.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m blurfled enough now.’
‘That’s why you did what you did, choosing to go with me and leaving Kleo. Because of the alc Zeta gave you.’
‘Is that it?’ he asked. Perhaps it was. It was well-known that alcohol produced personality changes, and he certainly had not been acting in his usual fashion. But it was an unusual situation; what would have been his ‘usual’ reactions to what had happened to him today?
I have to take charge of this situation, he thought. I have to get this girl under control – or leave her.
‘I don’t like to be bossed,’ Charley said. ‘I can see you’re about to boss me around, tell me what I can and can’t do. Like Denny does. Like my father did. Someday, I’ll have to tell you some of the things my father did to me… then maybe you’ll understand better. Some of the things, the awful things, he made me do. Sexual things.’
‘Oh,’ Nick said. Which might explain her lesbian tendencies, if Denny was actually right in so describing her.
Charley said, ‘I think what I’ll do with you is take you to a Cordonite printing center.’
‘You know where one is?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Then the tracks would give their eyeteeth to—’
‘I know. They’d love to catch me. I know about it through Denny. He’s a bigger dealer than you realize.’
‘Would he expect you to go there?’
‘He doesn’t know I know. I followed him one time – I thought he was sleeping with some other girl, but it wasn’t that: it was a printing center. I sneaked off and pretended I’d never left the apartment; it was late at night and I pretended to be asleep.’ She took his hand, squeezed it. ‘This is a particularly interesting plant because they turn out Cordonite material for children. Like, “That’s right! It’s a horse! And when men were free they rode horses!” Like that.’
‘Lower your voice,’ Nick said. There were others riding the upramp and her vibrant, adolescent voice carried, augmented by her enthusiasm.
‘Okay,’ she said, obediently.
‘Isn’t a Cordonite printing plant at the top of the order of the organization?’ he asked.
‘There is no organization, there’s only mutual bonds of brotherhood. No, one of the printing plants isn’t at the top; what’s at the top is the receiving station.’
‘Receiving station? What does it receive?’
‘Messages from Cordon.’
‘From Brightforth Prison?’
Charley said, ‘He has a transmitter stitched inside his body that they haven’t found yet, even with the x-rays they took. They found two, but not this one, and through this one we get daily meditations, his evolving thoughts and ideas, which the printing plants start cranking out as rapidly as possible. And from there, the material is passed to the distribution centers, where pushers pick it up and carry it off and try to get people to buy it.’ Sh
e added, ‘As you can guess, there’s a high mortality rate among the pushers.’
‘How many printing plants do you have?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Not many.’
‘Do the authorities—’
‘The pissers – pardon me, the PSS – locate one once in a while. But then we set up another, so the number remains generally the same.’ She paused, pondering. ‘I think we’d better go in a taxi rather than in your squib. If it’s all right with you.’
‘Any special reason why?’
‘I’m not sure. They may have monitored your license number; we usually try to reach the printing plants in rented cars. Taxis are the best.’
‘Is it far from here?’ he asked.
‘You mean like miles off in the country? No, it’s in the middle of town, in the busiest part. Come on.’ She hopped onto the downramp and he followed. A moment later they reached street level; the girl at once began peering into the traffic in search of a cab.
TEN
A cab floated leisurely from the traffic and came to rest at the curb beside them. Its door slid open and they entered.
‘Feller’s Luggage Emporium,’ Charley said to the driver. ‘On 16th Avenue.’
‘Um,’ the driver said, and lifted his ship up and once more into the flow of traffic, except, this time, going the other way.
‘But Feller’s Luggage—’ Nick began, but invisibly Charley dug her elbow into his ribs; he took the hint and lapsed into silence.
Ten minutes later, the cab left them off. Nick paid, and the cab floated on like a child’s painted toy.
‘Feller’s Luggage,’ Charley said, surveying the aristocratic building. ‘One of the oldest and most respected retail establishments in the city. You thought it would be a warehouse behind a gas station on the edge of town. Swarming with rats.’ She took his hand, led him through the automatically-opening doors and onto the carpeted floor of the world famous shop.
A smartly dressed salesman approached them. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, affably.
Charley said, ‘I have a set of luggage put away. Synthetic ostrich hide, four pieces. My name is Barrows. Julie Barrows.’
‘Would you please step this way?’ the salesman said to her, turning and walking with dignity toward the rear of the store.
‘Thank you,’ Charley said. Again she dug Nick in the ribs, this time gratuitously. And smiled up at him.
A heavy metal door slid aside, revealing a small room in which a variety of pieces of luggage rested on plain wooden shelves. The door through which they had come now slid quietly shut. The salesman waited a moment, consulting his watch, then carefully wound the watch… and, swiftly, the far wall of the room divided, showing a greater room beyond. A heavy pounding reached Nick’s ears, major printing machinery was at work, and he could see it now. As little as he knew about printing, he knew this: it was totally modern, the best there was, and quite expensive. The Under Men presses did not consist of mimeograph machines, not in the least.
Four soldiers in gray uniforms and wearing gas masks surrounded them, all holding lethal Hopp’s tubes. ‘Who are you?’ one of them, a sergeant, asked – asked hell. Demanded.
‘I’m Denny’s girl,’ Charley said.
‘Who’s Denny?’
‘You know.’ Gesturing, Charley said, ‘Denny Strong. He operates in this area at the distribution level.’
A scanner swept back and forth, surveying them.
The soldiers conferred, speaking into lip-level microphones and listening through earfone buttons in their right ears. ‘Okay,’ the sergeant in charge said at last. He turned his attention back to Nick and Charley. ‘What do you want here?’ he demanded.
‘A place to stay for a while,’ Charley said.
Nodding toward Nick, the occifer said, ‘Who’s he?’
‘A convert. He came over to us today.’
Nick said, ‘Because of the announcement of Cordon’s execution.’
The soldier grunted, pondered. ‘We’re housing just about everyone already. I don’t know…’ He chewed his lower lip, frowning. ‘Do you also want to stay here?’ he asked Nick.
‘For a day or so. No longer.’
Earnestly, Charley said, ‘You know Denny has those psychopathic rages, but generally as far as lasting—’
‘I don’t know Denny,’ the soldier said. ‘Can you two occupy the same room?’
‘I – guess so,’ Charley said.
‘Yes,’ Nick said.
‘We can give you sanctuary for seventy-two hours,’ the sergeant said. ‘Then you’ll have to move on.’
‘How big is this place?’ Nick asked him.
‘Four square city blocks.’
He believed it. ‘This is not a nickel and dime operation,’ he said to the soldiers.
‘If it were,’ one of them said, ‘we wouldn’t have much of a chance. We print tracts by the million, here. Most are ultimately confiscated by the authorities, but not all. We use the junk mail principle; even if one-fiftieth are read – and all the others thrown away – it’s worth the cost; it’s the way to do it.’
Charley said, ‘What’s come from Cordon now that he knows he’s going to be executed? Or does he know? Have they told him?’
‘The receiving station would know,’ the soldier said. ‘But we won’t hear from them for a few more hours; there’s generally a lapse while the material is edited.’
‘Then you don’t print Cordon’s words exactly as they come from him,’ Nick said.
The soldiers laughed. And did not answer.
‘He rambles,’ Charley explained.
Nick said, ‘Is there going to be any attempt to agitate for a stay of execution?’
‘I doubt if that’s been decided,’ one of the soldiers said.
‘It wouldn’t have any effect,’ another said. ‘We’d fail; they would execute him and we’d all be in detention camps.’
‘So you’re going to let him die?’ Nick asked.
‘We have no control over it,’ several soldiers said at once.
Nick said, ‘Once he’s dead, you’ll have nothing to print; you’ll have to shut down.’
The soldiers laughed.
‘You’ve heard from Provoni,’ Charley said.
A silence, and then one of the soldiers, the sergeant, said, ‘A garbled message. But authentic.’
The soldier beside him said quietly, ‘Thors Provoni is on his way back.’
PART TWO
ELEVEN
‘That puts a new light on things,’ Willis Gram said gloomily. ‘Read the intercepted message again.’
Director Barnes read from the copy before him. ‘“Have found… who will… their help will… and I am…” That’s all that came through well enough to be transcribed. Static got the rest.’
‘But all the answers are there,’ Gram said. ‘He’s alive; he’s coming back; he has found someone – not something, but someone, because he used the word “their”. He says, “Their help will…” and what’s missing probably is the rest of a sentence reading, “Their help will be enough.” Or words to that effect.’
‘I think you’re being too pessimistic,’ Barnes said.
‘I have to be. Anyhow, hell, I’ve got the evidence to be pessimistic about. They’ve been waiting for word from Provoni all this time and now it’s come. Their printing plants will have the news all over the planet in the next six hours, and there’s no way we can stop them.’
‘We can bomb their main printing plant on 16th Avenue,’ Director Barnes said; he was all for that. He had waited months for permission to destroy the huge Under Men plant.
‘They’ll patch this into the TV circuit,’ Gram said. ‘Two minutes – then we’ll find their transmitter and that’ll be the end of that, but they’ll have gotten their damn message across.’
‘Then give up,’ Barnes said.
‘I’m not going to give up. I’m never going to. I’ll have Provoni killed within an hour of the time he lands on Earth, and whoeve
r it is he’s brought to help them – we’ll snuff them, too. Damn nonhuman organisms, they probably have six legs and a tail that stings. Like a scorpion.’
‘And they’ll sting us to death,’ Barnes said.
‘Something like that.’ In his bathrobe and slippers, Gram paced moodily about his bedroom office, his arms locked behind him, stomach protruding. ‘Doesn’t it seem to you to be a betrayal of the human race, Old Men, Under Men, New Men, Unusuals – everyone? To bring in a nonhumanoid life form which’ll probably want to colonize here once it’s destroyed us?’
‘Except,’ Barnes pointed out, ‘it’s not going to destroy us; we’re going to destroy it.’
‘You just never know for sure about these things,’ Gram said. ‘They might gain a foothold. That’s what we have to prevent.’
Barnes said, ‘From a calculation of the distance from which the message came, it’s computed that he – and they – won’t be here for two more months.’
‘They may have a faster-than-light drive,’ Gram said shrewdly. ‘Provoni may not be aboard the Gray Dinosaur; he may be on one of their ships. And hell, the Gray Dinosaur is fast enough; remember, it was the prototype of a whole new line of interstellar transportation type ships; he got the first one and away he went.’
‘I’ll admit this,’ Barnes said. ‘Provoni may have modified the ship’s drive; he may have beefed it up. He always was a tinkerer. I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.’
‘Cordon will be executed immediately,’ Gram said. ‘Get it done now. Notify the media, so they can be present. Round up sympathizers.’
‘Ours? Or theirs?’
Gram spat out, ‘Ours.’
‘In addition,’ Barnes asked, scratching out notes on a pad of paper, ‘may I have permission to bomb the 16th Avenue printing plant?’
‘It’s bomb proof,’ Gram said.
‘Not exactly. It’s divided, like a beehive, into—’
‘I know all about it – I’ve read your damn plodding, tiresome memos about it for months. You have a thing about that 16th Avenue printing plant, don’t you?’
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