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The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick

The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick - раздел Литература, The Complete Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 4: ...

The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 4:

The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories

By Philip K. Dick

EVersion 4.0 / Scan Notes at EOF

Contents

Autofac Service Call Captive Market

Quot;More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds." -Wall Street Journal

Many thousands of readers worldwide consider Philip K. Dick to have been the greatest science fiction writer on any planet. Since his untimely death… This collection includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length… Dick won the prestigious Hugo Award for best novel of 1963 for The Man in the High Castle and in the last year of his…

Quot;A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection." -Kirkus Reviews

Quot;Awe-inspiring." -The Washington Post

  CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022

ISBN 0-8065-2379-4

 

Introduction

By James Tiptree, Jr.

I think, first and pervasively, it was the strangeness. Strange, Dick was and is. I think it was that which kept me combing the SF catalogs for more… And yet his characters are seemingly designed to be ordinary people -- except… In how many other science fiction stories do you know what the hero does for a living when he isn't caught up in the…

Autofac

 

I

Tension hung over the three waiting men. They smoked, paced back and forth, kicked aimlessly at weeds growing by the side of the road. A hot noonday sun glared down on brown fields, rows of neat plastic houses, the distant line of mountains to the west.

"Almost time," Earl Ferine said, knotting his skinny hands together. "It varies according to the load, a half second for every additional pound."

Bitterly, Morrison answered, "You've got it plotted? You're as bad as it is. Let's pretend it just happens to be late."

The third man said nothing. O'Neill was visiting from another settlement; he didn't know Ferine and Morrison well enough to argue with them. Instead, he crouched down and arranged the papers clipped to his aluminum check-board. In the blazing sun, O'Neill's arms were tanned, furry, glistening with sweat. Wiry, with tangled gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses, he was older than the other two. He wore slacks, a sports shirt and crepe-soled shoes. Between his fingers, his fountain pen glittered, metallic and efficient.

"What're you writing?" Ferine grumbled.

"I'm laying out the procedure we're going to employ," O'Neill said mildly. "Better to systemize it now, instead of trying at random. We want to know what we tried and what didn't work. Otherwise we'll go around in a circle. The problem we have here is one of communication; that's how I see it."

"Communication," Morrison agreed in his deep, chesty voice. "Yes, we can't get in touch with the damn thing. It comes, leaves off its load and goes on -- there's no contact between us and it."

"It's a machine," Ferine said excitedly. "It's dead -- blind and deaf."

"But it's in contact with the outside world," O'Neill pointed out. "There has to be some way to get to it. Specific semantic signals are meaningful to it; all we have to do is find those signals. Rediscover, actually. Maybe half a dozen out of a billion possibilities."

A low rumble interrupted the three men. They glanced up, wary and alert. The time had come.

"Here it is," Ferine said. "Okay, wise guy, let's see you make one single change in its routine."

The truck was massive, rumbling under its tightly packed load. In many ways, it resembled conventional human-operated transportation vehicles, but with one exception -- there was no driver's cabin. The horizontal surface was a loading stage, and the part that would normally be the headlights and radiator grill was a fibrous spongelike mass of receptors, the limited sensory apparatus of this mobile utility extension.

Aware of the three men, the truck slowed to a halt, shifted gears and pulled on its emergency brake. A moment passed as relays moved into action; then a portion of the loading surface tilted and a cascade of heavy cartons spilled down onto the roadway. With the objects fluttered a detailed inventory sheet.

"You know what to do," O'Neill said rapidly. "Hurry up, before it gets out of here."

Expertly, grimly, the three men grabbed up the deposited cartons and ripped the protective wrappers from them. Objects gleamed: a binocular microscope, a portable radio, heaps of plastic dishes, medical supplies, razor blades, clothing, food. Most of the shipment, as usual, was food. The three men systematically began smashing objects. In a few minutes, there was nothing but a chaos of debris littered around them.

"That's that," O'Neill panted, stepping back. He fumbled for his check-sheet. "Now let's see what it does."

The truck had begun to move away; abruptly it stopped and backed toward them. Its receptors had taken in the fact that the three men had demolished the dropped-off portion of the load. It spun in a grinding half circle and came around to face its receptor bank in their direction. Up went its antenna; it had begun communicating with the factory. Instructions were on the way.

A second, identical load was tilted and shoved off the truck.

"We failed," Ferine groaned as a duplicate inventory sheet fluttered after the new load. "We destroyed all that stuff for nothing."

"What now?" Morrison asked O'Neill. "What's the next strategem on our board?"

"Give me a hand." O'Neill grabbed up a carton and lugged it back to the truck. Sliding the carton onto the platform, he turned for another. The other two men followed clumsily after him. They put the load back onto the truck. As the truck started forward, the last square box was again in place.

The truck hesitated. Its receptors registered the return of its load. From within its works came a low sustained buzzing.

"This may drive it crazy," O'Neill commented, sweating. "It went through its operation and accomplished nothing."

The truck made a short, abortive move toward going on. Then it swung purposefully around and, in a blur of speed, again dumped the load onto the road.

"Get them!" O'Neill yelled. The three men grabbed up the cartons and feverishly reloaded them. But as fast as the cartons were shoved back on the horizontal stage, the truck's grapples tilted them down its far-side ramps and onto the road.

"No use," Morrison said, breathing hard. "Water through a sieve."

"We're licked," Ferine gasped in wretched agreement, "like always. We humans lose every time."

The truck regarded them calmly, its receptors blank and impassive. It was doing its job. The planetwide network of automatic factories was smoothly performing the task imposed on it five years before, in the early days of the Total Global Conflict.

"There it goes," Morrison observed dismally. The truck's antenna had come down; it shifted into low gear and released its parking brake.

"One last try," O'Neill said. He swept up one off the cartons and ripped it open. From it he dragged a ten-gallon milk tank and unscrewed the lid. "Silly as it seems."

"This is absurd," Ferine protested. Reluctantly, he found a cup among the littered debris and dipped it into the milk. "A kid's game!"

The truck has paused to observe them.

"Do it," O'Neill ordered sharply. "Exactly the way we practiced it."

The three of them drank quickly from the milk tank, visibly allowing the milk to spill down their chins; there had to be no mistaking what they were doing.

As planned, O'Neill was the first. His face twisting in revulsion, he hurled the cup away and violently spat the milk into the road.

"God's sake!" he choked.

The other two did the same; stamping and loudly cursing, they kicked over the milk tank and glared accusingly at the truck.

"It's no good!" Morrison roared.

Curious, the truck came slowly back. Electronic synapses clicked and whirred, responding to the situation; its antenna shot up like a flagpole.

"I think this is it," O'Neill said, trembling. As the truck watched, he dragged out a second milk tank, unscrewed its lid and tasted the contents. "The same!" he shouted at the truck. "It's just as bad!"

From the truck popped a metal cylinder. The cylinder dropped at Morrison's feet; he quickly snatched it up and tore it open.

 

STATE NATURE OF DEFECT

 

The instruction sheets listed rows of possible defects, with neat boxes by each; a punch-stick was included to indicate the particular deficiency of the product.

"What'll I check?" Morrison asked. "Contaminated? Bacterial? Sour? Rancid? Incorrectly labeled? Broken? Crushed? Cracked? Bent? Soiled?"

Thinking rapidly, O'Neill said, "Don't check any of them. The factory's undoubtedly ready to test and resample. It'll make its own analysis and then ignore us." His face glowed as frantic inspiration came. "Write in that blank at the bottom. It's an open space for further data."

"Write what?"

O'Neill said, "Write: the product is thoroughly pizzled."

"What's that?" Ferine demanded, baffled.

"Write it! It's a semantic garble -- the factory won't be able to understand it. Maybe we can jam the works."

With O'Neill's pen, Morrison carefully wrote that the milk was pizzled. Shaking his head, he resealed the cylinder and returned it to the truck. The truck swept up the milk tanks and slammed its railing tidily into place. With a shriek of tires, it hurtled off. From its slot, a final cylinder bounced; the truck hurriedly departed, leaving the cylinder lying in the dust.

O'Neill got it open and held up the paper for the others to see.

 

A FACTORY REPRESENTATIVE

WILL BE SENT OUT.

BE PREPARED TO SUPPLY COMPLETE DATA

ON PRODUCT DEFICIENCY.

 

For a moment, the three men were silent. Then Ferine began to giggle. "We did it. We contacted it. We got across."

"We sure did," O'Neill agreed. "It never heard of a product being pizzled."

Cut into the base of the mountains lay the vast metallic cube of the Kansas City factory. Its surface was corroded, pitted with radiation pox, cracked and scarred from the five years of war that had swept over it. Most of the factory was buried subsurface, only its entrance stages visible. The truck was a speck rumbling at high speed toward the expanse of black metal. Presently an opening formed in the uniform surface; the truck plunged into it and disappeared inside. The entrance snapped shut.

"Now the big job remains," O'Neill said. "Now we have to persuade it to close down operations -- to shut itself off."

 

 

II

Judith O'Neill served hot black coffee to the people sitting around the living room. Her husband talked while the others listened. O'Neill was as close to being an authority on the autofac system as could still be found.

In his own area, the Chicago region, he had shorted out the protective fence of the local factory long enough to get away with data tapes stored in its posterior brain. The factory, of course, had immediately reconstructed a better type offence. But he had shown that the factories were not infallible.

"The Institute of Applied Cybernetics," O'Neill explained, "had complete control over the network. Blame the war. Blame the big noise along the lines of communication that wiped out the knowledge we need. In any case, the Institute failed to transmit its information to us, so we can't transmit our information to the factories -- the news that the war is over and we're ready to resume control of industrial operations."

"And meanwhile," Morrison added sourly, "the damn network expands and consumes more of our natural resources all the time."

"I get the feeling," Judith said, "that if I stamped hard enough, I'd fall right down into a factory tunnel. They must have mines everywhere by now."

"Isn't there some limiting injunction?" Ferine asked nervously. "Were they set up to expand indefinitely?"

"Each factory is limited to its own operational area," O'Neill said, "but the network itself is unbounded. It can go on scooping up our resources forever. The Institute decided it gets top priority; we mere people come second."

"Will there be anything left for us?" Morrison wanted to know.

"Not unless we can stop the network's operations. It's already used up half a dozen basic minerals. Its search teams are out all the time, from every factory, looking everywhere for some last scrap to drag home."

"What would happen if tunnels from two factories crossed each other?"

O'Neill shrugged. "Normally, that won't happen. Each factory has its own special section of our planet, its own private cut of the pie for its exclusive use."

"But it could happen."

"Well, they're raw material-tropic; as long as there's anything left, they'll hunt it down." O'Neill pondered the idea with growing interest. "It's something to consider. I suppose as things get scarcer --"

He stopped talking. A figure had come into the room; it stood silently by the door, surveying them all.

In the dull shadows, the figure looked almost human. For a brief moment, O'Neill thought it was a settlement latecomer. Then, as it moved forward, he realized that it was only quasi-human: a functional upright biped chassis, with data-receptors mounted at the top, effectors and proprioceptors mounted in a downward worm that ended in floor-grippers. Its resemblance to a human being was testimony to nature's efficiency; no sentimental imitation was intended.

The factory representative had arrived.

It began without preamble. "This is a data-collecting machine capable of communicating on an oral basis. It contains both broadcasting and receiving apparatus and can integrate facts relevant to its line of inquiry."

The voice was pleasant, confident. Obviously it was a tape, recorded by some Institute technician before the war. Coming from the quasi-human shape, it sounded grotesque; O'Neill could vividly imagine the dead young man whose cheerful voice now issued from the mechanical mouth of this upright construction of steel and wiring.

"One word of caution," the pleasant voice continued. "It is fruitless to consider this receptor human and to engage it in discussions for which it is not equipped. Although purposeful, it is not capable of conceptual thought; it can only reassemble material already available to it."

The optimistic voice clicked out and a second voice came on. It resembled the first, but now there were no intonations or personal mannerisms. The machine was utilizing the dead man's phonetic speech-pattern for its own communication.

"Analysis of the rejected product," it stated, "shows no foreign elements or noticeable deterioration. The product meets the continual testing-standards employed throughout the network. Rejection is therefore on a basis outside the test area; standards not available to the network are being employed."

"That's right," O'Neill agreed. Weighing his words with care, he continued, "We found the milk substandard. We want nothing to do with it. We insist on more careful output."

The machine responded presently. "The semantic content of the term 'pizzled' is unfamiliar to the network. It does not exist in the taped vocabulary. Can you present a factual analysis of the milk in terms of specific elements present or absent?"

"No," O'Neill said warily; the game he was playing was intricate and dangerous. " 'Fizzled' is an overall term. It can't be reduced to chemical constituents."

"What does 'pizzled' signify?" the machine asked. "Can you define it in terms of alternate semantic symbols?"

O'Neill hesitated. The representative had to be steered from its special inquiry to more general regions, to the ultimate problem of closing down the network. If he could pry it open at any point, get the theoretical discussion started. . .

" 'Pizzled,' " he stated, "means the condition of a product that is manufactured when no need exists. It indicates the rejection of objects on the grounds that they are no longer wanted."

The representative said, "Network analysis shows a need of high-grade pasteurized milk-substitute in this area. There is no alternate source; the network controls all the synthetic mammary-type equipment in existence." It added, "Original taped instructions describe milk as an essential to human diet."

O'Neill was being outwitted; the machine was returning the discussion to the specific. "We've decided," he said desperately, "that we don't want any more milk. We'd prefer to go without it, at least until we can locate cows."

"That is contrary to the network tapes," the representative objected. "There are no cows. All milk is produced synthetically."

"Then we'll produce it synthetically ourselves," Morrison broke in impatiently. "Why can't we take over the machines? My God, we're not children! We can run our own lives!"

The factory representative moved toward the door. "Until such time as your community finds other sources of milk supply, the network will continue to supply you. Analytical and evaluating apparatus will remain in this area, conducting the customary random sampling."

Ferine shouted futilely, "How can we find other sources? You have the whole setup! You're running the whole show!" Following after it, he bellowed, "You say we're not ready to run things -- you claim we're not capable. How do you know? You don't give us a chance! We'll never have a chance!"

O'Neill was petrified. The machine was leaving; its one-track mind had completely triumphed.

"Look," he said hoarsely, blocking its way. "We want you to shut down, understand. We want to take over your equipment and run it ourselves. The war's over with. Damn it, you're not needed anymore!"

The factory representative paused briefly at the door. "The inoperative cycle," it said, "is not geared to begin until network production merely duplicates outside production. There is at this time, according to our continual sampling, no outside production. Therefore network production continues." Without warning, Morrison swung the steel pipe in his hand. It slashed against the machine's shoulder and burst through the elaborate network of sensory apparatus that made up its chest. The tank of receptors shattered; bits of glass, wiring and minute parts showered everywhere.

"It's a paradox!" Morrison yelled. "A word game -- a semantic game they're pulling on us. The Cyberneticists have it rigged." He raised the pipe and again brought it down savagely on the unprotesting machine. "They've got us hamstrung. We're completely helpless."

The room was in uproar. "It's the only way," Ferine gasped as he pushed past O'Neill. "We'll have to destroy them -- it's the network or us." Grabbing down a lamp, he hurled it in the "face" of the factory representative. The lamp and the intricate surface of plastic burst; Ferine waded in, groping blindly for the machine. Now all the people in the room were closing furiously around the upright cylinder, their impotent resentment boiling over. The machine sank down and disappeared as they dragged it to the floor.

Trembling, O'Neill turned away. His wife caught hold of his arm and led him to the side of the room.

"The idiots," he said dejectedly. "They can't destroy it; they'll only teach it to build more defenses. They're making the whole problem worse."

Into the living room rolled a network repair team. Expertly, the mechanical units detached themselves from the half-track mother-bug and scurried toward the mound of struggling humans. They slid between people and rapidly burrowed. A moment later, the inert carcass of the factory representative was dragged into the hopper of the mother-bug. Parts were collected, torn remnants gathered up and carried off. The plastic strut and gear was located. Then the units restationed themselves on the bug and the team departed.

Through the open door came a second factory representative, an exact duplicate of the first. And outside in the hall stood two more upright machines. The settlement had been combed at random by a corps of representatives. Like a horde of ants, the mobile data-collecting machines had filtered through the town until, by chance, one of them had come across O'Neill.

"Destruction of network mobile data-gathering equipment is detrimental to best human interests," the factory representative informed the roomful of people. "Raw material intake is at a dangerously low ebb; what basic materials still exist should be utilized in the manufacture of consumer commodities."

O'Neill and the machine stood facing each other.

"Oh?" O'Neill said softly. "That's interesting. I wonder what you're lowest on -- and what you'd really be willing to fight for."

 

Helicopter rotors whined tinnily above O'Neill's head; he ignored them and peered through the cabin window at the ground not far below.

Slag and ruins stretched everywhere. Weeds poked their way up, sickly stalks among which insects scuttled. Here and there, rat colonies were visible: matted hovels constructed of bone and rubble. Radiation had mutated the rats, along with most insects and animals. A little farther, O'Neill identified a squadron of birds pursuing a ground squirrel. The squirrel dived into a carefully prepared crack in the surface of slag and the birds turned, thwarted.

"You think we'll ever have it rebuilt?" Morrison asked. "It makes me sick to look at it."

"In time," O'Neill answered. "Assuming, of course, that we get industrial control back. And assuming that anything remains to work with. At best, it'll be slow. We'll have to inch out from the settlements."

To the right was a human colony, tattered scarecrows, gaunt and emaciated, living among the ruins of what had once been a town. A few acres of barren soil had been cleared; drooping vegetables wilted in the sun, chickens wandered listlessly here and there, and a fly-bothered horse lay panting in the shade of a crude shed.

"Ruins-squatters," O'Neill said gloomily. "Too far from the network -- not tangent to any of the factories."

"It's their own fault," Morrison told him angrily. "They could come into one of the settlements."

"That was their town. They're trying to do what we 're trying to do -- build up things again on their own. But they're starting now, without tools or machines, with their bare hands, nailing together bits of rubble. And it won't work. We need machines. We can't repair ruins; we've got to start industrial production."

Ahead lay a series of broken hills, chipped remains that had once been a ridge. Beyond stretched out the titanic ugly sore of an H-bomb crater, half filled with stagnant water and slime, a disease-ridden inland sea.

And beyond that -- a glitter of busy motion.

"There," O'Neill said tensely. He lowered the helicopter rapidly. "Can you tell which factory they're from?"

"They all look alike to me," Morrison muttered, leaning over to see. "We'll have to wait and follow them back, when they get a load."

"If they get a load," O'Neill corrected.

The autofac exploring crew ignored the helicopter buzzing overhead and concentrated on its job. Ahead of the main truck scuttled two tractors; they made their way up mounds of rubble, probes burgeoning like quills, shot down the far slope and disappeared into a blanket of ash that lay spread over the slag. The two scouts burrowed until only their antennas were visible. They burst up to the surface and scuttled on, their treads whirring and clanking.

"What are they after?" Morrison asked.

"God knows." O'Neill leafed intently through the papers on his clipboard. "We'll have to analyze all our back-order slips."

Below them, the autofac exploring crew disappeared behind. The helicopter passed over a deserted stretch of sand and slag on which nothing moved. A grove of scrub-brush appeared and then, far to the right, a series of tiny moving dots.

A procession of automatic ore carts was racing over the bleak slag, a string of rapidly moving metal trucks that followed one another nose to tail. O'Neill turned the helicopter toward them and a few minutes later it hovered above the mine itself.

Masses of squat mining equipment had made their way to the operations. Shafts had been sunk; empty carts waited in patient rows. A steady stream of loaded carts hurled toward the horizon, dribbling ore after them. Activity and the noise of machines hung over the area, an abrupt center of industry in the bleak wastes of slag.

"Here comes that exploring crew," Morrison observed, peering back the way they had come. "You think maybe they'll tangle?" He grinned. "No, I guess it's too much to hope for."

"It is this time," O'Neill answered. "They're looking for different substances, probably. And they're normally conditioned to ignore each other."

The first of the exploring bugs reached the line of ore carts. It veered slightly and continued its search; the carts traveled in their inexorable line as if nothing had happened.

Disappointed, Morrison turned away from the window and swore. "No use. It's like each doesn't exist for the other."

Gradually the exploring crew moved away from the line of carts, past the mining operations and over a ridge beyond. There was no special hurry; they departed without having reacted to the ore-gathering syndrome.

"Maybe they're from the same factory," Morrison said hopefully.

O'Neill pointed to the antennas visible on the major mining equipment. "Their vanes are turned at a different vector, so these represent two factories. It's going to be hard; we'll have to get it exactly right or there won't be any reaction." He clicked on the radio and got hold of the monitor at the settlement. "Any results on the consolidated back-order sheets?"

The operator put him through to the settlement governing offices.

"They're starting to come in," Ferine told him. "As soon as we get sufficient samplings, we'll try to determine which raw materials which factories lack. It's going to be risky, trying to extrapolate from complex products. There may be a number of basic elements common to the various sublets."

"What happens when we've identified the missing element?" Morrison asked O'Neill. "What happens when we've got two tangent factories short on the same material?"

"Then," O'Neill said grimly, "we start collecting the material ourselves -- even if we have to melt down every object in the settlements."

 

 

III

In the moth-ridden darkness of night, a dim wind stirred, chill and faint. Dense underbrush rattled metallically. Here and there a nocturnal rodent prowled, its senses hyper-alert, peering, planning, seeking food.

The area was wild. No human settlements existed for miles; the entire region had been seared flat, cauterized by repeated H-bomb blasts. Somewhere in the murky darkness, a sluggish trickle of water made its way among autofac slag and weeds, dripping thickly into what had once been an elaborate labyrinth of sewer mains. The pipes lay cracked and broken, jutting up into the night darkness, overgrown with creeping vegetation. The wind raised clouds of black ash that swirled and danced among the weeds. Once an enormous mutant wren stirred sleepily, pulled its crude protective night coat of rags around it and dozed off.

For a time, there was no movement. A streak of stars showed in the sky overhead, glowing starkly, remotely. Earl Ferine shivered, peered up and huddled closer to the pulsing heat-element placed on the ground between the three men.

"Well?" Morrison challenged, teeth chattering.

O'Neill didn't answer. He finished his cigarette, crushed it against a mound of decaying slag and, getting out his lighter, lit another. The mass of tungsten -- the bait -- lay a hundred yards directly ahead of them.

During the last few days, both the Detroit and Pittsburgh factories had run short of tungsten. And in at least one sector, their apparatus overlapped. This sluggish heap represented precision cutting tools, parts ripped from electrical switches, high-quality surgical equipment, sections of permanent magnets, measuring devices -- tungsten from every possible source, gathered feverishly from all the settlements.

Dark mist lay spread over the tungsten mound. Occasionally, a night moth fluttered down, attracted by the glow of reflected starlight. The moth hung momentarily, beat its elongated wings futilely against the interwoven tangle of metal and then drifted off, into the shadows of the thick-packed vines that rose up from the stumps of sewer pipes.

"Not a very damn pretty spot," Ferine said wryly.

"Don't kid yourself," O'Neill retorted. "This is the prettiest spot on Earth. This is the spot that marks the grave of the autofac network. People are going to come around here looking for it someday. There's going to be a plaque here a mile high."

"You're trying to keep your morale up," Morrison snorted. "You don't believe they're going to slaughter themselves over a heap of surgical tools and light-bulb filaments. They've probably got a machine down in the bottom level that sucks tungsten out of rock."

"Maybe," O'Neill said, slapping at a mosquito. The insect dodged cannily and then buzzed over to annoy Ferine. Ferine swung viciously at it and squatted sullenly down against the damp vegetation.

And there was what they had come to see.

O'Neill realized with a start that he had been looking at it for several minutes without recognizing it. The search-bug lay absolutely still. It rested at the crest of a small rise of slag, its anterior end slightly raised, receptors fully extended. It might have been an abandoned hulk; there was no activity of any kind, no sign of life or consciousness. The search-bug fitted perfectly into the wasted, fire-drenched landscape. A vague tub of metal sheets and gears and flat treads, it rested and waited. And watched.

It was examining the heap of tungsten. The bait had drawn its first bite.

"Fish," Ferine said thickly. "The line moved. I think the sinker dropped."

"What the hell are you mumbling about?" Morrison grunted. And then he, too, saw the search-bug. "Jesus," he whispered. He half rose to his feet, massive body arched forward. "Well, there's one of them. Now all we need is a unit from the other factory. Which do you suppose it is?"

O'Neill located the communication vane and traced its angle. "Pittsburgh, so pray for Detroit. . . pray like mad."

Satisfied, the search-bug detached itself and rolled forward. Cautiously approaching the mound, it began a series of intricate maneuvers, rolling first one way and then another. The three watching men were mystified -- until they glimpsed the first probing stalks of other search-bugs.

"Communication," O'Neill said softly. "Like bees."

Now five Pittsburgh search-bugs were approaching the mound of tungsten products. Receptors waving excitedly, they increased their pace, scurrying in a sudden burst of discovery up the side of the mound to the top. A bug burrowed and rapidly disappeared; The whole mound shuddered; the bug was down inside, exploring the extent of the find.

Ten minutes later, the first Pittsburgh ore carts appeared and began industriously hurrying off with their haul.

"Damn it!" O'Neill said, agonized. "They'll have it all before Detroit shows up."

"Can't we do anything to slow them down?" Ferine demanded helplessly. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed up a rock and heaved it at the nearest cart. The rock bounced off and the cart continued its work, unperturbed.

O'Neill got to his feet and prowled around, body rigid with impotent fury. Where were they? The autofacs were equal in all respects and the spot was the exact same linear distance from each center. Theoretically, the parties should have arrived simultaneously. Yet there was no sign of Detroit -- and the final pieces of tungsten were being loaded before his eyes.

But then something streaked past him.

He didn't recognize it, for the object moved too quickly. It shot like a bullet among the tangled vines, raced up the side of the hill-crest, poised for an instant to aim itself and hurtled down the far side. It smashed directly into the lead cart. Projectile and victim shattered in an abrupt burst of sound.

Morrison leaped up. "What the hell?"

"That's it!" Ferine screamed, dancing around and waving his skinny arms. "It's Detroit!"

A second Detroit search-bug appeared, hesitated as it took in the situation, and then flung itself furiously at the retreating Pittsburgh carts. Fragments of tungsten scattered everywhere -- parts, wiring, broken plates, gears and springs and bolts of the two antagonists flew in all directions. The remaining carts wheeled screechingly; one of them dumped its load and rattled off at top speed. A second followed, still weighed down with tungsten. A Detroit search-bug caught up with it, spun directly in its path and neatly overturned it. Bug and cart rolled down a shallow trench, into a stagnant pool of water. Dripping and glistening, the two of them struggled, half submerged.

"Well," O'Neill said unsteadily, "we did it. We can start back home." His legs felt weak. "Where's our vehicle?"

As he gunned the truck motor, something flashed a long way off, something large and metallic, moving over the dead slag and ash. It was a dense clot of carts, a solid expanse of heavy-duty ore carriers racing to the scene. Which factory were they from?

It didn't matter, for out of the thick tangle of black dripping vines, a web of counter-extensions was creeping to meet them. Both factories were assembling their mobile units. From all directions, bugs slithered and crept, closing in around the remaining heap of tungsten. Neither factory was going to let needed raw material get away; neither was going to give up its find. Blindly, mechanically, in the grip of inflexible directives, the two opponents labored to assemble superior forces.

"Come on," Morrison said urgently. "Let's get out of here. All hell is bursting loose."

O'Neill hastily turned the truck in the direction of the settlement. They began rumbling through the darkness on their way back. Every now and then, a metallic shape shot by them, going in the opposite direction.

"Did you see the load in that last cart?" Ferine asked, worried. "It wasn't empty."

Neither were the carts that followed it, a whole procession of bulging supply carriers directed by an elaborate high-level surveying unit.

"Guns," Morrison said, eyes wide with apprehension. "They're taking in weapons. But who's going to use them?"

"They are," O'Neill answered. He indicated a movement to their right. "Look over there. This is something we hadn't expected."

They were seeing the first factory representative move into action.

 

As the truck pulled into the Kansas City settlement, Judith hurried breathlessly toward them. Fluttering in her hand was a strip of metal-foil paper.

"What is it?" O'Neill demanded, grabbing it from her.

"Just come." His wife struggled to catch her breath. "A mobile car raced up, dropped it off and left. Big excitement. Golly, the factory's a blaze of lights. You can see it for miles."

O'Neill scanned the paper. It was a factory certification for the last group of settlement-placed orders, a total tabulation of requested and factory-analyzed needs. Stamped across the list in heavy black type were six foreboding words:

 

ALL SHIPMENTS SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

 

Letting out his breath harshly, O'Neill handed the paper over to Ferine. "No more consumer goods," he said ironically, a nervous grin twitching across his face. "The network's going on a wartime footing."

"Then we did it?" Morrison asked haltingly.

"That's right," O'Neill said. Now that the conflict had been sparked, he felt a growing, frigid terror. "Pittsburgh and Detroit are in it to the finish. It's too late for us to change our minds, now -- they're lining up allies."

 

 

IV

Cool morning sunlight lay across the ruined plain of black metallic ash. The ash smoldered a dull, unhealthy red; it was still warm.

"Watch your step," O'Neill cautioned. Grabbing hold of his wife's arm, he led her from the rusty, sagging truck, up onto the top of a pile of strewn concrete blocks, the scattered remains of a pillbox installation. Earl Ferine followed, making his way carefully, hesitantly.

Behind them, the dilapidated settlement lay spread out, a disorderly checkerboard of houses, buildings and streets. Since the autofac network had closed down its supply and maintenance, the human settlements had fallen into semibarbarism. The commodities that remained were broken and only partly usable. It had been over a year since the last mobile factory truck had appeared, loaded with food, tools, clothing and repair parts. From the flat expanse of dark concrete and metal at the foot of the mountains, nothing had emerged in their direction.

Their wish had been granted -- they were cut off, detached from the network.

On their own.

Around the settlement grew ragged fields of wheat and tattered stalks of sun-baked vegetables. Crude handmade tools had been distributed, primitive artifacts hammered out with great labor by the various settlements. The settlements were linked only by horsedrawn carts and by the slow stutter of the telegraph key.

They had managed to keep their organization, though. Goods and services were exchanged on a slow, steady basis. Basic commodities were produced and distributed. The clothing that O'Neill and his wife and Earl Ferine wore was coarse and unbleached, but sturdy. And they had managed to convert a few of the trucks from gasoline to wood.

"Here we are," O'Neill said. "We can see from here."

"Is it worth it?" Judith asked, exhausted. Bending down, she plucked aimlessly at her shoe, trying to dig a pebble from the soft hide sole. "It's a long way to come, to see something we've seen every day for thirteen months."

"True," O'Neill admitted, his hand briefly resting on his wife's limp shoulder. "But this may be the last. And that's what we want to see."

In the gray sky above them, a swift circling dot of opaque black moved. High, remote, the dot spun and darted, following an intricate and wary course. Gradually, its gyrations moved it toward the mountains and the bleak expanse of bomb-rubbled structure sunk in their base.

"San Francisco," O'Neill explained. "One of those long-range hawk projectiles, all the way from the West Coast."

"And you think it's the last?" Ferine asked.

"It's the only one we've seen this month." O'Neill seated himself and began sprinkling dried bits of tobacco into a trench of brown paper. "And we used to see hundreds."

"Maybe they have something better," Judith suggested. She found a smooth rock and tiredly seated herself. "Could it be?"

Her husband smiled ironically. "No. They don't have anything better."

The three of them were tensely silent. Above them, the circling dot of black drew closer. There was no sign of activity from the flat surface of metal and concrete; the Kansas City factory remained inert, totally unresponsive. A few billows of warm ash drifted across it and one end was partly submerged in rubble. The factory had taken numerous direct hits. Across the plain, the furrows of its subsurface tunnels lay exposed, clogged with debris and the dark, water-seeking tendrils of tough vines.

"Those damn vines," Ferine grumbled, picking at an old sore on his unshaven chin. "They're taking over the world."

Here and there around the factory, the demolished ruin of a mobile extension rusted in the morning dew. Carts, trucks, search-bugs, factory representatives, weapons carriers, guns, supply trains, subsurface projectiles, indiscriminate parts of machinery mixed and fused together in shapeless piles. Some had been destroyed returning to the factory; others had been contacted as they emerged, fully loaded, heavy with equipment. The factory itself -- what remained of it -- seemed to have settled more deeply into the earth. Its upper surface was barely visible, almost lost in drifting ash.

In four days, there had been no known activity, no visible movement of any sort.

"It's dead," Ferine said. "You can see it's dead."

O'Neill didn't answer. Squatting down, he made himself comfortable and prepared to wait. In his own mind, he was sure that some fragment of automation remained in the eroded factory. Time would tell. He examined his wrist-watch; it was eight thirty. In the old days, the factory would be starting its daily routine. Processions of trucks and varied mobile units would be coming to the surface, loaded with supplies, to begin their expeditions to the human settlement.

Off to the right, something stirred. He quickly turned his attention to it.

A single battered ore-gathering cart was creeping clumsily toward the factory. One last damaged mobile unit trying to complete its task. The cart was virtually empty; a few meager scraps of metal lay strewn in its hold. A scavenger. . . the metal was sections ripped from destroyed equipment encountered on the way. Feebly, like a blind metallic insect, the cart approached the factory. Its progress was incredibly jerky. Every now and then, it halted, bucked and quivered, and wandered aimlessly off the path.

"Control is bad," Judith said, with a touch of horror in her voice. "The factory's having trouble guiding it back."

Yes, he had seen that. Around New York, the factory had lost its high-frequency transmitter completely. Its mobile units had floundered in crazy gyrations, racing in random circles, crashing against rocks and trees, sliding into gullies, overturning, finally unwinding and becoming reluctantly inanimate.

The ore cart reached the edge of the ruined plain and halted briefly. Above it, the dot of black still circled the sky. For a time, the cart remained frozen.

"The factory's trying to decide," Ferine said. "It needs the material, but it's afraid of that hawk up there."

The factory debated and nothing stirred. Then the ore cart again resumed its unsteady crawl. It left the tangle of vines and started out across the blasted open plain. Painfully, with infinite caution, it headed toward the slab of dark concrete and metal at the base of the mountains.

The hawk stopped circling.

"Get down!" O'Neill said sharply. "They've got those rigged with the new bombs."

His wife and Perine crouched down beside him and the three of them peered warily at the plain and the metal insect crawling laboriously across it. In the sky, the hawk swept in a straight line until it hung directly over the cart. Then, without a sound or warning, it came down in a straight dive. Hands to her face, Judith shrieked, "I can't watch! It's awful! Like wild animals!"

"It's not after the cart," O'Neill grated.

As the airborne projectile dropped, the cart put on a burst of desperate speed. It raced noisily toward the factory, clanking and rattling, trying in a last futile attempt to reach safely. Forgetting the menace above, the frantically eager factory opened up and guided its mobile unit directly inside. And the hawk had what it wanted.

Before the barrier could close, the hawk swooped down in a long glide parallel with the ground. As the cart disappeared into the depths of the factory, the hawk shot after it, a swift shimmer of metal that hurtled past the clanking cart. Suddenly aware, the factory snapped the barrier shut. Grotesquely, the cart struggled; it was caught fast in the half-closed entrance.

But whether it freed itself didn't matter. There was a dull rumbling stir. The ground moved, billowed, then settled back. A deep shock wave passed beneath the three watching human beings. From the factory rose a single column of black smoke. The surface of concrete split like a dried pod; it shriveled and broke, and dribbled shattered bits of itself in a shower of ruin. The smoke hung for a while, drifting aimlessly away with the morning wind.

The factory was a fused, gutted wreck. It had been penetrated and destroyed.

O'Neill got stiffly to his feet. "That's all. All over with. We've got what we set out after -- we've destroyed the autofac network." He glanced at Perine. "Or was that what we were after?"

They looked toward the settlement that lay behind them. Little remained of the orderly rows of houses and streets of the previous years. Without the network, the settlement had rapidly decayed. The original prosperous neatness had dissipated; the settlement was shabby, ill-kept.

"Of course," Perine said haltingly. "Once we get into the factories and start setting up our own assembly lines. . ."

"Is there anything left?" Judith inquired.

"There must be something left. My God, there were levels going down miles!"

"Some of those bombs they developed toward the end were awfully big," Judith pointed out. "Better than anything we had in our war."

"Remember that camp we saw? The ruins-squatters?"

"I wasn't along," Perine said.

"They were like wild animals. Eating roots and larvae. Sharpening rocks, tanning hides. Savagery, bestiality."

"But that's what people like that want," Perine answered defensively

"Do they? Do we want this?" O'Neill indicated the straggling settlement. "Is this what we set out looking for, that day we collected the tungsten? Or that day we told the factory truck its milk was --" He couldn't remember the word.

"Pizzled," Judith supplied.

"Come on," O'Neill said. "Let's get started. Let's see what's left of that factory -- left for us."

 

They approached the ruined factory late in the afternoon. Four trucks rumbled shakily up to the rim of the gutted pit and halted, motors steaming, tailpipes dripping. Wary and alert, workmen scrambled down and stepped gingerly across the hot ash.

"Maybe it's too soon," one of them objected.

O'Neill had no intention of waiting. "Come on," he ordered. Grabbing up a flashlight, he stepped down into the crater.

The sheltered hull of the Kansas City factory lay directly ahead. In its gutted mouth, the ore cart still hung caught, but it was no longer struggling. Beyond the cart was an ominous pool of gloom. O'Neill flashed his light through the entrance; the tangled, jagged remains of upright supports were visible.

"We want to get down deep," he said to Morrison, who prowled cautiously beside him. "If there's anything left, it's at the bottom."

Morrison grunted. "Those boring moles from Atlanta got most of the deep layers."

"Until the others got their mines sunk." O'Neill stepped carefully through the sagging entrance, climbed a heap of debris that had been tossed against the slit from inside, and found himself within the factory -- an expanse of confused wreckage, without pattern or meaning.

"Entropy," Morrison breathed, oppressed. "The thing it always hated. The thing it was built to fight. Random particles everywhere. No purpose to it."

"Down underneath," O'Neill said stubbornly, "we may find some sealed enclaves. I know they got so they were dividing up into autonomous sections, trying to preserve repair units intact, to re-form the composite factory."

"The moles got most of them, too," Morrison observed, but he lumbered after O'Neill.

Behind them, the workmen came slowly. A section of wreckage shifted ominously and a shower of hot fragments cascaded down.

"You men get back to the trucks," O'Neill said. "No sense endangering any more of us than we have to. If Morrison and I don't come back, forget us -- don't risk sending a rescue party." As they left, he pointed out to Morrison a descending ramp still partially intact. "Let's get below."

Silently, the two men passed one dead level after another. Endless miles of dark ruin stretched out, without sound or activity. The vague shapes of darkened machinery, unmoving belts and conveyer equipment were partially visible, and the partially completed husks of war projectiles, bent and twisted by the final blast.

"We can salvage some of that," O'Neill said, but he didn't actually believe it. The machinery was fused, shapeless. Everything in the factory had run together, molten slag without form or use. "Once we get it to the surface ..."

"We can't," Morrison contradicted bitterly. "We don't have hoists or winches." He kicked at a heap of charred supplies that had stopped along its broken belt and spilled halfway across the ramp.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," O'Neill said as the two of them continued past vacant levels of machines. "But now that I look back, I'm not so sure."

They had penetrated a long way into the factory. The final level lap spread out ahead of them. O'Neill flashed the light here and there, trying to locate undestroyed sections, portions of the assembly process still intact.

It was Morrison who felt it first. He suddenly dropped to his hands and knees; heavy body pressed against the floor, he lay listening, face hard, eyes wide. "For God's sake --"

"What is it?" O'Neill cried. Then he, too, felt it. Beneath them, a faint, insistent vibration hummed through the floor, a steady hum of activity. They had been wrong; the hawk had not been totally successful. Below, in a deeper level, the factory was still alive. Closed, limited operations still went on.

"On its own," O'Neill muttered, searching for an extension of the descent lift. "Autonomous activity, set to continue after the rest is gone. How do we get down?"

The descent lift was broken off, sealed by a thick section of metal. The still-living layer beneath their feet was completely cut off; there was no entrance.

Racing back the way they had come, O'Neill reached the surface and hailed the first truck. "Where the hell's the torch? Give it here!"

The precious blowtorch was passed to him and he hurried back, puffing, into the depths of the ruined factory where Morrison waited. Together, the two of them began frantically cutting through the warped metal flooring, burning apart the sealed layers of protective mesh.

"It's coming," Morrison gasped, squinting in the glare of the torch. The plate fell with a clang, disappearing into the level below. A blaze of white light burst up around them and the two men leaped back.

In the sealed chamber, furious activity boomed and echoed, a steady process of moving belts, whirring machine-tools, fast-moving mechanical supervisors. At one end, a steady flow of raw materials entered the line; at the far end, the final product was whipped off, inspected and crammed into a conveyer tube.

All this was visible for a split second; then the intrusion was discovered. Robot relays came into play. The blaze of lights flickered and dimmed. The assembly line froze to a halt, stopped in its furious activity.

The machines clicked off and became silent.

At one end, a mobile unit detached itself and sped up the wall toward the hole O'Neill and Morrison had cut. It slammed an emergency seal in place and expertly welded it tight. The scene below was gone. A moment later the floor shivered as activity resumed.

Morrison, white-faced and shaking, turned to O'Neill. "What are they doing? What are they making?"

"Not weapons," O'Neill said.

"That stuff is being sent up" -- Morrison gestured convulsively -- "to the surface."

Shakily, O'Neill climbed to his feet. "Can we locate the spot?"

"I -- think so."

"We better." O'Neill swept up the flashlight and started toward the ascent ramp. "We're going to have to see what those pellets are that they're shooting up."

 

The exit valve of the conveyor tube was concealed in a tangle of vines and ruins a quarter of a mile beyond the factory. In a slot of rock at the base of the mountains the valve poked up like a nozzle. From ten yards away, it was invisible; the two men were almost on top of it before they noticed it.

Every few moments, a pellet burst from the valve and shot up into the sky. The nozzle revolved and altered its angle of deflection; each pellet was launched in a slightly varied trajectory.

"How far are they going?" Morrison wondered.

"Probably varies. It's distributing them at random." O'Neill advanced cautiously, but the mechanism took no note of him. Plastered against the towering wall of rock was a crumpled pellet; by accident, the nozzle had released it directly at the mountainside. O'Neill climbed up, got it and jumped down.

The pellet was a smashed container of machinery, tiny metallic elements too minute to be analyzed without a microscope.

"Not a weapon," O'Neill said.

The cylinder had split. At first he couldn't tell if it had been the impact or deliberate internal mechanisms at work. From the rent, an ooze of metal bits was sliding. Squatting down, O'Neill examined them.

The bits were in motion. Microscopic machinery, smaller than ants, smaller than pins, working energetically, purposefully -- constructing something that looked like a tiny rectangle of steel.

"They're building," O'Neill said, awed. He got up and prowled on. Off to the side, at the far edge of the gully, he came across a downed pellet far advanced on its construction. Apparently it had been released some time ago.

This one had made great enough progress to be identified. Minute as it was, the structure was familiar. The machinery was building a miniature replica of the demolished factory.

"Well," O'Neill said thoughtfully, "we're back where we started from. For better or worse . .. I don't know."

"I guess they must be all over Earth by now," Morrison said, "landing everywhere and going to work."

A thought struck O'Neill. "Maybe some of them are geared to escape velocity. That would be neat -- autofac networks throughout the whole universe." Behind him, the nozzle continued to spurt out its torrent of metal seeds.

 

 

Service Call

It would be wise to explain what Courtland was doing just before the doorbell rang. In his swank apartment on Leavenworth Street where Russian Hill drops to the… Involved with his intricate analytical data, Courtland at first failed to hear the bell. In the corner of the living…

Captive Market

Saturday morning, about eleven o'clock, Mrs. Edna Berthelson was ready to make her little trip. Although it was a weekly affair, consuming four… Because that was what it was. A find, a stroke of incredible luck. There was… Now the store was old, and so was she. The big, heavyset, black browed man who was her father had died long ago; her…

The Mold of Yancy

Leon Sipling groaned and pushed away his work papers. In an organization of thousands he was the only employee not putting out. Probably he was the… "Say," Sipling said hoarsely, "I think I'm stuck, Bab. How… After a speculative moment, Babson reached for the impulse synapsis, his massive face unsympathetic. "You holding…

The Minority Report

 

I

 

The first thought Anderton had when he saw the young man was: I'm getting bald. Bald and fat and old. But he didn't say it aloud. Instead, he pushed back his chair, got to his feet, and came resolutely around the side of his desk, his right hand rigidly extended. Smiling with forced amiability, he shook hands with the young man.

"Witwer?" he asked, managing to make this query sound gracious. "That's right," the young man said. "But the name's Ed to you, of course. That is, if you share my dislike for needless formality." The look on his blond, overly-confident face showed that he considered the matter settled. It would be Ed and John: Everything would be agreeably cooperative right from the start.

"Did you have much trouble finding the building?" Anderton asked guardedly, ignoring the too-friendly overture. Good God, he had to hold on to something. Fear touched him and he began to sweat. Witwer was moving around the office as if he already owned it -- as if he were measuring it for size. Couldn't he wait a couple of days -- a decent interval?

"No trouble," Witwer answered blithely, his hands in his pockets. Eagerly, he examined the voluminous files that lined the wall. "I'm not coming into your agency blind, you understand. I have quite a few ideas of my own about the way Precrime is run."

Shakily, Anderton lit his pipe. "How is it run? I should like to know." "Not badly," Witwer said. "In fact, quite well."

Anderton regarded him steadily. "Is that your private opinion? Or is it just cant?"

Witwer met his gaze guilelessly. "Private and public. The Senate's pleased with your work. In fact, they're enthusiastic." He added, "As enthusiastic as very old men can be."

Anderton winced, but outwardly he remained impassive. It cost him an effort, though. He wondered what Witwer really thought. What was actually going on in that closecropped skull? The young man's eyes were blue, bright -- and disturbingly clever. Witwer was nobody's fool. And obviously he had a great deal of ambition.

"As I understand it," Anderton said cautiously, "you're going to be my assistant until I retire."

"That's my understanding, too," the other replied, without an instant's hesitation.

"Which may be this year, or next year -- or ten years from now." The pipe in Anderton's hand trembled. "I'm under no compulsion to retire. I founded Precrime and I can stay on here as long as I want. It's purely my decision."

Witwer nodded, his expression still guileless. "Of course."

With an effort, Anderton cooled down a trifle. "I merely wanted to get things straight."

"From the start," Witwer agreed. "You're the boss. What you say goes." With every evidence of sincerity, he asked: "Would you care to show me the organization? I'd like to familiarize myself with the general routine as soon as possible."

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: "You're acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course. I presume we can take that for granted."

"I have the information publicly available," Witwer replied. "With the aid of your precog mutants, you've boldly and successfully abolished the post-crime punitive system of jails and fines. As we all realize, punishment was never much of a deterrent, and could scarcely have afforded comfort to a victim already dead."

They had come to the descent lift. As it carried them swiftly downward, Anderton said: "You've probably grasped the basic legalistic drawback to precrime methodology. We're taking in individuals who have broken no law."

"But they surely will," Witwer affirmed with conviction.

"Happily they don't -- because we get them first, before they can commit an act of violence. So the commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We claim they're culpable. They, on the other hand, eternally claim they're innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent."

The lift let them out, and they again paced down a yellow corridor. "In our society we have no major crimes," Anderton went on, "but we do have a detention camp full of would-be criminals."

Doors opened and closed, and they were in the analytical wing. Ahead of them rose impressive banks of equipment -- the data-receptors, and the computing mechanisms that studied and restructured the incoming material. And beyond the machinery sat the three precogs, almost lost to view in the maze of wiring.

"There they are," Anderton said dryly. "What do you think of them?" In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling. Every incoherent utterance, every random syllable, was analyzed, compared, reassembled in the form of visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards, and ejected into various coded slots. All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps. Their physical needs were taken care of automatically. They had no spiritual needs. Vegetable-like, they muttered and dozed and existed. Their minds were dull, confused, lost in shadows.

But not the shadows of today. The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened.

For the first time Witwer's face lost its breezy confidence. A sick, dismayed expression crept into his eyes, a mixture of shame and moral shock. "It's not -- pleasant," he murmured. "I didn't realize they were so -- " He groped in his mind for the right word, gesticulating. "So -- deformed."

"Deformed and retarded," Anderton instantly agreed. "Especially the girl, there. Donna is forty-five years old. But she looks about ten. The talent absorbs everything; the esp-lobe shrivels the balance of the frontal area. But what do we care? We get their prophecies. They pass on what we need. They don't understand any of it, but we do."

Subdued, Witwer crossed the room to the machinery. From a slot he collected a stack of cards. "Are these names that have come up?" he asked.

"Obviously." Frowning, Anderton took the stack from him. "I haven't had a chance to examine them," he explained, impatiently concealing his annoyance.

Fascinated, Witwer watched the machinery pop a fresh card into the now empty slot. It was followed by a second -- and a third. From the whirring disks came one card after another. "The precogs must see quite far into the future," Witwer exclaimed.

"They see a quite limited span," Anderton informed him. "One week or two ahead at the very most. Much of their data is worthless to us -- simply not relevant to our line. We pass it on to the appropriate agencies. And they in turn trade data with us. Every important bureau has its cellar of treasured monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Witwer stared at him uneasily. "Oh, yes, I understand. See no evil, speak no evil, et cetera. Very amusing."

"Very apt." Automatically, Anderton collected the fresh cards which had been turned up by the spinning machinery. "Some of these names will be totally discarded. And most of the remainder record petty crimes: thefts, income tax evasion, assault, extortion. As I'm sure you know, Precrime has cut down felonies by ninety-nine and decimal point eight percent. We seldom get actual murder or treason. After all, the culprit knows we'll confine him in the detention camp a week before he gets a chance to commit the crime."

"When was the last time an actual murder was committed?" Witwer asked.

"Five years ago," Anderton said, pride in his voice.

"How did it happen?"

"The criminal escaped our teams. We had his name -- in fact, we had all the details of the crime, including the victim's name. We knew the exact moment, the location of the planned act of violence. But in spite of us he was able to carry it out." Anderton shrugged. "After all, we can't get all of them." He riffled the cards. "But we do get most."

"One murder in five years." Witwer's confidence was returning. "Quite an impressive record. . . something to be proud of."

Quietly Anderton said: "I am proud. Thirty years ago I worked out the theory -- back in the days when the self-seekers were thinking in terms of quick raids on the stock market. I saw something legitimate ahead -- something of tremendous social value."

He tossed the packet of cards to Wally Page, his subordinate in charge of the monkey block. "See which ones we want," he told him. "Use your own judgment."

As Page disappeared with the cards, Witwer said thoughtfully: "It's a big responsibility."

"Yes, it is," agreed Anderton. "If we let one criminal escape -- as we did five years ago -- we've got a human life on our conscience. We're solely responsible. If we slip up, somebody dies." Bitterly, he jerked three new cards from the slot. "It's a public trust."

"Are you ever tempted to -- " Witwer hesitated. "I mean, some of the men you pick up must offer you plenty."

"It wouldn't do any good. A duplicate file of cards pops out at Army GHQ. It's check and balance. They can keep their eye on us as continuously as they wish." Anderton glanced briefly at the top card. "So even if we wanted to accept a -- "

He broke off, his lips tightening.

"What's the matter?" Witwer asked curiously.

Carefully, Anderton folded up the top card and put it away in his pocket. "Nothing," he muttered. "Nothing at all."

The harshness in his voice brought a flush to Witwer's face. "You really don't like me," he observed.

"True," Anderton admitted. "I don't. But -- "

He couldn't believe he disliked the young man that much. It didn't seem possible: it wasn't possible. Something was wrong. Dazed, he tried to steady his tumbling mind.

On the card was his name. Line one -- an already accused future murderer! According to the coded punches, Precrime Commissioner John A. Anderton was going to kill a man -- and within the next week.

With absolute, overwhelming conviction, he didn't believe it.

 

 

II

 

In the outer office, talking to Page, stood Anderton's slim and attractive young wife, Lisa. She was engaged in a sharp, animated discussion of policy, and barely glanced up as Witwer and her husband entered.

"Hello, darling," Anderton said.

Witwer remained silent. But his pale eyes flickered slightly as they rested on the brown-haired woman in her trim police uniform. Lisa was now an executive official of Precrime but once, Witwer knew, she had been Anderton's secretary.

Noticing the interest on Witwer's face Anderton paused and reflected. To plant the card in the machines would require an accomplice on the inside -- someone who was closely connected with Precrime and had access to the analytical equipment. Lisa was an improbable element. But the possibility did exist.

Of course, the conspiracy could be large-scale and elaborate, involving far more than a "rigged" card inserted somewhere along the line. The original data itself might have been tampered with. Actually, there was no telling how far back the alteration went. A cold fear touched him as he began to see the possibilities. His original impulse -- to tear open the machines and remove all the data -- was uselessly primitive. Probably the tapes agreed with the card: He would only incriminate himself further.

He had approximately twenty-four hours. Then, the Army people would check over their cards and discover the discrepancy. They would find in their files a duplicate of the card he had appropriated. He had only one of two copies, which meant that the folded card in his pocket might just as well be lying on Page's desk in plain view of everyone.

From outside the building came the drone of police cars starting out on their routine round-ups. How many hours would elapse before one of them pulled up in front of his house?

"What's the matter, darling?" Lisa asked him uneasily. "You look as if you've just seen a ghost. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he assured her.

Lisa suddenly seemed to become aware of Ed Witwer's admiring scrutiny. "Is this gentleman your new co-worker, darling?" she asked.

Warily, Anderton introduced his new associate. Lisa smiled in friendly greeting. Did a covert awareness pass between them? He couldn't tell. God, he was beginning to suspect everybody -- not only his wife and Witwer, but a dozen members of his staff.

"Are you from New York?" Lisa asked.

"No," Witwer replied. "I've lived most of my life in Chicago. I'm staying at a hotel -- one of the big downtown hotels. Wait -- I have the name written on a card somewhere."

While he self-consciously searched his pockets, Lisa suggested: "Perhaps you'd like to have dinner with us. We'll be working in close cooperation, and I really think we ought to get better acquainted."

Startled, Anderton backed off. What were the chances of his wife's friendliness being benign, accidental? Witwer would be present the balance of the evening, and would now have an excuse to trail along to Anderton's private residence. Profoundly disturbed, he turned impulsively, and moved toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Lisa asked, astonished.

"Back to the monkey block," he told her. "I want to check over some rather puzzling data tapes before the Army sees them." He was out in the corridor before she could think of a plausible reason for detaining him.

Rapidly, he made his way to the ramp at its far end. He was striding down the outside stairs toward the public sidewalk, when Lisa appeared breathlessly behind him.

"What on earth has come over you?" Catching hold of his arm, she moved quickly in front of him. "I knew you were leaving," she exclaimed, blocking his way. "What's wrong with you? Everybody thinks you're -- " She checked herself. "I mean, you're acting so erratically."

People surged by them -- the usual afternoon crowd. Ignoring them, Anderton pried his wife's fingers from his arm. "I'm getting out," he told her. "While there's still time."

"But -- why?"

"I'm being framed -- deliberately and maliciously. This creature is out to get my job. The Senate is getting at me through him."

Lisa gazed up at him, bewildered. "But he seems like such a nice young man."

"Nice as a water moccasin."

Lisa's dismay turned to disbelief. "I don't believe it. Darling, all this strain you've been under -- " Smiling uncertainly, she faltered: "It's not really credible that Ed Witwer is trying to frame you. How could he, even if he wanted to? Surely Ed wouldn't -- "

"Ed?"

"That's his name, isn't it?"

Her brown eyes flashed in startled, wildly incredulous protest. "Good heavens, you're suspicious of everybody. You actually believe I'm mixed up with it in some way, don't you?"

He considered. "I'm not sure."

She drew closer to him, her eyes accusing. "That's not true. You really believe it. Maybe you ought to go away for a few weeks. You desperately need a rest. All this tension and trauma, a younger man coming in. You're acting paranoiac. Can't you see that? People plotting against you. Tell me, do you have any actual proof?"

Anderton removed his wallet and took out the folded card. "Examine this carefully," he said, handing it to her.

The color drained out of her face, and she gave a little harsh, dry gasp.

"The set-up is fairly obvious," Anderton told her, as levelly as he could. "This will give Witwer a legal pretext to remove me right now. He won't have to wait until I resign." Grimly, he added: "They know I'm good for a few years yet."

"But-"

"It will end the check and balance system. Precrime will no longer be an independent agency. The Senate will control the police, and after that -- " His lips tightened. "They'll absorb the Army too. Well, it's outwardly logical enough. Of course I feel hostility and resentment toward Witwer -- of course I have a motive.

"Nobody likes to be replaced by a younger man, and find himself turned out to pasture. It's all really quite plausible -- except that I haven't the remotest intention of killing Witwer. But I can't prove that. So what can I do?"

Mutely, her face very white, Lisa shook her head. "I -- I don't know. Darling, if only --"

"Right now," Anderton said abruptly, "I'm going home to pack my things. That's about as far ahead as I can plan."

"You're really going to -- to try to hide out?"

"I am. As far as the Centaurian-colony planets, if necessary. It's been done successfully before, and I have a twenty-four-hour start." He turned resolutely. "Go back inside. There's no point in your coming with me."

"Did you imagine I would?" Lisa asked huskily.

Startled, Anderton stared at her. "Wouldn't you?" Then with amazement, he murmured: "No, I can see you don't believe me. You still think I'm imagining all this." He jabbed savagely at the card. "Even with that evidence you still aren't convinced."

"No," Lisa agreed quickly, "I'm not. You didn't look at it closely enough, darling. Ed Witwer's name isn't on it."

Incredulous, Anderton took the card from her.

"Nobody says you're going to kill Ed Witwer," Lisa continued rapidly, in a thin, brittle voice. "The card must be genuine, understand? And it has nothing to do with Ed. He's not plotting against you and neither is anybody else."

Too confused to reply, Anderton stood studying the card. She was right. Ed Witwer was not listed as his victim. On line five, the machine had neatly stamped another name.

LEOPOLD KAPLAN

Numbly, he pocketed the card. He had never heard of the man in his life.

 

 

III

 

The house was cool and deserted, and almost immediately Anderton began making preparations for his journey. While he packed, frantic thoughts passed through his mind.

Possibly he was wrong about Witwer -- but how could he be sure? In any event, the conspiracy against him was far more complex than he had realized. Witwer, in the over-all picture, might be merely an insignificant puppet animated by someone else -- by some distant, indistinct figure only vaguely visible in the background.

It had been a mistake to show the card to Lisa. Undoubtedly, she would describe it in detail to Witwer. He'd never get off Earth, never have an opportunity to find out what life on a frontier planet might be like.

While he was thus preoccupied, a board creaked behind him. He turned from the bed, clutching a weather-stained winter sports jacket, to face the muzzle of a gray-blue A-pistol.

"It didn't take you long," he said, staring with bitterness at the tight-lipped, heavyset man in a brown overcoat who stood holding the gun in his gloved hand. "Didn't she even hesitate?"

The intruder's face registered no response. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "Come along with me."

Startled, Anderton laid down the sports jacket. "You're not from my agency? You're not a police officer?"

Protesting and astonished, he was hustled outside the house to a waiting limousine. Instantly three heavily armed men closed in behind him. The door slammed and the car shot off down the highway, away from the city. Impassive and remote, the faces around him jogged with the motion of the speeding vehicle as open fields, dark and somber, swept past.

Anderton was till trying futilely to grasp the implications of what had happened, when the car came to a rutted side road, turned off, and descended into a gloomy sub-surface garage. Someone shouted an order. The heavy metal lock grated shut and overhead lights blinked on. The driver turned off the car motor.

"You'll have reason to regret this," Anderton warned hoarsely, as they dragged him from the car. "Do you realize who I am?"

"We realize," the man in the brown overcoat said.

At gun-point, Anderton was marched upstairs, from the clammy silence of the garage into a deep-carpeted hallway. He was, apparently, in a luxurious private residence, set out in the war-devoured rural area. At the far end of the hallway he could make out a room -- a book-lined study simply but tastefully furnished. In a circle of lamplight, his face partly in shadows, a man he had never met sat waiting for him.

As Anderton approached, the man nervously slipped a pair of rimless glasses in place, snapped the case shut, and moistened his dry lips. He was elderly, perhaps seventy or older, and under his arm was a slim silver cane. His body was thin, wiry, his attitude curiously rigid. What little hair he had was dusty brown -- a carefully-smoothed sheen of neutral color above his pale, bony skull. Only his eyes seemed really alert.

"Is this Anderton?" he inquired querulously, turning to the man in the brown overcoat. "Where did you pick him up?"

"At his home," the other replied. "He was packing -- as we expected."

The man at the desk shivered visibly. "Packing." He took off his glasses and jerkily returned them to their case. "Look here," he said bluntly to Anderton, "what's the matter with you? Are you hopelessly insane? How could you kill a man you've never met?"

The old man, Anderton suddenly realized, was Leopold Kaplan.

"First, I'll ask you a question," Anderton countered rapidly. "Do you realize what you've done? I'm Commissioner of Police. I can have you sent up for twenty years."

He was going to say more, but a sudden wonder cut him short.

"How did you find out?" he demanded. Involuntarily, his hand went to his pocket, where the folded card was hidden. "It won't be for another -- "

"I wasn't notified through your agency," Kaplan broke in, with angry impatience. "The fact that you've never heard of me doesn't surprise me too much. Leopold Kaplan, General of the Army of the Federated Westbloc Alliance." Begrudgingly, he added. "Retired, since the end of the Anglo-Chinese War, and the abolishment of AFWA."

It made sense. Anderton had suspected that the Army processed its duplicate cards immediately, for its own protection. Relaxing somewhat, he demanded: "Well? You've got me here. What next?"

"Evidently," Kaplan said, "I'm not going to have you destroyed, or it would have shown up on one of those miserable little cards. I'm curious about you. It seemed incredible to me that a man of your stature could contemplate the cold-blooded murder of a total stranger. There must be something more here. Frankly, I'm puzzled. If it represented some kind of Police strategy-" He shrugged his thin shoulders. "Surely you wouldn't have permitted the duplicate card to reach us."

"Unless," one of his men suggested, "it's a deliberate plant."

Kaplan raised his bright, bird-like eyes and scrutinized Anderton. "What do you have to say?"

"That's exactly what it is," Anderton said, quick to see the advantage of stating frankly what he believed to be the simple truth. "The prediction on the card was deliberately fabricated by a clique inside the police agency. The card is prepared and I'm netted. I'm relieved of my authority automatically. My assistant steps in and claims he prevented the murder in the usual efficient Precrime manner. Needless to say, there is no murder or intent to murder."

"I agree with you that there will be no murder," Kaplan affirmed grimly. "You'll be in police custody. I intend to make certain of that."

Horrified, Anderton protested: "You're taking me back there? If I'm in custody I'll never be able to prove -- "

"I don't care what you prove or don't prove," Kaplan interrupted. "All I'm interested in is having you out of the way." Frigidly, he added: "For my own protection."

"He was getting ready to leave," one of the men asserted.

"That's right," Anderton said, sweating. "As soon as they get hold of me I'll be confined in the detention camp. Witwer will take over -- lock, stock and barrel." His face darkened. "And my wife. They're acting in concert, apparently."

For a moment Kaplan seemed to waver. "It's possible," he conceded, regarding Anderton steadily. Then he shook his head. "I can't take the chance. If this is a frame against you, I'm sorry. But it's simply not my affair." He smiled slightly. "However, I wish you luck." To the men he said: "Take him to the police building and turn him over to the highest authority." He mentioned the name of the acting commissioner, and waited for Anderton's reaction.

"Witwer!" Anderton echoed, incredulous.

Still smiling slightly, Kaplan turned and clicked on the console radio in the study. "Witwer has already assumed authority. Obviously, he's going to create quite an affair out of this."

There was a brief static hum, and then, abruptly, the radio blared out into the room -- a noisy professional voice, reading a prepared announcement.

"... all citizens are warned not to shelter or in any fashion aid or assist this dangerous marginal individual. The extraordinary circumstance of an escaped criminal at liberty and in a position to commit an act of violence is unique in modern times. All citizens are hereby notified that legal statutes still in force implicate any and all persons failing to cooperate fully with the police in their task of apprehending John Allison Anderton. To repeat: The Precrime Agency of the Federal Westbloc Government is in the process of locating and neutralizing its former Commissioner, John Allison Anderton, who, through the methodology of the precrime-system, is hereby declared a potential murderer and as such forfeits his rights to freedom and all its privileges."

"It didn't take him long," Anderton muttered, appalled. Kaplan snapped off the radio and the voice vanished.

"Lisa must have gone directly to him," Anderton speculated bitterly.

"Why should he wait?" Kaplan asked. "You made your intentions clear."

He nodded to his men. "Take him back to town. I feel uneasy having him so close. In that respect I concur with Commissioner Witwer. I want him neutralized as soon as possible."

 

 

IV

 

Cold, light rain beat against the pavement, as the car moved through the dark streets of New York City toward the police building.

"You can see his point," one of the men said to Anderton. "If you were in his place you'd act just as decisively."

Sullen and resentful, Anderton stared straight ahead.

"Anyhow," the man went on, "you're just one of many. Thousands of people have gone to that detention camp. You won't be lonely. As a matter of fact, you may not want to leave."

Helplessly, Anderton watched pedestrians hurrying along the rain-swept sidewalks. He felt no strong emotion. He was aware only of an overpowering fatigue. Dully, he checked off the street numbers: they were getting near the police station.

"This Witwer seems to know how to take advantage of an opportunity," one of the men observed conversationally. "Did you ever meet him?"

"Briefly," Anderton answered.

"He wanted your job -- so he framed you. Are you sure of that?"

Anderton grimaced. "Does it matter?"

"I was just curious." The man eyed him languidly. "So you're the ex-Commissioner of Police. People in the camp will be glad to see you coming. They'll remember you."

"No doubt," Anderton agreed.

"Witwer sure didn't waste any time. Kaplan's lucky -- with an official like that in charge." The man looked at Anderton almost pleadingly. "You're really convinced it's a plot, eh?"

"Of course."

"You wouldn't harm a hair of Kaplan's head? For the first time in history, Precrime goes wrong? An innocent man is framed by one of those cards. Maybe there've been other innocent people -- right?"

"It's quite possible," Anderton admitted listlessly.

"Maybe the whole system can break down. Sure, you're not going to commit a murder -and maybe none of them were. Is that why you told Kaplan you wanted to keep yourself outside? Were you hoping to prove the system wrong? I've got an open mind, if you want to talk about it."

Another man leaned over, and asked, "Just between the two of us, is there really anything to this plot stuff? Are you really being framed?"

Anderton sighed. At that point he wasn't certain, himself. Perhaps he was trapped in a closed, meaningless time-circle with no motive and no beginning. In fact, he was almost ready to concede that he was the victim of a weary, neurotic fantasy, spawned by growing insecurity. Without a fight, he was willing to give himself up. A vast weight of exhaustion lay upon him. He was struggling against the impossible -- and all the cards were stacked against him.

The sharp squeal of tires roused him. Frantically, the driver struggled to control the car, tugging at the wheel and slamming on the brakes, as a massive bread truck loomed up from the fog and ran directly across the lane ahead. Had he gunned the motor instead he might have saved himself. But too late he realized his error. The car skidded, lurched, hesitated for a brief instant, and then smashed head on into the bread truck.

Under Anderton the seat lifted up and flung him face-forward against the door. Pain, sudden, intolerable, seemed to burst in his brain as he lay gasping and trying feebly to pull himself to his knees. Somewhere the crackle of fire echoed dismally, a patch of hissing brilliance winking in the swirls of mist making their way into the twisted hulk of the car.

Hands from outside the car reached for him. Slowly he became aware that he was being dragged through the rent that had been the door. A heavy seat cushion was shoved brusquely aside, and all at once he found himself on his feet, leaning heavily against a dark shape and being guided into the shadows of an alley a short distance from the car. In the distance, police sirens wailed.

"You'll live," a voice grated in his ear, low and urgent. It was a voice he had never heard before, as unfamiliar and harsh as the rain beating into his face. "Can you hear what I'm saying?"

"Yes," Anderton acknowledged. He plucked aimlessly at the ripped sleeve of his shirt. A cut on his cheek was beginning to throb. Confused, he tried to orient himself. "You're not -- "

"Stop talking and listen." The man was heavyset, almost fat. Now his big hands held Anderton propped against the wet brick wall of the building, out of the rain and the flickering light of the burning car. "We had to do it that way," he said. "It was the only alternative. We didn't have much time. We thought Kaplan would keep you at his place longer." "Who are you?" Anderton managed.

The moist, rain-streaked face twisted into a humorless grin. "My name's Fleming. You'll see me again. We have about five seconds before the police get here. Then we're back where we started." A flat packet was stuffed into Anderton's hands. "That's enough loot to keep you going. And there's a full set of identification in there. We'll contact you from time to time." His grin increased and became a nervous chuckle. "Until you've proved your point."

Anderton blinked. "It is a frameup, then?"

"Of course." Sharply, the man swore. "You mean they got you to believe it, too?"

"I thought -- " Anderton had trouble talking; one of his front teeth seemed to be loose. "Hostility toward Witwer . . . replaced, my wife and a younger man, natural resentment. ..."

"Don't kid yourself," the other said. "You know better than that. This whole business was worked out carefully. They had every phase of it under control. The card was set to pop the day Witwer appeared. They've already got the first part wrapped up. Witwer is Commissioner, and you're a hunted criminal."

"Who's behind it?"

"Your wife."

Anderton's head spun. "You're positive?"

The man laughed. "You bet your life." He glanced quickly around. "Here come the police. Take off down this alley. Grab a bus, get yourself into the slum section, rent a room and buy a stack of magazines to keep you busy. Get other clothes -- You're smart enough to take care of yourself. Don't try to leave Earth. They've got all the intersystem transports screened. If you can keep low for the next seven days, you're made."

"Who are you?" Anderton demanded.

Fleming let go of him. Cautiously, he moved to the entrance of the alley and peered out. The first police car had come to rest on the damp pavement; its motor spinning tinnily, it crept suspiciously toward the smouldering ruin that had been Kaplan's car. Inside the wreck the squad of men were stirring feebly, beginning to creep painfully through the tangle of steel and plastic out into the cold rain.

"Consider us a protective society," Fleming said softly, his plump, expressionless face shining with moisture. "A sort of police force that watches the police. To see," he added, "that everything stays on an even keel."

His thick hand shot out. Stumbling, Anderton was knocked away from him, half-falling into the shadows and damp debris that littered the alley.

"Get going," Fleming told him sharply. "And don't discard that packet." As Anderton felt his way hesitantly toward the far exit of the alley, the man's last words drifted to him. "Study it carefully and you may still survive."

 

 

V

 

The identification cards described him as Ernest Temple, an unemployed electrician, drawing a weekly subsistence from the State of New York, with a wife and four children in Buffalo and less than a hundred dollars in assets. A sweat-stained green card gave him permission to travel and to maintain no fixed address. A man looking for work needed to travel. He might have to go a long way.

As he rode across town in the almost empty bus, Anderton studied the description of Ernest Temple. Obviously, the cards had been made out with him in mind, for all the measurements fitted. After a time he wondered about the fingerprints and the brain-wave pattern. They couldn't possibly stand comparison. The walletful of cards would get him past only the most cursory examinations.

But it was something. And with the ID cards came ten thousand dollars in bills. He pocketed the money and cards, then turned to the neatly-typed message in which they had been enclosed.

At first he could make no sense of it. For a long time he studied it, perplexed.

The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.

The bus had entered the vast slum region, the tumbled miles of cheap hotels and broken-down tenements that had sprung up after the mass destruction of the war. It slowed to a stop, and Anderton got to his feet. A few passengers idly observed his cut cheek and damaged clothing. Ignoring them, he stepped down onto the rain-swept curb.

Beyond collecting the money due him, the hotel clerk was not interested. Anderton climbed the stairs to the second floor and entered the narrow, musty-smelling room that now belonged to him. Gratefully, he locked the door and pulled down the window shades. The room was small but clean. Bed, dresser, scenic calendar, chair, lamp, a radio with a slot for the insertion of quarters.

He dropped a quarter into it and threw himself heavily down on the bed. All main stations carried the police bulletin. It was novel, exciting, something unknown to the present generation. An escaped criminal! The public was avidly interested.

"... this man has used the advantage of his high position to carry out an initial escape," the announcer was saying, with professional indignation. "Because of his high office he had access to the previewed data and the trust placed in him permitted him to evade the normal process of detection and re-location. During the period of his tenure he exercised his authority to send countless potentially guilty individuals to their proper confinement, thus sparing the lives of innocent victims. This man, John Allison Anderton, was instrumental in the original creation of the Precrime system, the prophylactic pre-detection of criminals through the ingenious use of mutant precogs, capable of previewing future events and transferring orally that data to analytical machinery. These three precogs, in their vital function...."

The voice faded out as he left the room and entered the tiny bathroom. There, he stripped off his coat, and shirt, and ran hot water in the wash bowl. He began bathing the cut on his cheek. At the drugstore on the corner he had bought iodine and Band-aids, a razor, comb, toothbrush, and other small things he would need. The next morning he intended to find a second-hand clothing store and buy more suitable clothing. After all, he was now an unemployed electrician, not an accident-damaged Commissioner of Police.

In the other room the radio blared on. Only subconsciously aware of it, he stood in front of the cracked mirror, examining a broken tooth.

"... the system of three precogs finds its genesis in the computers of the middle decades of this century. How are the results of an electronic computer checked? By feeding the data to a second computer of identical design. But two computers are not sufficient. If each computer arrived at a different answer it is impossible to tell a priori which is correct. The solution, based on a careful study of statistical method, is to utilize a third computer to check the results of the first two. In this manner, a so-called majority report is obtained. It can be assumed with fair probability that the agreement of two out of three computers indicates which of the alternative results is accurate. It would not be likely that two computers would arrive at identically incorrect solutions -- "

Anderton dropped the towel he was clutching and raced into the other room. Trembling, he bent to catch the blaring words of the radio.

"... unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped-for but seldom-achieved phenomenon, acting-Commissioner Witwer explains. It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant. This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures. If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future. In the Precrime Agency's work we must first of all assume -- "

Frantically, Anderton paced around the tiny room. Majority report -- only two of the precogs had concurred on the material underlying the card. That was the meaning of the message enclosed with the packet. The report of the third precog, the minority report, was somehow of importance.

Why?

His watch told him that it was after midnight. Page would be off duty. He wouldn't be back in the monkey block until the next afternoon. It was a slim chance, but worth taking. Maybe Page would cover for him, and maybe not. He would have to risk it.

He had to see the minority report.

 

 

VI

 

Between noon and one o'clock the rubbish-littered streets swarmed with people. He chose that time, the busiest part of the day, to make his call. Selecting a phonebooth in a patron-teeming super drugstore, he dialed the familiar police number and stood holding the cold receiver to his ear. Deliberately, he had selected the aud, not the vid line: in spite of his second-hand clothing and seedy, unshaven appearance, he might be recognized.

The receptionist was new to him. Cautiously, he gave Page's extension. If Witwer were removing the regular staff and putting in his satellites, he might find himself talking to a total stranger.

"Hello," Page's gruff voice came.

Relieved, Anderton glanced around. Nobody was paying any attention to him. The shoppers wandered among the merchandise, going about their daily routines. "Can you talk?" he asked. "Or are you tied up?"

There was a moment of silence. He could picture Page's mild face torn with uncertainty as he wildly tried to decide what to do. At last came halting words. "Why -- are you calling here?"

Ignoring the question, Anderton said, "I didn't recognize the receptionist. New personnel?"

"Brand-new," Page agreed, in a thin, strangled voice. "Big turnovers, these days."

"So I hear." Tensely, Anderton asked, "How's your job? Still safe?"

"Wait a minute." The receiver was put down and the muffled sound of steps came in Anderton's ear. It was followed by the quick slam of a door being hastily shut. Page returned. "We can talk better now," he said hoarsely.

"How much better?"

"Not a great deal. Where are you?"

"Strolling through Central Park," Anderton said. "Enjoying the sunlight." For all he knew, Page had gone to make sure the line-tap was in place. Right now, an airborne police team was probably on its way. But he had to take the chance. "I'm in a new field," he said curtly. "I'm an electrician these days."

"Oh?" Page said, baffled.

"I thought maybe you had some work for me. If it can be arranged, I'd like to drop by and examine your basic computing equipment. Especially the data and analytical banks in the monkey block."

After a pause, Page said: "It -- might be arranged. If it's really important."

"It is," Anderton assured him. "When would be best for you?"

"Well," Page said, struggling. "I'm having a repair team come in to look at the intercom equipment. The acting-Commissioner wants it improved, so he can operate quicker. You might trail along."

"I'll do that. About when?"

"Say four o'clock. Entrance B, level 6. I'll meet you."

"Fine," Anderton agreed, already starting to hang up. "I hope you're still in charge, when I get there."

He hung up and rapidly left the booth. A moment later he was pushing through the dense pack of people crammed into the nearby cafeteria. Nobody would locate him there.

He had three and a half hours to wait. And it was going to seem a lot longer. It proved to be the longest wait of his life before he finally met Page as arranged.

The first thing Page said was: "You're out of your mind. Why in hell did you come back?"

"I'm not back for long." Tautly, Anderton prowled around the monkey block, systematically locking one door after another. "Don't let anybody in. I can't take chances."

"You should have quit when you were ahead." In an agony of apprehension, Page followed after him. "Witwer is making hay, hand over fist. He's got the whole country screaming for your blood."

Ignoring him, Anderton snapped open the main control bank of the analytical machinery. "Which of the three monkeys gave the minority report?"

"Don't question me -- I'm getting out." On his way to the door Page halted briefly, pointed to the middle figure, and then disappeared. The door closed; Anderton was alone.

The middle one. He knew that one well. The dwarfed, hunched-over figure had sat buried in its wiring and relays for fifteen years. As Anderton approached, it didn't look up. With eyes glazed and blank, it contemplated a world that did not yet exist, blind to the physical reality that lay around it.

"Jerry" was twenty-four years old. Originally, he had been classified as a hydrocephalic idiot but when he reached the age of six the psych testers had identified the precog talent, buried under the layers of tissue corrosion. Placed in a government-operated training school, the latent talent had been cultivated. By the time he was nine the talent had advanced to a useful stage. "Jerry," however, remained in the aimless chaos of idiocy; the burgeoning faculty had absorbed the totality of his personality.

Squatting down, Anderton began disassembling the protective shields that guarded the tape-reels stored in the analytical machinery. Using schematics, he traced the leads back from the final stages of the integrated computers, to the point where "Jerry's" individual equipment branched off. Within minutes he was shakily lifting out two half-hour tapes: recent rejected data not fused with majority reports. Consulting the code chart, he selected the section of tape which referred to his particular card.

A tape scanner was mounted nearby. Holding his breath, he inserted the tape, activated the transport, and listened. It took only a second. From the first statement of the report it was clear what had happened. He had what he wanted; he could stop looking.

"Jerry's" vision was misphased. Because of the erratic nature of precog-nition, he was examining a time-area slightly different from that of his companions. For him, the report that Anderton would commit a murder was an event to be integrated along with everything else. That assertion -- and Anderton's reaction -- was one more piece of datum.

Obviously, "Jerry's" report superseded the majority report. Having been informed that he would commit a murder, Anderton would change his mind and not do so. The preview of the murder had cancelled out the murder; prophylaxis had occurred simply in his being informed. Already, a new time-path had been created. But "Jerry" was outvoted.

Trembling, Anderton rewound the tape and clicked on the recording head. At high speed he made a copy of the report, restored the original, and removed the duplicate from the transport. Here was the proof that the card was invalid: obsolete. All he had to do was show it to Witwer....

His own stupidity amazed him. Undoubtedly, Witwer had seen the report; and in spite of it, had assumed the job of Commissioner, had kept the police teams out. Witwer didn't intend to back down; he wasn't concerned with Anderton's innocence.

What, then, could he do? Who else would be interested?

"You damn fool!" a voice behind him grated, wild with anxiety.

Quickly, he turned. His wife stood at one of the doors, in her police uniform, her eyes frantic with dismay. "Don't worry," he told her briefly, displaying the reel of tape. "I'm leaving."

Her face distorted, Lisa rushed frantically up to him. "Page said you were here, but I couldn't believe it. He shouldn't have let you in. He just doesn't understand what you are."

"What am I?" Anderton inquired caustically. "Before you answer, maybe you better listen to this tape."

"I don't want to listen to it! I just want you to get out of here! Ed Witwer knows somebody's down here. Page is trying to keep him occupied, but -- " She broke off, her head turned stiffly to one side. "He's here now! He's going to force his way in."

"Haven't you got any influence? Be gracious and charming. He'll probably forget about me."

Lisa looked at him in bitter reproach. "There's a ship parked on the roof. If you want to get away...." Her voice choked and for an instant she was silent. Then she said, "I'll be taking off in a minute or so. If you want to come -- "

"I'll come," Anderton said. He had no other choice. He had secured his tape, his proof, but he hadn't worked out any method of leaving. Gladly, he hurried after the slim figure of his wife as she strode from the block, through a side door and down a supply corridor, her heels clicking loudly in the deserted gloom.

"It's a good fast ship," she told him over her shoulder. "It's emergency-fueled -- ready to go. I was going to supervise some of the teams."

 

 

VII

 

Behind the wheel of the high-velocity police cruiser, Anderton outlined what the minority report tape contained. Lisa listened without comment, her face pinched and strained, her hands clasped tensely in her lap. Below the ship, the war-ravaged rural countryside spread out like a relief map, the vacant regions between cities crater-pitted and dotted with the ruins of farms and small industrial plants.

"I wonder," she said, when he had finished, "how many times this has happened before."

"A minority report? A great many times."

"I mean, one precog misphased. Using the report of the others as data -- superseding them." Her eyes dark and serious, she added, "Perhaps a lot of the people in the camps are like you."

"No," Anderton insisted. But he was beginning to feel uneasy about it, too. "I was in a position to see the card, to get a look at the report. That's what did it."

"But-" Lisa gestured significantly. "Perhaps all of them would have reacted that way. We could have told them the truth."

"It would have been too great a risk," he answered stubbornly.

Lisa laughed sharply. "Risk? Chance? Uncertainty? With precogs around?"

Anderton concentrated on steering the fast little ship. "This is a unique case," he repeated. "And we have an immediate problem. We can tackle the theoretical aspects later on. I have to get this tape to the proper people -- before your bright young friend demolishes it."

"You're taking it to Kaplan?"

"I certainly am." He tapped the reel of tape which lay on the seat between them. "He'll be interested. Proof that his life isn't in danger ought to be of vital concern to him."

From her purse, Lisa shakily got out her cigarette case. "And you think he'll help you."

"He may -- or he may not. It's a chance worth taking."

"How did you manage to go underground so quickly?" Lisa asked. "A completely effective disguise is difficult to obtain."

"All it takes is money," he answered evasively.

As she smoked, Lisa pondered. "Probably Kaplan will protect you," she said. "He's quite powerful."

"I thought he was only a retired general."

"Technically -- that's what he is. But Witwer got out the dossier on him. Kaplan heads an unusual kind of exclusive veterans' organization. It's actually a kind of club, with a few restricted members. High officers only -- an international class from both sides of the war. Here in New York they maintain a great mansion of a house, three glossy-paper publications, and occasional TV coverage that costs them a small fortune."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Only this. You've convinced me that you're innocent. I mean, it's obvious that you won't commit a murder. But you must realize now that the original report, the majority report, was not a fake. Nobody falsified it. Ed Witwer didn't create it. There's no plot against you, and there never was. If you're going to accept this minority report as genuine you'll have to accept the majority one, also."

Reluctantly, he agreed. "I suppose so."

"Ed Witwer," Lisa continued, "is acting in complete good faith. He really believes you're a potential criminal -- and why not? He's got the majority report sitting on his desk, but you have that card folded up in your pocket."

"I destroyed it," Anderton said, quietly.

Lisa leaned earnestly toward him. "Ed Witwer isn't motivated by any desire to get your job," she said. "He's motivated by the same desire that has always dominated you. He believes in Precrime. He wants the system to continue. I've talked to him and I'm convinced he's telling the truth."

Anderton asked, "Do you want me to take this reel to Witwer? If I do -- he'll destroy it."

"Nonsense," Lisa retorted. "The originals have been in his hands from the start. He could have destroyed them any time he wished."

"That's true." Anderton conceded. "Quite possibly he didn't know."

"Of course he didn't. Look at it this way. If Kaplan gets hold of that tape, the police will be discredited. Can't you see why? It would prove that the majority report was an error. Ed Witwer is absolutely right. You have to be taken in -- if Precrime is to survive. You're thinking of your own safety. But think, for a moment, about the system." Leaning over, she stubbed out her cigarette and fumbled in her purse for another. "Which means more to you -- your own personal safety or the existence of the system?"

"My safety," Anderton answered, without hesitation.

"You're positive?"

"If the system can survive only by imprisoning innocent people, then it deserves to be destroyed. My personal safety is important because I'm a human being. And furthermore -- "

From her purse, Lisa got out an incredibly tiny pistol. "I believe," she told him huskily, "that I have my finger on the firing release. I've never used a weapon like this before. But I'm willing to try."

After a pause, Anderton asked: "You want me to turn the ship around? Is that it?"

"Yes, back to the police building. I'm sorry. If you could put the good of the system above your own selfish -- "

"Keep your sermon," Anderton told her. "I'll take the ship back. But I'm not going to listen to your defense of a code of behavior no intelligent man could subscribe to."

Lisa's lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. Holding the pistol tightly, she sat facing him, her eyes fixed intently on him as he swung the ship in a broad arc. A few loose articles rattled from the glove compartment as the little craft turned on a radical slant, one wing rising majestically until it pointed straight up.

Both Anderton and his wife were supported by the constraining metal arms of their seats. But not so the third member of the party.

Out of the corner of his eye, Anderton saw a flash of motion. A sound came simultaneously, the clawing struggle of a large man as he abruptly lost his footing and plunged into the reinforced wall of the ship. What followed happened quickly. Fleming scrambled instantly to his feet, lurching and wary, one arm lashing out for the woman's pistol. Anderton was too startled to cry out. Lisa turned, saw the man -- and screamed. Fleming knocked the gun from her hand, sending it clattering to the floor.

Grunting, Fleming shoved her aside and retrieved the gun. "Sorry," he gasped, straightening up as best he could. "I thought she might talk more. That's why I waited."

"You were here when -- " Anderton began -- and stopped. It was obvious that Fleming and his men had kept him under surveillance. The existence of Lisa's ship had been duly noted and factored in, and while Lisa had debated whether it would be wise to fly him to safety, Fleming had crept into the storage compartment of the ship.

"Perhaps," Fleming said, "you'd better give me that reel of tape." His moist, clumsy fingers groped for it. "You're right -- Witwer would have melted it down to a puddle."

"Kaplan, too?" Anderton asked numbly, still dazed by the appearance of the man.

"Kaplan is working directly with Witwer. That's why his name showed on line five of the card. Which one of them is the actual boss, we can't tell. Possibly neither." Fleming tossed the tiny pistol away and got out his own heavy-duty military weapon. "You pulled a real flub in taking off with this woman. I told you she was back of the whole thing."

"I can't believe that," Anderton protested. "If she -- "

"You've got no sense. This ship was warmed up by Witwer's order. They wanted to fly you out of the building so that we couldn't get to you. With you on your own, separated from us, you didn't stand a chance."

A strange look passed over Lisa's stricken features. "It's not true," she whispered. "Witwer never saw this ship. I was going to supervise -- "

"You almost got away with it," Fleming interrupted inexorably. "We'll be lucky if a police patrol ship isn't hanging on us. There wasn't time to check." He squatted down as he spoke, directly behind the woman's chair. "The first thing is to get this woman out of the way. We'll have to drag you completely out of this area. Page tipped off Witwer on your new disguise, and you can be sure it has been widely broadcast."

Still crouching, Fleming seized hold of Lisa. Tossing his heavy gun to Anderton, he expertly tilted her chin up until her temple was shoved back against the seat. Lisa clawed frantically at him; a thin, terrified wail rose in her throat. Ignoring her, Fleming closed his great hands around her neck and began relentlessly to squeeze.

"No bullet wound," he explained, gasping. "She's going to fall out -- natural accident. It happens all the time. But in this case, her neck will be broken first."

It seemed strange that Anderton waited so long. As it was, Fleming's thick ringers were cruelly embedded in the woman's pale flesh before he lifted the butt of the heavyduty pistol and brought it down on the back of Fleming's skull. The monstrous hands relaxed. Staggered, Fleming's head fell forward and he sagged against the wall of the ship. Trying feebly to collect himself, he began dragging his body upward. Anderton hit him again, this time above the left eye. He fell back, and lay still.

Struggling to breathe, Lisa remained for a moment huddled over, her body swaying back and forth. Then, gradually, the color crept back into her face.

"Can you take the controls?" Anderton asked, shaking her, his voice urgent.

"Yes, I think so." Almost mechanically she reached for the wheel. "I'll be all right. Don't worry about me."

"This pistol," Anderton said, "is Army ordnance issue. But it's not from the war. It's one of the useful new ones they've developed. I could be a long way off but there's just a chance -- "

He climbed back to where Fleming lay spread out on the deck. Trying not to touch the man's head, he tore open his coat and rummaged in his pockets. A moment later Fleming's sweat-sodden wallet rested in his hands.

Tod Fleming, according to his identification, was an Army Major attached to the Internal Intelligence Department of Military Information. Among the various papers was a document signed by General Leopold Kaplan, stating that Fleming was under the special protection of his own group -- the International Veterans' League.

Fleming and his men were operating under Kaplan's orders. The bread truck, the accident, had been deliberately rigged.

It meant that Kaplan had deliberately kept him out of police hands. The plan went back to the original contact in his home, when Kaplan's men had picked him up as he was packing. Incredulous, he realized what had really happened. Even then, they were making sure they got him before the police. From the start, it had been an elaborate strategy to make certain that Witwer would fail to arrest him.

"You were telling the truth," Anderton said to his wife, as he climbed back in the seat. "Can we get hold of Witwer?"

Mutely, she nodded. Indicating the communications circuit of the dashboard, she asked: "What -- did you find?"

"Get Witwer for me. I want to talk to him as soon as I can. It's very urgent."

Jerkily, she dialed, got the closed-channel mechanical circuit, and raised police headquarters in New York. A visual panorama of petty police officials flashed by before a tiny replica of Ed Witwer's features appeared on the screen.

"Remember me?" Anderton asked him.

Witwer blanched. "Good God. What happened? Lisa, are you bringing him in?" Abruptly his eyes fastened on the gun in Anderton's hands. "Look," he said savagely, "don't do anything to her. Whatever you may think, she's not responsible."

"I've already found that out," Anderton answered. "Can you get a fix on us? We may need protection getting back."

"Back!" Witwer gazed at him unbelievingly. "You're coming in? You're giving yourself up?"

"I am, yes." Speaking rapidly, urgently, Anderton added, "There's something you must do immediately. Close off the monkey block. Make certain nobody gets it -- Page or anyone else. Especially Army people."

"Kaplan," the miniature image said.

"What about him?"

"He was here. He -- he just left."

Anderton's heart stopped beating. "What was he doing?"

"Picking up data. Transcribing duplicates of our precog reports on you. He insisted he wanted them solely for his protection."

"Then he's already got it," Anderton said. "It's too late."

Alarmed, Witwer almost shouted: "Just what do you mean? What's happening?"

"I'll tell you," Anderton said heavily, "when I get back to my office."

 

 

VIII

 

Witwer met him on the roof on the police building. As the small ship came to rest, a cloud of escort ships dipped their fins and sped off. Anderton immediately approached the blond-haired young man.

"You've got what you wanted," he told him. "You can lock me up, and send me to the detention camp. But that won't be enough."

Witwer's blue eyes were pale with uncertainty. "I'm afraid I don't understand -- "

"It's not my fault. I should never have left the police building. Where's Wally Page?"

"We've already clamped down on him," Witwer replied. "He won't give us any trouble."

Anderton's face was grim.

"You're holding him for the wrong reason," he said. "Letting me into the monkey block was no crime. But passing information to Army is. You've had an Army plant working here." He corrected himself, a little lamely, "I mean, I have."

"I've called back the order on you. Now the teams are looking for Kaplan."

"Any luck?"

"He left here in an Army truck. We followed him, but the truck got into a militarized Barracks. Now they've got a big wartime R-3 tank blocking the street. It would be civil war to move it aside."

Slowly, hesitantly, Lisa made her way from the ship. She was still pale and shaken and on her throat an ugly bruise was forming.

"What happened to you?" Witwer demanded. Then he caught sight of Fleming's inert form lying spread out inside. Facing Anderton squarely, he said: "Then you've finally stopped pretending this is some conspiracy of mine."

"I have."

"You don't think I'm -- " He made a disgusted face. "Plotting to get your job."

"Sure you are. Everybody is guilty of that sort of thing. And I'm plotting to keep it. But this is something else -- and you're not responsible."

"Why do you assert," Witwer inquired, "that it's too late to turn yourself in? My God, we'll put you in the camp. The week will pass and Kaplan will still be alive."

"He'll be alive, yes," Anderton conceded. "But he can prove he'd be just as alive if I were walking the streets. He has the information that proves the majority report obsolete. He can break the Precrime system." He finished, "Heads or tails, he wins -- and we lose. The Army discredits us; their strategy paid off."

"But why are they risking so much? What exactly do they want?"

"After the Anglo-Chinese War, the Army lost out. It isn't what it was in the good old AFWA days. They ran the complete show, both military and domestic. And they did their own police work."

"Like Fleming," Lisa said faintly.

"After the war, the Westbloc was demilitarized. Officers like Kaplan were retired and discarded. Nobody likes that." Anderton grimaced. "I can sympathize with him. He's not the only one. But we couldn't keep on running things that way. We had to divide up the authority."

"You say Kaplan has won," Witwer said. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"I'm not going to kill him. We know it and he knows it. Probably he'll come around and offer us some kind of deal. We'll continue to function, but the Senate will abolish our real pull. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I should say not," Witwer answered emphatically. "One of these days I'm going to be running this agency." He flushed. "Not immediately, of course."

Anderton's expression was somber. "It's too bad you publicized the majority report. If you had kept it quiet, we could cautiously draw it back in. But everybody's heard about it. We can't retract it now."

"I guess not," Witwer admitted awkwardly. "Maybe I -- don't have this job down as neatly as I imagined."

"You will, in time. You'll be a good police officer. You believe in the status quo. But learn to take it easy." Anderton moved away from them. "I'm going to study the data tapes of the majority report. I want to find out exactly how I was supposed to kill Kaplan." Reflectively, he finished: "It might give me some ideas."

The data tapes of the precogs "Donna" and "Mike" were separately stored. Choosing the machinery responsible for the analysis of "Donna," he opened the protective shield and laid out the contents. As before, the code informed him which reels were relevant and in a moment he had the tape-transport mechanism in operation.

It was approximately what he had suspected. This was the material utilized by "Jerry" -- the superseded time-path. In it Kaplan's Military Intelligence agents kidnapped Anderton as he drove home from work. Taken to Kaplan's villa, the organization GHQ of the International Veterans' League. Anderton was given an ultimatum: voluntarily disband the Precrime system or face open hostilities with Army.

In this discarded time-path, Anderton, as Police Commissioner, had turned to the Senate for support. No support was forthcoming. To avoid civil war, the Senate had ratified the dismemberment of the police system, and decreed a return to military law "to cope with the emergency." Taking a corps of fanatic police, Anderton had located Kaplan and shot him, along with other officials of the Veterans' League. Only Kaplan had died. The others had been patched up. And the coup had been successful.

This was "Donna." He rewound the tape and turned to the material previewed by "Mike." It would be identical; both precogs had combined to present a unified picture. "Mike" began as "Donna" had begun: Anderton had become aware of Kaplan's plot against the police. But something was wrong. Puzzled, he ran the tape back to the beginning. Incomprehensibly, it didn't jibe. Again he relayed the tape, listening intently.

The "Mike" report was quite different from the "Donna" report. An hour later, he had finished his examination, put away the tapes, and left the monkey block. As soon as he emerged, Witwer asked. "What's the matter? I can see something's wrong."

"No," Anderton answered slowly, still deep in thought. "Not exactly wrong." A sound came to his ears. He walked vaguely over to the window and

peered out.

The street was crammed with people. Moving down the center lane was a four-column line of uniformed troops. Rifles, helmets ... marching soldiers in their dingy wartime uniforms, carrying the cherished pennants of AFWA flapping in the cold afternoon wind.

"An Army rally," Witwer explained bleakly. "I was wrong. They're not going to make a deal with us. Why should they? Kaplan's going to make it public."

Anderton felt no surprise. "He's going to read the minority report?"

"Apparently. They're going to demand the Senate disband us, and take away our authority. They're going to claim we've been arresting innocent men -- nocturnal police raids, that sort of thing. Rule by terror."

"You suppose the Senate will yield?"

Witwer hesitated. "I wouldn't want to guess."

"I'll guess," Anderton said. "They will. That business out there fits with what I learned downstairs. We've got ourselves boxed in and there's only one direction we can go. Whether we like it or not, we'll have to take it." His eyes had a steely glint.

Apprehensively, Witwer asked: "What is it?"

"Once I say it, you'll wonder why you didn't invent it. Very obviously, I'm going to have to fulfill the publicized report. I'm going to have to kill Kaplan. That's the only way we can keep them from discrediting us."

"But," Witwer said, astonished, "the majority report has been superseded."

"I can do it," Anderton informed him, "but it's going to cost. You're familiar with the statutes governing first-degree murder?"

"Life imprisonment."

"At least. Probably, you could pull a few wires and get it commuted to exile. I could be sent to one of the colony planets, the good old frontier."

"Would you -- prefer that?"

"Hell, no," Anderton said heartily. "But it would be the lesser of the two evils. And it's got to be done."

"I don't see how you can kill Kaplan."

Anderton got out the heavy-duty military weapon Fleming had tossed to him. "I'll use this."

"They won't stop you?"

"Why should they? They've got that minority report that says I've changed my mind."

"Then the minority report is incorrect?"

"No," Anderton said, "it's absolutely correct. But I'm going to murder Kaplan anyhow."

 

 

IX

 

He had never killed a man. He had never even seen a man killed. And he had been Police Commissioner for thirty years. For this generation, deliberate murder had died out. It simply didn't happen.

A police car carried him to within a block of the Army rally. There, in the shadows of the back seat, he painstakingly examined the pistol Fleming had provided him. It seemed to be intact. Actually, there was no doubt of the outcome. He was absolutely certain of what would happen within the next half hour. Putting the pistol back together, he opened the door of the parked car and stepped warily out.

Nobody paid the slightest attention to him. Surging masses of people pushed eagerly forward, trying to get within hearing distance of the rally. Army uniforms predominated and at the perimeter of the cleared area, a line of tanks and major weapons was displayed -- formidable armament still in production.

Army had erected a metal speaker's stand and ascending steps. Behind the stand hung the vast AFWA banner, emblem of the combined powers that had fought in the war. By a curious corrosion of time, the AFWA Veterans' League included officers from the wartime enemy. But a general was a general and fine distinctions had faded over the years.

Occupying the first rows of seats sat the high brass of the AFWA command. Behind them came junior commissioned officers. Regimental banners swirled in a variety of colors and symbols. In fact, the occasion had taken on the aspect of a festive pageant. On the raised stand itself sat stern-faced dignitaries of the Veterans' League, all of them tense with expectancy. At the extreme edges, almost unnoticed, waited a few police units, ostensibly to keep order. Actually, they were informants making observations. If order were kept, the Army would maintain it.

The late-afternoon wind carried the muffled booming of many people packed tightly together. As Anderton made his way through the dense mob he was engulfed by the solid presence of humanity. An eager sense of anticipation held everybody rigid. The crowd seemed to sense that something spectacular was on the way. With difficulty, Anderton forced his way past the rows of seats and over to the tight knot of Army officials at the edge of the platform. Kaplan was among them. But he was now General Kaplan. The vest, the gold pocket watch, the cane, the conservative business suit -- all were gone. For this event, Kaplan had got his old uniform from its mothballs. Straight and impressive, he stood surrounded by what had been his general staff. He wore his service bars, his medals, his boots, his decorative short-sword, and his visored cap. It was amazing how transformed a bald man became under the stark potency of an officer's peaked and visored cap.

Noticing Anderton, General Kaplan broke away from the group and strode to where the younger man was standing. The expression on his thin, mobile countenance showed how incredulously glad he was to see the Commissioner of Police.

"This is a surprise," he informed Anderton, holding out his small gray-gloved hand. "It was my impression you had been taken in by the acting Commissioner."

"I'm still out," Anderton answered shortly, shaking hands. "After all, Witwer has that same reel of tape." He indicated the package Kaplan clutched in his steely fingers and met the man's gaze confidently.

In spite of his nervousness, General Kaplan was in good humor. "This is a great occasion for the Army," he revealed. "You'll be glad to hear I'm going to give the public a full account of the spurious charge brought against you."

"Fine," Anderton answered noncommittally.

"It will be made clear that you were unjustly accused." General Kaplan was trying to discover what Anderton knew. "Did Fleming have an opportunity to acquaint you with the situation?"

"To some degree," Anderton replied. "You're going to read only the minority report? That's all you've got there?"

"I'm going to compare it to the majority report." General Kaplan signalled an aide and a leather briefcase was produced. "Everything is here -- all the evidence we need," he said. "You don't mind being an example, do you? Your case symbolizes the unjust arrests of countless individuals." Stiffly, General Kaplan examined his wristwatch. "I must begin. Will you join me on the platform?"

"Why?"

Coldly, but with a kind of repressed vehemence, General Kaplan said: "So they can see the living proof. You and I together -- the killer and his victim. Standing side by side, exposing the whole sinister fraud which the police have been operating."

"Gladly," Anderton agreed. "What are we waiting for?"

Disconcerted, General Kaplan moved toward the platform. Again, he glanced uneasily at Anderton, as if visibly wondering why he had appeared and what he really knew. His uncertainty grew as Anderton willingly mounted the steps of the platform and found himself a seat directly beside the speaker's podium.

"You fully comprehend what I'm going to be saying?" General Kaplan demanded. "The exposure will have considerable repercussions. It may cause the Senate to reconsider the basic validity of the Precrime system."

"I understand," Anderton answered, arms folded. "Let's go."

A hush had descended on the crowd. But there was a restless, eager stirring when General Kaplan obtained the briefcase and began arranging his material in front of him.

"The man sitting at my side," he began, in a clean, clipped voice, "is familiar to you all. You may be surprised to see him, for until recently he was described by the police as a dangerous killer."

The eyes of the crowd focused on Anderton. Avidly, they peered at the only potential killer they had ever been privileged to see at close range.

"Within the last few hours, however," General Kaplan continued, "the police order for his arrest has been cancelled; because former Commissioner Anderton voluntarily gave himself up? No, that is not strictly accurate. He is sitting here. He has not given himself up, but the police are no longer interested in him. John Allison Anderton is innocent of any crime in the past, present, and future. The allegations against him were patent frauds, diabolical distortions of a contaminated penal system based on a false premise -- a vast, impersonal engine of destruction grinding men and women to their doom."

Fascinated, the crowd glanced from Kaplan to Anderton. Everyone was familiar with the basic situation.

"Many men have been seized and imprisoned under the so-called prophylactic Precrime structure," General Kaplan continued, his voice gaining feeling and strength. "Accused not of crimes they have committed, but of crimes they will commit. It is asserted that these men, if allowed to remain free, will at some future time commit felonies."

"But there can be no valid knowledge about the future. As soon as precog-nitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious. In every case, without exception, the report of the three police precogs has invalidated their own data. If no arrests had been made, there would still have been no crimes committed."

Anderton listened idly, only half-hearing the words. The crowd, however, listened with great interest. General Kaplan was now gathering up a summary made from the minority report. He explained what it was and how it had come into existence.

From his coat pocket, Anderton slipped out his gun and held it in his lap. Already, Kaplan was laying aside the minority report, the precognitive material obtained from "Jerry." His lean, bony fingers groped for the summary of first, "Donna," and after that, "Mike."

"This was the original majority report," he explained. "The assertion, made by the first two precogs, that Anderton would commit a murder. Now here is the automatically invalidated material. I shall read it to you." He whipped out his rimless glasses, fitted them to his nose, and started slowly to read.

A queer expression appeared on his face. He halted, stammered, and abruptly broke off. The papers fluttered from his hands. Like a cornered animal, he spun, crouched, and dashed from the speaker's stand.

For an instant his distorted face flashed past Anderton. On his feet now, Anderton raised the gun, stepped quickly forward, and fired. Tangled up in the rows of feet projecting from the chairs that filled the platform, Kaplan gave a single shrill shriek of agony and fright. Like a ruined bird, he tumbled, fluttering and flailing, from the platform to the ground below. Anderton stepped to the railing, but it was already over.

Kaplan, as the majority report had asserted, was dead. His thin chest was a smoking cavity of darkness, crumbling ash that broke loose as the body lay twitching. Sickened, Anderton turned away, and moved quickly between the rising figures of stunned Army officers. The gun, which he still held, guaranteed that he would not be interfered with. He leaped from the platform and edged into the chaotic mass of people at its base. Stricken, horrified, they struggled to see what had happened. The incident, occurring before their very eyes, was incomprehensible. It would take time for acceptance to replace blind terror.

At the periphery of the crowd, Anderton was seized by the waiting police. "You're lucky to get out," one of them whispered to him as the car crept cautiously ahead.

"I guess I am," Anderton replied remotely. He settled back and tried to compose himself. He was trembling and dizzy. Abruptly, he leaned forward and was violently sick.

"The poor devil," one the cops murmured sympathetically.

Through the swirls of misery and nausea, Anderton was unable to tell whether the cop was referring to Kaplan or to himself.

Four burly policemen assisted Lisa and John Anderton in the packing and loading of their possessions. In fifty years, the ex-Commissioner of Police had accumulated a vast collection of material goods. Somber and pensive, he stood watching the procession of crates on their way to the waiting trucks.

By truck they would go directly to the field -- and from there to Centaurus X by inter-system transport. A long trip for an old man. But he wouldn't have to make it back.

"There goes the second from the last crate," Lisa declared, absorbed and preoccupied by the task. In sweater and slacks, she roamed through the barren rooms, checking on last-minute details. "I suppose we won't be able to use these new atronic appliances. They're still using electricity on Centten."

"I hope you don't care too much," Anderton said.

"We'll get used to it," Lisa replied, and gave him a fleeting smile. "Won't we?"

"I hope so. You're positive you'll have no regrets. If I thought- " "No regrets," Lisa assured him. "Now suppose you help me with this crate."

As they boarded the lead truck, Witwer drove up in a patrol car. He leaped out and hurried up to them, his face looking strangely haggard. "Before you take off," he said to Anderton, "you'll have to give me a break-down on the situation with the precogs. I'm getting inquiries from the Senate. They want to find out if the middle report, the retraction, was an error -- or what." Confusedly, he finished: "I still can't explain it. The minority report was wrong, wasn't it?"

"Which minority report?" Anderton inquired, amused.

Witwer blinked. "Then that is it. I might have known." Seated in the cabin of the truck, Anderton got out his pipe and shook tobacco into it. With Lisa's lighter he ignited the tobacco and began operations. Lisa had gone back to the house, wanting to be sure nothing vital had been overlooked.

"There were three minority reports," he told Witwer, enjoying the young man's confusion. Someday, Witwer would learn not to wade into situations he didn't fully understand. Satisfaction was Anderton's final emotion. Old and worn-out as he was, he had been the only one to grasp the real nature of the problem.

"The three reports were consecutive," he explained. "The first was 'Donna.' In that time-path, Kaplan told me of the plot, and I promptly murdered him. 'Jerry,' phased slightly ahead of 'Donna,' used her report as data. He factored in my knowledge of the report. In that, the second time-path, all I wanted to do was to keep my job. It wasn't Kaplan I wanted to kill. It was my own position and life I was interested in."

"And 'Mike' was the third report? That came after the minority report?" Witwer corrected himself. "I mean, it came last?"

" 'Mike' was the last of the three, yes. Faced with the knowledge of the first report, I had decided not to kill Kaplan. That produced report two. But faced with that report, I changed my mind back. Report two, situation two, was the situation Kaplan wanted to create. It was to the advantage of the police to recreate position one. And by that time I was thinking of the police. I had figured out what Kaplan was doing. The third report invalidated the second one in the same way the second one invalidated the first. That brought us back where we started from."

Lisa came over, breathless and gasping. "Let's go -- we're all finished here." Lithe and agile, she ascended the metal rungs of the truck and squeezed in beside her husband and the driver. The latter obediently started up his truck and the others followed.

"Each report was different," Anderton concluded. "Each was unique. But two of them agreed on one point. If left free, I mould kill Kaplan. That created the illusion of a majority report. Actually, that's all it was -- an illusion. 'Donna' and 'Mike' previewed the same event -- but in two totally different time-paths, occurring under totally different situations. 'Donna' and 'Jerry,' the so-called minority report and half of the majority report, were incorrect. Of the three, 'Mike' was correct -- since no report came after his, to invalidate him. That sums it up."

Anxiously, Witwer trotted along beside the truck, his smooth, blond face creased with worry. "Will it happen again? Should we overhaul the set-up?"

"It can happen in only one circumstance," Anderton said. "My case was unique, since I had access to the data. It could happen again -- but only to the next Police Commissioner. So watch your step." Briefly, he grinned, deriving no inconsiderable comfort from Witwer's strained expression. Beside him, Lisa's red lips twitched and her hand reached out and closed over his. "Better keep your eyes open," he informed young Witwer. "It might happen to you at any time."

 

 

Recall Mechanism

The analyst said: "I'm Humphrys, the man you came to see." There were fear and hostility on the patient's face, so Humphrys said: "I… Grudgingly, the patient smiled. "I heard about that. So psychologists are… The expression on his face showed that it was no small problem, and that, if he didn't clear it up, it would probably…

The Unreconstructed M

 

I

The machine was a foot wide and two feet long; it looked like an oversized box of crackers. Silently, with great caution, it climbed the side of a concrete building; it had lowered two rubberized rollers and was now beginning the first phase of its job.

From its rear, a flake of blue enamel was exuded. The machine pressed the flake firmly against the rough concrete and then continued on. Its upward path carried it from vertical concrete to vertical steel: it had reached a window. The machine paused and produced a microscopic fragment of cloth fabric. The cloth, with great care, was embedded in the fitting of the steel window frame.

In the chill darkness, the machine was virtually invisible. The glow of a distant tangle of traffic briefly touched it, illuminated its polished hull, and departed. The machine resumed its work.

It projected a plastic pseudopodium and incinerated the pane of window glass. There was no response from within the gloomy apartment: nobody was home. The machine, now dulled with particles of glass-dust, crept over the steel frame and raised an inquisitive receptor.

While it received, it exerted precisely two hundred pounds pressure on the steel window frame; the frame obediently bent. Satisfied, the machine descended the inside of the wall to the moderately thick carpet. There it began the second phase of its job.

One single human hair -- follicle and speck of scalp included -- was deposited on the hardwood floor by the lamp. Not far from the piano, two dried grains of tobacco were ceremoniously laid out. The machine waited an interval of ten seconds and then, as an internal section of magnetic tape clicked into place, it suddenly said, "Ugh! Damn it. . ."

Curiously, its voice was husky and masculine.

The machine made its way to the closet door, which was locked. Climbing the wood surface, the machine reached the lock mechanism, and, inserting a thin section of itself, caressed the tumblers back. Behind the row of coats was a small mound of batteries and wires: a self-powered video recorder. The machine destroyed the reservoir of film -- which was vital -- and then, as it left the closet, expelled a drop of blood on the jagged tangle that had been the lens-scanner. The drop of blood was even more vital.

While the machine was pressing the artificial outline of a heel mark into the greasy film that covered the flooring of the closet, a sharp sound came from the hallway. The machine ceased its work and became rigid. A moment later a small, middle-aged man entered the apartment, coat over one arm, briefcase in the other.

"Good God," he said, stopping instantly as he saw the machine. "What are you?"

The machine lifted the nozzle of its front section and shot an explosive pellet at the man's half-bald head. The pellet traveled into the skull and detonated. Still clutching his coat and briefcase, bewildered expression on his face, the man collapsed to the rug. His glasses, broken, lay twisted beside his ear. His body stirred a little, twitched, and then was satisfactorily quiet.

Only two steps remained to the job, now that the main part was done. The machine deposited a bit of burnt match in one of the spotless ashtrays resting on the mantel, and entered the kitchen to search for a water glass. It was starting up the side of the sink when the noise of human voices startled it.

"This is the apartment," a voice said, clear and close.

"Get ready -- he ought to still be here." Another voice, a man's voice, like the first. The hall door was pushed open and two individuals in heavy overcoats sprinted purposefully into the apartment. At their approach, the machine dropped to the kitchen floor, the water glass forgotten. Something had gone wrong. Its rectangular outline flowed and wavered; pulling itself into an upright package it fused its shape into that of a conventional TV unit.

It was holding that emergency form when one of the men -- tall, red-haired -- peered briefly into the kitchen.

"Nobody in here," the man declared, and hurried on.

"The window," his companion said, panting. Two more figures entered the apartment, an entire crew. "The glass is gone -- missing. He got in that way."

"But he's gone." The red-haired man reappeared at the kitchen door; he snapped on the light and entered, a gun visible in his hand. "Strange ... we got here right away, as soon as we picked up the rattle." Suspiciously, he examined his wristwatch. "Rosenburg's been dead only a few seconds . . . how could he have got out again so fast?"

 

Standing in the street entrance, Edward Ackers listened to the voice. During the last half hour the voice had taken on a carping, nagging whine; sinking almost to inaudibility, it plodded along, mechanically turning out its message of complaint.

"You're tired," Ackers said. "Go home. Take a hot bath."

"No," the voice said, interrupting its tirade. The locus of the voice was a large illuminated blob on the dark sidewalk, a few yards to Acker's right. The revolving neon sign read:

 

BANISH IT!

 

Thirty times -- he had counted -- within the last few minutes the sign had captured a passerby and the man in the booth had begun his harangue. Beyond the booth were several theaters and restaurants: the booth was well-situated.

But it wasn't for the crowd that the booth had been erected. It was for Ackers and the offices behind him; the tirade was aimed directly at the Interior Department. The nagging racket had gone on so many months that Ackers was scarcely aware of it. Rain on the roof. Traffic noises. He yawned, folded his arms, and waited.

"Banish it," the voice complained peevishly. "Come on, Ackers. Say something; do something."

"I'm waiting," Ackers said complacently.

 

A group of middle-class citizens passed the booth and were handed leaflets. The citizens scattered the leaflets after them, and Ackers laughed.

"Don't laugh," the voice muttered. "It's not funny; it costs us money to print those."

"Your personal money?" Ackers inquired.

"Partly." Garth was lonely, tonight. "What are you waiting for? What's happened? I saw a police team leave your roof a few minutes ago . . . ?

"We may take in somebody," Ackers said, "there's been a killing."

Down the dark sidewalk the man stirred in his dreary propaganda booth. "Oh?" Harvey Garth's voice came. He leaned forward and the two looked directly at each other: Ackers, carefully-groomed, well-fed, wearing a respectable overcoat. . . Garth, a thin man, much younger, with a lean, hungry face composed mostly of nose and forehead.

"So you see," Ackers told him, "we do need the system. Don't be Utopian."

"A man is murdered; and you rectify the moral imbalance by killing the killer." Garth's protesting voice rose in a bleak spasm. "Banish it! Banish the system that condemns men to certain extinction!"

"Get your leaflets here," Ackers parodied dryly. "And your slogans. Either or both. What would you suggest in place of the system?"

Garth's voice was proud with conviction. "Education."

Amused, Ackers asked: "Is that all? You think that would stop anti-social activity? Criminals just don't -- know better?"

"And psychotherapy, of course." His projected face bony and intense, Garth peered out of his booth like an aroused turtle. "They're sick . . . that's why they commit crimes, healthy men don't commit crimes. And you compound it; you create a sick society of punitive cruelty." He waggled an accusing finger. "You're the real culprit, you and the whole Interior Department. You and the whole Banishment System."

Again and again the neon sign blinked BANISH it! Meaning, of course, the system of compulsory ostracism for felons, the machinery that projected a condemned human being into some random backwater region of the sidereal universe, into some remote and out-of-the-way corner where he would be of no harm.

"No harm to us, anyhow," Ackers mused aloud.

Garth spoke the familiar argument. "Yes, but what about the local inhabitants?"

 

Too bad about the local inhabitants. Anyhow, the banished victim spent his energy and time trying to find a way back to the Sol System. If he got back before old age caught up with him he was readmitted by society. Quite a challenge . . . especially to some cosmopolite who had never set foot outside Greater New York. There were -- probably -- many involuntary expatriates cutting grain in odd fields with primitive sickles. The remote sections of the universe seemed composed mostly of dank rural cultures, isolated agrarian enclaves typified by small-time bartering of fruit and vegetables and handmade artifacts.

"Did you know," Ackers said, "that in the Age of Monarchs, a pickpocket was usually hanged?"

"Banish it," Garth continued monotonously, sinking back into his booth. The sign revolved; leaflets were passed out. And Ackers impatiently watched the late-evening street for sign of the hospital truck.

He knew Heimie Rosenburg. A sweeter little guy there never was. . . although Heimie had been mixed up in one of the sprawling slave combines that illegally transported settlers to outsystem fertile planets. Between them, the two largest slavers had settled virtually the entire Sirius System. Four out of six emigrants were hustled out in carriers registered as "freighters." It was hard to picture gentle little Heimie Rosenburg as a business agent for Tirol Enterprises, but there it was.

As he waited, Ackers conjectured on Heimie's murder. Probably one element of the incessant subterranean war going on between Paul Tirol and his major rival, David Lantano, was a brilliant and energetic newcomer . . . but murder was anybody's game. It all depended on how it was done; it could be commercial hack or the purest art.

"Here comes something," Garth's voice sounded, carried to his inner ear by the delicate output transformers of the booth's equipment. "Looks like a freezer."

It was; the hospital truck had arrived. Ackers stepped forward as the truck halted and the back was let down.

"How soon did you get there?" he asked the cop who jumped heavily to the pavement.

"Right away," the cop answered, "but no sign of the killer. I don't think we're going to get Heimie back . . . they got him dead-center, right in the cerebellum. Expert work, no amateur stuff."

Disappointed, Ackers clambered into the hospital truck to inspect for himself.

 

Very tiny and still, Heimie Rosenburg lay on his back, arms at his sides, gazing sightlessly up at the roof of the truck. On his face remained the expression of bewildered wonder. Somebody -- one of the cops -- had placed his bent glasses in his clenched hand. In falling he had cut his cheek. The destroyed portion of his skull was covered by a moist plastic web.

"Who's back at the apartment?" Ackers asked presently.

"The rest of my crew," the cop answered. "And an independent researcher. Leroy Beam."

"Him," Ackers said, with aversion. "How is it he showed up?"

"Caught the rattle, too, happened to be passing with his rig. Poor Heimie had an awful big booster on that rattle . . . I'm surprised it wasn't picked up here at the main offices."

"They say Heimie had a high anxiety level," Ackers said. "Bugs all over his apartment. You're starting to collect evidence?"

"The teams are moving in," the cop said. "We should begin getting specifications in half an hour. The killer knocked out the vid bug set up in the closet. But --" He grinned. "He cut himself breaking the circuit. A drop of blood, right on the wiring; it looks promising."

 

At the apartment, Leroy Beam watched the Interior police begin their analysis. They worked smoothly and thoroughly, but Beam was dissatisfied.

His original impression remained: he was suspicious. Nobody could have gotten away so quickly. Heimie had died, and his death -- the cessation of his neural pattern -- had triggered off an automatic squawk. A rattle didn't particularly protect its owner, but its existence ensured (or usually ensured) detection of the murderer. Why had it failed Heimie?

Prowling moodily, Leroy Beam entered the kitchen for the second time. There, on the floor by the sink, was a small portable TV unit, the kind popular with the sporting set: a gaudy little packet of plastic and knobs and multi-tinted lenses.

"Why this?" Beam asked, as one of the cops plodded past him. "This TV unit sitting here on the kitchen floor. It's out of place."

The cop ignored him. In the living room, elaborate police detection equipment was scraping the various surfaces inch by inch. In the half hour since Heimie's death, a number of specifications had been logged. First, the drop of blood on the damaged vid wiring. Second, a hazy heel mark where the murderer had stepped. Third, a bit of burnt match in the ashtray. More were expected; the analysis had only begun.

It usually took nine specifications to delineate the single individual. Leroy Beam glanced cautiously around him. None of the cops was watching, so he bent down and picked up the TV unit; it felt ordinary. He clicked the on switch and waited. Nothing happened; no image formed. Strange.

He was holding it upside down, trying to see the inner chassis, when Edward Ackers from Interior entered the apartment. Quickly, Beam stuffed the TV unit into the pocket of his heavy overcoat.

"What are you doing here?" Ackers said.

"Seeking," Beam answered, wondering if Ackers noticed his tubby bulge. "I'm in business, too."

"Did you know Heimie?"

"By reputation," Beam answered vaguely. "Tied in with Tirol's combine, I hear; some sort of front man. Had an office on Fifth Avenue."

"Swank place, like the rest of those Fifth Avenue feather merchants." Ackers went on into the living room to watch detectors gather up evidence.

There was a vast nearsightedness to the wedge grinding ponderously across the carpet. It was scrutinizing at a microscopic level, and its field was sharply curtailed. As fast as material was obtained, it was relayed to the Interior offices, to the aggregate file banks where the civil population was represented by a series of punch cards, cross-indexed infinitely.

Lifting the telephone, Ackers called his wife. "I won't be home," he told her. "Business."

A lag and then Ellen responded. "Oh?" she said distantly. "Well, thanks for letting me know."

Over in the corner, two members of the police crew were delightedly examining a new discovery, valid enough to be a specification. "I'll call you again," he said hurriedly to Ellen, "before I leave. Goodbye."

"Goodbye," Ellen said curtly, and managed to hang up before he did. The new discovery was the undamaged aud bug, which was mounted under the floor lamp. A continuous magnetic tape -- still in motion -- gleamed amiably; the murder episode had been recorded sound-wise in its entirety.

"Everything," a cop said gleefully to Ackers. "It was going before Heimie got home."

"You played it back?"

"A portion. There's a couple words spoken by the murderer, should be enough."

Ackers got in touch with Interior. "Have the specifications on the Rosenburg case been fed, yet?"

"Just the first," the attendant answered. "The file discriminates the usual massive category -- about six billion names."

Ten minutes later the second specification was fed to the files. Persons with type O blood, with size 11 1/2 shoes, numbered slightly over a billion. The third specification brought in the element of smoker-nonsmoker. That dropped the number to less than a billion, but not much less. Most adults smoked.

"The aud tape will drop it fast," Leroy Beam commented, standing beside Ackers, his arms folded to conceal his bulging coat. "Ought to be able to get age, at least."

 

The aud tape, analyzed, gave thirty to forty years as the conjectured age. And -- timbre analysis -- a man of perhaps two hundred pounds. A little later the bent steel window frame was examined, and the warp noted. It jibed with the specification of the aud tape. There were now six specifications, including that of sex (male). The number of persons in the in-group was falling rapidly.

"It won't be long," Ackers said genially. "And if he tacked one of those little buckets to the building side, we'll have a paint scrape."

Beam said: "I'm leaving. Good luck."

"Stick around."

"Sorry." Beam moved toward the hall door. "This is yours, not mine. I've got my own business to attend to. . . I'm doing research for a hot-shot nonferrous mining concern."

Ackers eyed his coat. "Are you pregnant?"

"Not that I know of," Beam said, coloring. "I've led a good clean life." Awkwardly, he patted his coat. "You mean this?"

By the window, one of the police gave a triumphant yap. The two bits of pipe tobacco had been discovered: a refinement for the third specification. "Excellent," Ackers said, turning away from Beam and momentarily forgetting him.

Beam left.

Very shortly he was driving across town toward his own labs, the small and independent research outfit that he headed, unsupported by a government grant. Resting on the seat beside him was the portable TV unit; it was still silent.

 

"First of all," Beam's gowned technician declared, "it has a power supply approximately seventy times that of a portable TV pack. We picked up the Gamma radiation." He displayed the usual detector. "So you're right, it's not a TV set"

Gingerly, Beam lifted the small unit from the lab bench. Five hours had passed, and still he knew nothing about it. Taking firm hold of the back he pulled with all his strength. The back refused to come off. It wasn't stuck: there were no seams. The back was not a back; it only looked like a back.

"Then what is it?" he asked.

"Could be lots of things," the technician said noncommittally; he had been roused from the privacy of his home, and it was now two-thirty in the morning. "Could be some sort of scanning equipment. A bomb. A weapon. Any kind of gadget." Laboriously, Beam felt the unit all over, searching for a flaw in the surface. "It's uniform," he murmured. "A single surface."

"You bet. The breaks are false -- it's a poured substance. And," the technician added, "it's hard. I tried to chip off a representative sample but --" He gestured. "No results."

"Guaranteed not to shatter when dropped," Beam said absently. "New extra-tough plastic." He shook the unit energetically; the muted noise of metal parts in motion reached his ear. "It's full of guts."

"We'll get it open," the technician promised, "but not tonight."

Beam replaced the unit on the bench. He could, with bad luck, work days on this one item -- to discover, after all, that it had nothing to do with the murder of Heimie Rosenburg. On the other hand . . .

"Drill me a hole in it," he instructed. "So we can see it."

His technician protested: "I drilled; the drill broke. I've sent out for an improved density. This substance is imported; somebody hooked it from a white dwarf system. It was conceived under stupendous pressure."

"You're stalling," Beam said, irritated. "That's how they talk in the advertising media."

The technician shrugged. "Anyhow, it's extra hard. A naturally-evolved element, or an artificially-processed product from somebody's labs. Who has funds to develop a metal like this?"

"One of the big slavers," Beam said. "That's where the wealth winds up. And they hop around to various systems . . . they'd have access to raw materials. Special ores."

"Can't I go home?" the technician asked. "What's so important about this?"

"This device either killed or helped kill Heimie Rosenburg. We'll sit here, you and I, until we get it open." Beam seated himself and began examining the check sheet showing which tests had been applied. "Sooner or later it'll fly open like a clam -- if you can remember that far back."

Behind them, a warning bell sounded.

"Somebody in the anteroom," Beam said, surprised and wary. "At two-thirty?" He got up and made his way down the dark hall to the front of the building. Probably it was Ackers. His conscience stirred guiltily: somebody had logged the absence of the TV unit.

But it was not Ackers.

Waiting humbly in the cold, deserted anteroom was Paul Tirol; with him was an attractive young woman unknown to Beam. Tirol's wrinkled face broke into smiles, and he extended a hearty hand. "Beam," he said. They shook. "Your front door said you were down here. Still working?"

Guardedly, wondering who the woman was and what Tirol wanted, Beam said: "Catching up on some slipshod errors. Whole firm's going broke."

Tirol laughed indulgently. "Always a japer." His deep-set eyes darted; Tirol was a powerfully-built person, older than most, with a somber, intensely-creased face. "Have room for a few contracts? I thought I might slip a few jobs your way. . . if you're open."

"I'm always open," Beam countered, blocking Tirol's view of the lab proper. The door, anyhow, had slid itself shut. Tirol had been Heimie's boss . . . he no doubt felt entitled to all extant information on the murder. Who did it? When? How? Why? But that didn't explain why he was here.

"Terrible thing," Tirol said crudely. He made no move to introduce the woman; she had retired to the couch to light a cigarette. She was slender, with mahogany-colored hair; she wore a blue coat, and a kerchief tied around her head.

"Yes," Beam agreed. "Terrible."

"You were there, I understand."

That explained some of it. "Well," Beam conceded, "I showed up."

"But you didn't actually see it?"

"No," Beam admitted, "nobody saw it. Interior is collecting specification material. They should have it down to one card before morning."

Visibly, Tirol relaxed. "I'm glad of that. I'd hate to see the vicious criminal escape. Banishment's too good for him. He ought to be gassed."

"Barbarism," Beam murmured dryly. "The days of the gas chamber. Medieval."

Tirol peered past him. "You're working on --" Now he was overtly beginning to pry. "Come now, Leroy. Heimie Rosenburg -- God bless his soul -- was killed tonight and tonight I find you burning the midnight oil. You can talk openly with me; you've got something relevant to his death, haven't you?"

"That's Ackers you're thinking of."

Tirol chuckled. "Can I take a look?"

"Not until you start paying me; I'm not on your books yet."

In a strained, unnatural voice, Tirol bleated: "I want it."

Puzzled, Beam said: "You want what?"

With a grotesque shudder, Tirol blundered forward, shoved Beam aside, and groped for the door. The door flew open and Tirol started noisily down the dark corridor, feeling his way by instinct toward the research labs.

"Hey!" Beam shouted, outraged. He sprinted after the older man, reached the inner door, and prepared to fight it out. He was shaking, partly with amazement, partly with anger. "What the hell?" he demanded breathlessly. "You don't own me!"

Behind him the door mysteriously gave way. Foolishly, he sprawled backward, half-falling into the lab. There, stricken with helpless paralysis, was his technician. And, coming across the floor of the lab was something small and metallic. It looked like an oversized box of crackers, and it was going lickety-split toward Tirol. The object -- metal and gleaming -- hopped up into Tirol's arms, and the old man turned and lumbered back up the hall to the anteroom.

"What was it?" the technician said, coming to life.

Ignoring him, Beam hurried after Tirol. "He's got it!" he yelled futilely.

"It --" the technician mumbled. "It was the TV set. And it ran."

 

II

The file banks at Interior were in agitated flux.

The process of creating a more and more restricted category was tedious, and it took time. Most of the Interior staff had gone home to bed; it was almost three in the morning, and the corridors and offices were deserted. A few mechanical cleaning devices crept here and there in the darkness. The sole source of life was the study chamber of the file banks. Edward Ackers sat patiently waiting for the results, waiting for specifications to come in, and for the file machinery to process them.

To his right a few Interior police played a benign lottery and waited stoically to be sent out for the pick-up. The lines of communication to Heimie Rosenburg's apartment buzzed ceaselessly. Down the street, along the bleak sidewalk, Harvey Garth was still at his propaganda booth, still flashing his BANISH it! sign and muttering in people's ears. There were virtually no passersby, now, but Garth went on. He was tireless; he never gave up.

"Psychopath," Ackers said resentfully. Even where he sat, six floors up, the tinny, carping voice reached his middle ear.

"Take him in," one of the game-playing cops suggested. The game, intricate and devious, was a version of a Centaurian III practice. "We can revoke his vendor's license."

 

Ackers had, when there was nothing else to do, concocted and refined an indictment of Garth, a sort of lay analysis of the man's mental aberrations. He enjoyed playing the psychoanalytic game; it gave him a sense of power.

 

Garth, Harvey

Prominent compulsive syndrome. Has assumed role of ideological anarchist, opposing legal and social system. No rational expression, only repetition of key words and phrases. Idee fixe is Banish the banishment system. Cause dominates life. Rigid fanatic, probably of manic type, since. . .

 

Ackers let the sentence go, since he didn't really know what the structure of the manic type was. Anyhow, the analysis was excellent, and someday it would be resting in an official slot instead of merely drifting through his mind. And, when that happened, the annoying voice would conclude.

"Big turmoil," Garth droned. "Banishment system in vast upheaval. . . crisis moment has arrived."

"Why crisis?" Ackers asked aloud.

 

Down below on the pavement Garth responded. "All your machines are humming. Grand excitement reigns. Somebody's head will be in the basket before sun-up." His voice trailed off in a weary blur. "Intrigue and murder. Corpses . . . the police scurry and a beautiful woman lurks." To his analysis Ackers added an amplifying clause.

 

. . .Garth's talents are warped by his compulsive sense of mission. Having designed an ingenious communication device he sees only its propaganda possibility. Whereas Garth's voice-ear mechanism could be put to work for All Humanity.

 

That pleased him. Ackers got up and wandered over to the attendant operating the file. "How's it coming?" he asked.

"Here's the situation," the attendant said. There was a line of gray stubble smeared over his chin, and he was bleary-eyed. "We're gradually paring it down."

Ackers, as he resumed his seat, wished he were back in the days of the almighty fingerprint. But a print hadn't shown up in months; a thousand techniques existed for print-removal and print alteration. There was no single specification capable, in itself, of delineating the individual. A composite was needed, a gestalt of the assembled data.

 

1) blood sample (type O) 6,139,481,601

2) shoe size (11 1/2) 1,268,303,431

3) smoker 791,992,386

3a) smoker (pipe) 52,774,853

4) sex (male) 26,449,094

5) age (30-40 years) 9,221,397

6) weight (200 lbs) 488,290

7) fabric of clothing 17,459

8) hair variety 866

9) ownership of utilized weapon 40

 

A vivid picture was emerging from the data. Ackers could see him clearly. The man was practically standing there, in front of his desk. A fairly young man, somewhat heavy, a man who smoked a pipe and wore an extremely expensive tweed suit. An individual created by nine specifications; no tenth had been listed because no more data of specification level had been found.

Now, according to the report, the apartment had been thoroughly searched. The detection equipment was going outdoors.

"One more should do it," Ackers said, returning the report to the attendant. He wondered if it would come in and how long it would take.

To waste time he telephoned his wife, but instead of getting Ellen he got the automatic response circuit. "Yes, sir," it told him. "Mrs. Ackers has retired for the night. You may state a thirty-second message which will be transcribed for her attention tomorrow morning. Thank you."

Ackers raged at the mechanism futilely and then hung up. He wondered if Ellen were really in bed; maybe she had, as often before, slipped out. But, after all, it was almost three o'clock in the morning. Any sane person would be asleep: only he and Garth were still at their little stations, performing their vital duties.

What had Garth meant by a "beautiful woman"?

"Mr. Ackers," the attendant said, "there's a tenth specification coming in over the wires."

Hopefully, Ackers gazed up at the file bank. He could see nothing, of course; the actual mechanism occupied the underground levels of the building, and all that existed here was the input receptors and throw-out slots. But just looking at the machinery was in itself comforting. At this moment the bank was accepting the tenth piece of material. In a moment he would know how many citizens fell into the ten categories . . . he would know if already he had a group small enough to be sorted one by one.

"Here it is," the attendant said, pushing the report to him.

 

Type of utilized vehicle (color) 7

 

"My God," Ackers said mildly. "That's low enough. Seven persons -- we can go to work."

"You want the seven cards popped?"

"Pop them," Ackers said.

A moment later, the throw-out slot deposited seven neat white cards in the tray. The attendant passed them to Ackers and he quickly riffled them. The next step was personal motive and proximity: items that had to be gotten from the suspects themselves.

Of the seven names six meant nothing to him. Two lived on Venus, one in the Centaurus System, one was somewhere in Sirius, one was in the hospital, and one lived in the Soviet Union. The seventh, however, lived within a few miles, on the outskirts of New York.

 

LANTANO, DAVID

 

That clinched it. The gestalt, in Ackers' mind, locked clearly in place; the image hardened to reality. He had half expected, even prayed to see Lantano's card brought up.

"Here's your pick-up," he said shakily to the game-playing cops. "Better get as large a team together as possible, this one won't be easy." Momentously, he added: "Maybe I'd better come along."

 

Beam reached the anteroom of his lab as the ancient figure of Paul Tirol disappeared out the street door and onto the dark sidewalk. The young woman, trotting ahead of him, had climbed into a parked car and started it forward; as Tirol emerged, she swept him up and at once departed.

Panting, Beam stood impotently collecting himself on the deserted pavement. The ersatz TV unit was gone; now he had nothing. Aimlessly, he began to run down the street. His heels echoed loudly in the cold silence. No sign of them; no sign of anything.

"I'll be damned," he said, with almost religious awe. The unit -- a robot device of obvious complexity -- clearly belonged to Paul Tirol; as soon as it had identified his presence it had sprinted gladly to him. For. . . protection?

It had killed Heimie; and it belonged to Tirol. So, by a novel and indirect method, Tirol had murdered his employee, his Fifth Avenue front man. At a rough guess, such a highly-organized robot would cost in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.

A lot of money, considering that murder was the easiest of criminal acts. Why not hire an itinerant goon with a crowbar?

Beam started slowly back toward his lab. Then, abruptly, he changed his mind and turned in the direction of the business area. When a free-wheeling cab came by, he hailed it and clambered in.

"Where to, sport?" the starter at cab relay asked. City cabs were guided by remote control from one central source.

He gave the name of a specific bar. Settling back against the seat he pondered. Anybody could commit a murder; an expensive, complicated machine wasn't necessary.

The machine had been built to do something else. The murder of Heimie Rosenburg was incidental.

 

Against the nocturnal skyline, a huge stone residence loomed. Ackers inspected it from a distance. There were no lights burning; everything was locked up tight. Spread out before the house was an acre of grass. David Lantano was probably the last person on Earth to own an acre of grass outright; it was less expensive to buy an entire planet in some other system.

"Let's go," Ackers commanded; disgusted by such opulence, he deliberately trampled through a bed of roses on his way up the wide porch steps. Behind him flowed the team of shock-police.

"Gosh," Lantano rumbled, when he had been roused from his bed. He was a kindly-looking, rather youthful fat man, wearing now an abundant silk dressing robe. He would have seemed more in place as director of a boys' summer camp; there was an expression of perpetual good humor on his soft, sagging face. "What's wrong, officer?"

Ackers loathed being called officer. "You're under arrest," he stated.

"Me?" Lantano echoed feebly. "Hey, officer, I've got lawyers to take care of these things." He yawned voluminously. "Care for some coffee?" Stupidly, he began puttering around his front room, fixing a pot.

It had been years since Ackers had splurged and bought himself a cup of coffee. With Terran land covered by dense industrial and residential installations there was no room for crops, and coffee had refused to "take" in any other system. Lantano probably grew his somewhere on an illicit plantation in South America -- the pickers probably believed they had been transported to some remote colony.

"No thanks," Ackers said. "Let's get going."

Still dazed, Lantano plopped himself down in an easy chair and regarded Ackers with alarm. "You're serious." Gradually his expression faded; he seemed to be drifting back to sleep. "Who?" he murmured distantly.

"Heimie Rosenburg."

"No kidding." Lantano shook his head listlessly. "I always wanted him in my company. Heimie's got real charm. Had, I mean."

It made Ackers nervous to remain here in the vast lush mansion. The coffee was heating, and the smell of it tickled his nose. And, heaven forbid -- there on the table was a basket of apricots.

"Peaches," Lantano corrected, noticing his fixed stare. "Help yourself."

"Where -- did you get them?"

Lantano shrugged. "Synthetic dome. Hydroponics. I forget where . . . I don't have a technical mind."

"You know what the fine is for possessing natural fruit?"

"Look," Lantano said earnestly, clasping his mushy hands together. "Give me the details on this affair, and I'll prove to you I had nothing to do with it. Come on, officer."

"Ackers," Ackers said.

"Okay, Ackers. I thought I recognized you, but I wasn't sure; didn't want to make a fool of myself. When was Heimie killed?"

Grudgingly, Ackers gave him the pertinent information.

For a time Lantano was silent. Then, slowly, gravely, he said: "You better look at those seven cards again. One of those fellows isn't in the Sirius System . . . he's back here."

Ackers calculated the chances of successfully banishing a man of David Lantano's importance. His organization -- Interplay Export -- had fingers all over the galaxy; there'd be search crews going out like bees. But nobody went out banishment distance. The condemned, temporarily ionized, rendered in terms of charged particles of energy, radiated outward at the velocity of light. This was an experimental technique that had failed; it worked only one way.

"Consider," Lantano said thoughtfully. "If I was going to kill Heimie -- would I do it myself? You're not being logical, Ackers. I'd send somebody." He pointed a fleshy finger at Ackers. "You imagine I'd risk my own life? I know you pick up everybody . . . you usually turn up enough specifications."

"We have ten on you," Ackers said briskly.

"So you're going to banish me?"

"If you're guilty, you'll have to face banishment like anyone else. Your particular prestige has no bearing."

Nettled, Ackers added, "Obviously, you'll be released. You'll have plenty of opportunity to prove your innocence; you can question each of the ten specifications in turn."

He started to go on and describe the general process of court procedure employed in the twenty-first century, but something made him pause. David Lantano and his chair seemed to be gradually sinking into the floor. Was it an illusion? Blinking, Ackers rubbed his eyes and peered. At the same time, one of the policemen yelped a warning of dismay; Lantano was quietly leaving them.

"Come back!" Ackers demanded; he leaped forward and grabbed hold of the chair. Hurriedly, one of his men shorted out the power supply of the building; the chair ceased descending and groaned to a halt. Only Lantano's head was visible above the floor level. He was almost entirely submerged in a concealed escape shaft.

"What seedy, useless -- " Ackers began.

"I know," Lantano admitted, making no move to drag himself up. He seemed resigned; his mind was again off in clouds of contemplation. "I hope we can clear all this up. Evidently I'm being framed. Tirol got somebody who looks like me, somebody to go in and murder Heimie."

Ackers and the police crew helped him up from his depressed chair. He gave no resistance; he was too deep in his brooding.

 

The cab let Leroy Beam off in front of the bar. To his right, in the next block, was the Interior Building. . . and, on the sidewalk, the opaque blob that was Harvey Garth's propaganda booth.

Entering the bar, Beam found a table in the back and seated himself. Already he could pick up the faint, distorted murmur of Garth's reflections. Garth, speaking to himself in a directionless blur, was not yet aware of him.

"Banish it," Garth was saying. "Banish all of them. Bunch of crooks and thieves." Garth, in the miasma of his booth, was rambling vitriolically.

"What's going on?" Beam asked. "What's the latest?"

Garth's monologue broke off as he focussed his attention on Beam. "You in there? In the bar?"

"I want to find out about Heimie's death."

"Yes," Garth said. "He's dead; the files are moving, kicking out cards."

"When I left Heimie's apartment," Beam said, "they had turned up six specifications." He punched a button on the drink selector and dropped in a token.

"That must have been earlier," Garth said; "they've got more."

"How many?"

"Ten in all."

Ten. That was usually enough. And all ten of them laid out by a robot device . . . a little procession of hints strewn along its path: between the concrete side of the building and the dead body of Heimie Rosenburg.

"That's lucky," he said speculatively. "Helps out Ackers."

"Since you're paying me," Garth said, "I'll tell you the rest. They've already gone out on their pick-up: Ackers went along."

Then the device had been successful. Up to a point, at least. He was sure of one thing: the device should have been out of the apartment. Tirol hadn't known about Heimie's death rattle; Heimie had been wise enough to do the installation privately.

Had the rattle not brought persons into the apartment, the device would have scuttled out and returned to Tirol. Then, no doubt, Tirol would have detonated it. Nothing would remain to indicate that a machine could lay down a trail of synthetic clues: blood type, fabric, pipe tobacco, hair... all the rest, and all spurious.

"Who's the pick-up on?" Beam asked.

"David Lantano."

Beam winced. "Naturally. That's what the whole thing's about; he's being framed!"

 

Garth was indifferent; he was a hired employee, stationed by the pool of independent researchers to siphon information from the Interior Department. He had no actual interest in politics; his Banish It! was sheer window-dressing.

"I know it's a frame," Beam said, "and so does Lantano. But neither of us can prove it. . . unless Lantano has an absolutely airtight alibi."

"Banish it," Garth murmured, reverting to his routine. A small group of late-retiring citizens had strolled past his booth, and he was masking his conversation with Beam. The conversation, directed to the one listener, was inaudible to everyone else; but it was better not to take risks. Sometimes, very close to the booth, there was an audible feedback of the signal.

Hunched over his drink, Leroy Beam contemplated the various items he could try. He could inform Lantano's organization, which existed relatively intact. . . but the result would be epic civil war. And, in addition, he didn't really care if Lantano was framed; it was all the same to him. Sooner or later one of the big slavers had to absorb the other: cartel is the natural conclusion of big business. With Lantano gone, Tirol would painlessly swallow his organization; everybody would be working at his desk as always.

On the other hand, there might someday be a device -- now half-completed in Tirol's basement -- that left a trail of Leroy Beam clues. Once the idea caught on, there was no particular end.

"And I had the damn thing," he said fruitlessly. "I hammered on it for five hours. It was a TV unit, then, but it was still the device that killed Heimie."

"You're positive it's gone?"

"It's not only gone -- it's out of existence. Unless she wrecked the car driving Tirol home."

"She?" Garth asked.

"The woman." Beam pondered. "She saw it. Or she knew about it; she was with him." But, unfortunately, he had no idea who the woman might be.

"What'd she look like?" Garth asked.

"Tall, mahogany hair. Very nervous mouth."

"I didn't realize she was working with him openly. They must have really needed the device." Garth added: "You didn't identify her? I guess there's no reason why you should; she's kept out of sight."

"Who is she?"

"That's Ellen Ackers."

Beam laughed sharply. "And she's driving Paul Tirol around?"

"She's -- well, she's driving Tirol around, yes. You can put it that way."

"How long?"

"I thought you were in on it. She and Ackers split up; that was last year. But he wouldn't let her leave; he wouldn't give her a divorce. Afraid of the publicity. Very important to keep up respectability. . . keep the shirt fully stuffed."

"He knows about Paul Tirol and her?"

"Of course not. He knows she's -- spiritually hooked up. But he doesn't care . . . as long as she keeps it quiet. It's his position he's thinking about."

"If Ackers found out," Beam murmured. "If he saw the link between his wife and Tirol. . . he'd ignore his ten interoffice memos. He'd want to haul in Tirol. The hell with the evidence; he could always collect that later." Beam pushed away his drink; the glass was empty anyhow. "Where is Ackers?"

"I told you. Out at Lantano's place, picking him up."

"He'd come back here? He wouldn't go home?"

"Naturally he'd come back here." Garth was silent a moment. "I see a couple of Interior vans turning into the garage ramp. That's probably the pick-up crew returning."

Beam waited tensely. "Is Ackers along?"

"Yes, he's there. Banish It!" Garth's voice rose in stentorian frenzy. "Banish the system of Banishment! Root out the crooks and pirates!"

Sliding to his feet, Beam left the bar.

 

A dull light showed in the rear of Edward Ackers' apartment: probably the kitchen light. The front door was locked. Standing in the carpeted hallway, Beam skillfully tilted with the door mechanism. It was geared to respond to specific neural patterns: those of its owners and a limited circle of friends. For him there was no activity.

Kneeling down, Beam switched on a pocket oscillator and started sine wave emission. Gradually, he increased the frequency. At perhaps 150,000 cps the lock gui ltily clicked; that was all he needed. Switching the oscillator off, he rummaged through his supply of skeleton patterns until he located the closet cylinder. Slipped into the turret of the oscillator, the cylinder emitted a synthetic neural pattern close enough to the real thing to affect the lock.

The door swung open. Beam entered.

In half-darkness the living room seemed modest and tasteful. Ellen Ackers was an adequate housekeeper. Beam listened. Was she home at all? And if so, where? Awake? Asleep?

He peeped into the bedroom. There was the bed, but nobody was in it.

If she wasn't here she was at Tirol's. But he didn't intend to follow her; this was as far as he cared to risk.

He inspected the dining room. Empty. The kitchen was empty, too. Next came an upholstered general-purpose rumpus room; on one side was a gaudy bar and on the other a wall-to-wall couch. Tossed on the couch was a woman's coat, purse, gloves. Familiar clothes: Ellen Ackers had worn them. So she had come here after leaving his research lab.

The only room left was the bathroom. He fumbled with the knob; it was locked from the inside. There was no sound, but somebody was on the other side of the door. He could sense her in there.

"Ellen," he said, against the panelling. "Mrs. Ellen Ackers; is that you?"

No answer. He could sense her not making any sound at all: a stifled, frantic silence.

While he was kneeling down, fooling with his pocketful of magnetic lock-pullers, an explosive pellet burst through the door at head level and splattered into the plaster of the wall beyond.

Instantly the door flew open; there stood Ellen Ackers, her face distorted with fright. One of her husband's government pistols was clenched in her small, bony hand. She was less than a foot from him. Without getting up, Beam grabbed her wrist; she fired over his head, and then the two of them deteriorated into harsh, labored breathing.

"Come on," Beam managed finally. The nozzle of the gun was literally brushing the top of his head. To kill him, she would have to pull the pistol back against her. But he didn't let her; he kept hold of her wrist until finally, reluctantly, she dropped the gun. It clattered to the floor and he got stiffly up.

"You were sitting down," she whispered, in a stricken, accusing voice.

"Kneeling down: picking the lock. I'm glad you aimed for my brain." He picked up the gun and succeeded in getting it into his overcoat pocket; his hands were shaking.

Ellen Ackers gazed at him starkly; her eyes were huge and dark, and her face was an ugly white. Her skin had a dead cast, as if it were artificial, totally dry, thoroughly sifted with talc. She seemed on the verge of hysteria; a harsh, muffled shudder struggled up inside her, lodging finally in her throat. She tried to speak but only a rasping noise came out.

"Gee, lady," Beam said, embarrassed. "Come in the kitchen and sit down."

She stared at him as if he had said something incredible or obscene or miraculous; he wasn't sure which.

"Come on." He tried to take hold of her arm but she jerked frantically away. She had on a simple green suit, and in it she looked very nice; a little too thin and terribly tense, but still attractive. She had on expensive earrings, an imported stone that seemed always in motion . . . but otherwise her outfit was austere.

"You -- were the man at the lab," she managed, in a brittle, choked voice.

"I'm Leroy Beam. An independent." Awkwardly guiding her, he led her into the kitchen and seated her at the table. She folded her hands in front of her and studied them fixedly; the bleak boniness of her face seemed to be increasing rather than receding. He felt uneasy.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Cup of coffee?" He began searching the cupboards for a bottle of Venusian-grown coffee substitute. While he was looking, Ellen Ackers said tautiy: "You better go in there. In the bathroom. I don't think he's dead, but he might be."

Beam raced into the bathroom. Behind the plastic shower curtain was an opaque shape. It was Paul Tirol, lying wadded up in the tub, fully clothed. He was not dead but he had been struck behind the left ear and his scalp was leaking a slow, steady trickle of blood. Beam took his pulse, listened to his breathing, and then straightened up.

At the doorway Ellen Ackers materialized, still pale with fright. "Is he? Did I kill him?"

"He's fine."

Visibly, she relaxed. "Thank God. It happened so fast -- he stepped ahead of me to take the M inside his place, and then I did it. I hit him as lightly as I could. He was so interested in it. . . he forgot about me." Words spilled from her, quick, jerky sentences, punctuated by rigid tremors of her hands. "I lugged him back in the car and drove here; it was all I could think of."

"What are you in this for?"

Her hysteria rose in a spasm of convulsive muscle-twitching. "It was all planned -- I had everything worked out. As soon as I got hold of it I was going to --" She broke off.

"Blackmail Tirol?" he asked, fascinated.

She smiled weakly. "No, not Paul. It was Paul who gave me the idea . . . it was his first idea, when his researchers showed him the thing. The M, he calls it. M stands for machine. He means it can't be educated, morally corrected."

Incredulous, Beam said: "You were going to blackmail your husband."

Ellen Ackers nodded. "So he'd let me leave."

Suddenly Beam felt sincere respect for her. "My God -- the rattle. Heimie didn't arrange that; you did. So the device would be trapped in the apartment."

"Yes," she agreed. "I was going to pick it up. But Paul showed up with other ideas; he wanted it, too."

"What went haywire? You have it, don't you?"

Silently she indicated the linen closet. "I stuffed it away when I heard you."

Beam opened the linen closet. Resting primly on the neatly-folded towels was a small, familiar, portable TV unit.

"It's reverted," Ellen said, from behind him, in an utterly defeated monotone. "As soon as I hit Paul it changed. For half an hour I've been trying to get it to shift. It won't. It'll stay that way forever."

 

III

Beam went to the telephone and called a doctor. In the bathroom, Tirol groaned and feebly thrashed his arms. He was beginning to return to consciousness.

"Was that necessary?" Ellen Ackers demanded. "The doctor -- did you have to call?"

Beam ignored her. Bending, he lifted the portable TV unit and held it in his hands; he felt its weight move up his arms like a slow, leaden fatigue. The ultimate adversary, he thought; too stupid to be defeated. It was worse than an animal. It was a rock, solid and dense, lacking all qualities. Except, he thought, the quality of determination. It was determined to persist, to survive; a rock with will. He felt as if he were holding up the universe, and he put the unreconstructed M down.

From behind him Ellen said: "It drives you crazy." Her voice had regained tone. She lit a cigarette with a silver cigarette lighter and then shoved her hands in the pockets of her suit.

"Yes," he said.

"There's nothing you can do, is there? You tried to get it open before. They'll patch Paul up, and he'll go back to his place, and Lantano will be banished --" She took a deep shuddering breath. "And the Interior Department will go on as always."

"Yes," he said. Still kneeling, he surveyed the M. Now, with what he knew, he did not waste time struggling with it. He considered it impassively; he did not even bother to touch it.

In the bathroom, Paul Tirol was trying to crawl from the tub. He slipped back, cursed and moaned, and started his laborious ascent once again.

"Ellen?" his voice quavered, a dim and distorted sound, like dry wires rubbing.

"Take it easy," she said between her teeth; not moving she stood smoking rapidly on her cigarette.

"Help me, Ellen," Tirol muttered. "Something happened to me . . . I don't remember what. Something hit me."

"He'll remember," Ellen said.

Beam said: "I can take this thing to Ackers as it is. You can tell him what it's for -- what it did. That ought to be enough; he won't go through with Lantano."

But he didn't believe it, either. Ackers would have to admit a mistake, a basic mistake, and if he had been wrong to pick up Lantano, he was ruined. And so, in a sense, was the whole system of delineation. It could be fooled; it had been fooled. Ackers was rigid, and he would go right on in a straight line: the hell with Lantano. The hell with abstract justice. Better to preserve cultural continuity and keep society running on an even keel.

"Tirol's equipment," Beam said. "Do you know where it is?"

She shrugged wildly. "What equipment?"

"This thing -- " he jabbed at the M -- "was made somewhere."

"Not here, Tirol didn't make it."

"All right," he said reasonably. They had perhaps six minutes more before the doctor and the emergency medical carrier arrived on rooftop. "Who did make it?"

"The alloy was developed on Bellatrix." She spoke jerkily, word by word. "The rind . . . forms a skin on the outside, a bubble that gets sucked in and out of a reservoir. That's its rind, the TV shape. It sucks it back and becomes the M; it's ready to act."

"What made it?" he repeated.

"A Bellatrix machine tool syndicate . . . a subsidiary of Tirol's organization. They're made to be watchdogs. The big plantations on outplanets use them; they patrol. They get poachers."

Beam said: "Then originally they're not set for one person."

"No."

"Then who set this for Heimie? Not a machine tool syndicate."

"That was done here."

He straightened up and lifted the portable TV unit. "Let's go. Take me there, where Tirol had it altered."

For a moment the woman did not respond. Grabbing her arm he hustled her to the door. She gasped and stared at him mutely.

"Come on," he said, pushing her out into the hall. The portable TV unit bumped against the door as he shut it; he held the unit tight and followed after Ellen Ackers.

 

The town was slatternly and run-down, a few retail stores, fuel station, bars and dance halls. It was two hours' flight from Greater New York and it was called Olum.

"Turn right," Ellen said listlessly. She gazed out at the neon signs and rested her arm on the window sill of the ship.

They flew above warehouses and deserted streets. Lights were few. At an intersection Ellen nodded and he set the ship down on a roof.

Below them was a sagging, fly-specked wooden frame store. A peeling sign was propped up in the window: FULTON BROTHERS locksmiths. With the sign were doorknobs, locks, keys, saws, and spring-wound alarm clocks. Somewhere in the interior of the store a yellow night light burned fitfully.

"This way," Ellen said. She stepped from the ship and made her way down a flight of rickety wooden stairs. Beam laid the portable TV unit on the floor of the ship, locked the doors, and then followed after the woman. Holding onto the railing, he descended to a back porch on which were trash cans and a pile of sodden newspapers tied with string. Ellen was unlocking a door and feeling her way inside.

First he found himself in a musty, cramped storeroom. Pipe and rolls of wire and sheets of metal were heaped everywhere; it was like a junkyard. Next came a narrow corridor and then he was standing in the entrance of a workshop. Ellen reached overhead and groped to find the hanging string of a light. The light clicked on. To the right was a long and littered workbench with a hand grinder at one end, a vise, a keyhole saw; two wooden stools were before the bench and half-assembled machinery was stacked on the floor in no apparent order. The workshop was chaotic, dusty, and archaic. On the wall was a threadbare blue coat hung from a nail: the workcoat of a machinist.

"Here," Ellen said, with bitterness. "This is where Paul had it brought. This outfit is owned by the Tirol organization; this whole slum is part of their holdings."

Beam walked to the bench. "To have altered it," he said, "Tirol must have had a plate of Heimie's neural pattern." He overturned a heap of glass jars; screws and washers poured onto the pitted surface of the bench.

"He got it from Heimie's door," Ellen said. "He had Heimie's lock analyzed and Heimie's pattern inferred from the setting of the tumblers."

"And he had the M opened?"

"There's an old mechanic," Ellen said. "A little dried-up old man; he runs this shop. Patrick Fulton. He installed the bias on the M."

"A bias," Beam said, nodding.

"A bias against killing people. Heimie was the exception, for everybody else it took its protective form. Out in the wilds they would have set it for something else, not a TV unit." She laughed, a sudden ripple close to hysteria. "Yes, that would have looked odd, it sitting out in a forest somewhere, a TV unit. They would have made it into a rock or a stick."

"A rock," Beam said. He could imagine it. The M waiting, covered with moss, waiting for months, years, and then weathered and corroded, finally picking up the presence of a human being. Then the M ceasing to be a rock, becoming, in a quick blur of motion, a box one foot wide and two feet long. An oversized cracker box that started forward --

But there was something missing. "The fakery," he said. "Emitting flakes of paint and hair and tobacco. How did that come in?"

In a brittle voice Ellen said: "The landowner murdered the poacher, and he was culpable in the eyes of the law. So the M left clues. Claw marks. Animal blood. Animal hair."

"God," he said, revolted. "Killed by an animal."

"A bear, a wildcat -- whatever was indigenous, it varied. The predator of the region, a natural death." With her toe she touched a cardboard carton under the workbench. "It's in there, it used to be, anyhow. The neural plate, the transmitter, the discarded parts of the M, the schematics."

The carton had been a shipping container for power packs. Now the packs were gone, and in their place was a carefully-wrapped inner box, sealed against moisture and insect infestation. Beam tore away the metal foil and saw that he had found what he wanted. He gingerly carried the contents out and spread them on the workbench among the soldering irons and drills.

"It's all there," Ellen said, without emotion.

"Maybe," he said, "I can leave you out of this. I can take this and the TV unit to Ackers and try it without your testimony."

"Sure," she said wearily.

"What are you going to do?"

"Well," she said, "I can't go back to Paul, so I guess there's not much I can do."

"The blackmail bit was a mistake," he said.

Her eyes glowed. "Okay."

"If he releases Lantano," Beam said, "he'll be asked to resign. Then he'll probably give you your divorce, it won't be important to him one way or another."

"I --" she began. And then she stopped. Her face seemed to fade, as if the color and texture of her flesh was vanishing from within. She lifted one hand and half-turned, her mouth open and the sentence still unfinished.

Beam, reaching, slapped the overhead light out; the workroom winked into darkness. He had heard it too, had heard it at the same time as Ellen Ackers. The rickety outside porch had creaked and now the slow, ponderous motion was past the storeroom and into the hall.

A heavy man, he thought. A slow-moving man, sleepy, making his way step by step, his eyes almost shut, his great body sagging beneath his suit. Beneath, he thought, his expensive tweed suit. In the darkness the man's shape was looming; Beam could not see it but he could sense it there, filling up the doorway as it halted. Boards creaked under its weight. In a daze he wondered if Ackers already knew, if his order had already been rescinded. Or had the man got out on his own, worked through his own organization?

The man, starting forward again, spoke in a deep, husky voice. "Ugh," Lantano said. "Damn it."

Ellen began to shriek. Beam still did not realize what it was; he was still fumbling for the light and wondering stupidly why it did not come on. He had smashed the bulb, he realized. He lit a match; the match went out and he grabbed for Ellen Ackers' cigarette lighter. It was in her purse, and it took him an agonized second to get it out.

The unreconstructed M was approaching them slowly, one receptor stalk extended. Again it halted, swiveled to the left until it was facing the workbench. It was not now in the shape of a portable TV unit; it had retaken its cracker-box shape.

"The plate," Ellen Ackers whispered. "It responded to the plate."

 

The M had been roused by Heimie Rosenburg's looking for it. But Beam still felt the presence of David Lantano. The big man was still here in the room; the sense of heaviness, the proximity of weight and ponderousness had arrived with the machine, as it moved, sketching Lantano's existence. As he fixedly watched, the machine produced a fragment of cloth fabric and pressed it into a nearby heap of grid-mesh. Other elements, blood and tobacco and hair, were being produced, but they were too small for him to see. The machine pressed a heel mark into the dust of the floor and then projected a nozzle from its anterior section.

Her arm over her eyes, Ellen Ackers ran away. But the machine was not interested in her; revolving in the direction of the workbench it raised itself and fired. An explosive pellet, released by the nozzle, traveled across the workbench and entered the debris heaped across the bench. The pellet detonated; bits of wire and nails showered in particles.

Heimie's dead, Beam thought, and went on watching. The machine was searching for the plate, trying to locate and destroy the synthetic neural emission. It swiveled, lowered its nozzle hesitantly, and then fired again. Behind the workbench, the wall burst and settled into itself.

Beam, holding the cigarette lighter, walked toward the M. A receptor stalk waved toward him and the machine retreated. Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed. For an interval, the device struggled with itself; then, reluctantly, the portable TV unit again became visible. From the machine a high-pitched whine emerged, an anguished squeal. Conflicting stimuli were present; the machine was unable to make a decision.

The machine was developing a situation neurosis and the ambivalence of its response was destroying it. In a way its anguish had a human quality, but he could not feel sorry for it. It was a mechanical contraption trying to assume a posture of disguise and attack at the same time; the breakdown was one of relays and tubes, not of a living brain. And it had been a living brain into which it had fired its original pellet. Heimie Rosenburg was dead, and there were no more like him and no possibility that more could be assembled. He went over to the machine and nudged it onto its back with his foot.

The machine whirred snake-like and spun away. "Ugh, damn it!" it said. It showered bits of tobacco as it rolled off; drops of blood and flakes of blue enamel fell from it as it disappeared into the corridor. Beam could hear it moving about, bumping into the walls like a blind, damaged organism. After a moment he followed after it.

In the corridor, the machine was traveling in a slow circle. It was erecting around itself a wall of particles: cloth and hairs and burnt matches and bits of tobacco, the mass cemented together with blood.

"Ugh, damn it," the machine said in its heavy masculine voice. It went on working, and Beam returned to the other room.

"Where's a phone?" he said to Ellen Ackers.

She stared at him vacantly.

"It won't hurt you," he said. He felt dull and worn-out. "It's in a closed cycle. It'll go on until it runs down."

"It went crazy," she said. She shuddered.

"No," he said. "Regression. It's trying to hide."

From the corridor the machine said, "Ugh. Damn it." Beam found the phone and called Edward Ackers.

 

Banishment for Paul Tirol meant first a procession of bands of darkness and then a protracted, infuriating interval in which empty matter drifted randomly around him, arranging itself into first one pattern and then another.

The period between the time Ellen Ackers attacked him and the time banishment sentence had been pronounced was vague and dim in his mind. Like the present shadows, it was hard to pin down.

He had -- he thought -- awakened in Ackers' apartment. Yes, that was it; and Leroy Beam was there, too. A sort of transcendental Leroy Beam who hovered robustly around, arranging everybody in configurations of his choice. A doctor had come. And finally Edward Ackers had shown up to face his wife and the situation.

Bandaged, and on his way into Interior, he had caught a glimpse of a man going out. The ponderous, bulbous shape of David Lantano, on his way home to his luxurious stone mansion and acre of grass.

At sight of him Tirol had felt a goad of fear. Lantano hadn't even noticed him; an acutely thoughtful expression on his face, Lantano padded into a waiting car and departed.

 

"You have one thousand dollars," Edward Ackers was saying wearily, during the final phase. Distorted, Ackers' face bloomed again in the drifting shadows around Tirol, an image of the man's last appearance. Ackers, too, was ruined, but in a different way. "The law supplies you with one thousand dollars to meet your immediate needs, also you'll find a pocket dictionary of representative out-system dialects."

Ionization itself was painless. He had no memory of it; only a blank space darker than the blurred images on either side.

"You hate me," he had declared accusingly, his last words to Ackers. "I destroyed you. But. . . it wasn't you." He had been confused. "Lantano. Maneuvered but not. How? You did . . ."

But Lantano had had nothing to do with it. Lantano had shambled off home, a withdrawn spectator throughout. The hell with Lantano. The hell with Ackers and Leroy Beam and -- reluctantly -- the hell with Mrs. Ellen Ackers.

"Wow," Tirol babbled, as his drifting body finally collected physical shape. "We had a lot of good times . . . didn't we, Ellen?"

And then a roaring hot field of sunlight was radiating down on him. Stupefied, he sat slumped over, limp and passive. Yellow, scalding sunlight. . . everywhere. Nothing but the dancing heat of it, blinding him, cowing him into submission.

 

He was sprawled in the middle of a yellow clay road. To his right was a baking, drying field of corn wilted in the midday heat. A pair of large, disreputable-looking birds wheeled silently overhead. A long way off was a line of blunted hills: ragged troughs and peaks that seemed nothing more than heaps of dust. At their base was a meager lump of man-made buildings.

At least he hoped they were man-made.

As he climbed shakily to his feet, a feeble noise drifted to his ears. Coming down the hot, dirty road was a car of some sort. Apprehensive and cautious, Tirol walked to meet it.

The driver was human, a thin, almost emaciated youth with pebbled black skin and a heavy mass of weed-colored hair. He wore a stained canvas shirt and overalls. A bent, unlit cigarette hung from his lower lip. The car was a combustion-driven model and had rolled out of the twentieth century; battered and twisted, it rattled to a halt as the driver critically inspected Tirol. From the car's radio yammered a torrent of tinny dance music.

"You a tax collector?" the driver asked.

"Certainly not," Tirol said, knowing the bucolic hostility toward tax collectors. But -- he floundered. He couldn't confess that he was a banished criminal from Earth; that was an invitation to be massacred, usually in some picturesque way. "I'm an inspector," he announced, "Department of Health."

Satisfied, the driver nodded. "Lots of scuttly cutbeede, these days. You fellows got a spray, yet? Losing one crop after another."

Tirol gratefully climbed into the car. "I didn't realize the sun was so hot," he murmured.

"You've got an accent," the youth observed, starting up the engine. "Where you from?"

"Speech impediment," Tirol said cagily. "How long before we reach town?"

"Oh, maybe an hour," the youth answered, as the car wandered lazily forward.

Tirol was afraid to ask the name of the planet. It would give him away. But he was consumed with the need to know. He might be two star-systems away or two million; he might be a month out of Earth or seventy years. Naturally, he had to get back; he had no intention of becoming a sharecropper on some backwater colony planet.

"Pretty swip," the youth said, indicating the torrent of noxious jazz pouring from the car radio. "That's Calamine Freddy and his Woolybear Creole Original Band. Know that tune?"

"No," Tirol muttered. The sun and dryness and heat made his head ache, and he wished to God he knew where he was.

 

The town was miserably tiny. The houses were dilapidated; the streets were dirt. A kind of domestic chicken roamed here and there, pecking in the rubbish. Under a porch a bluish quasi-dog lay sleeping. Perspiring and unhappy, Paul Tirol entered the bus station and located a schedule. A series of meaningless entries flashed by: names of towns. The name of the planet, of course, was not listed.

"What's the fare to the nearest port?" he asked the indolent official behind the ticket window.

The official considered. "Depends on what sort of port you want. Where you planning to go?"

"Toward Center," Tirol said. "Center" was the term used in out-systems for the Sol Group.

Dispassionately, the official shook his head. "No inter-system port around here."

Tirol was baffled. Evidently, he wasn't on the hub planet of this particular system. "Well," he said, "then the nearest interplan port."

The official consulted a vast reference book. "You want to go to which system-member?"

"Whichever one has the inter-system port," Tirol said patiently. He would leave from there.

"That would be Venus."

Astonished, Tirol said: "Then this system -- " He broke off, chagrined, as he remembered. It was the parochial custom in many out-systems, especially those a long way out, to name their member planets after the original nine. This one was probably called "Mars" or "Jupiter" or "Earth," depending on its position in the group. "Fine," Tirol finished. "One-way ticket to -- Venus."

Venus, or what passed for Venus, was a dismal orb no larger than an asteroid. A bleak cloud of metallic haze hung over it, obscuring the sun. Except for mining and smelting operations the planet was deserted. A few dreary shacks dotted the barren countryside. A perpetual wind blew, scattering debris and trash.

But the inter-system port was here, the field which linked the planet to its nearest star-neighbor and, ultimately, with the balance of the universe. At the moment a giant freighter was taking ore.

Tirol entered the ticket office. Spreading out most of his remaining money he said: "I want a one-way ticket taking me toward Center. As far as I can go."

The clerk calculated. "You care what class?"

"No," he said, mopping his forehead.

"How fast?"

"No."

The clerk said: "That'll carry you as far as the Betelgeuse System."

"Good enough," Tirol said, wondering what he did then. But at least he could contact his organization from there; he was already back in the charted universe. But now he was almost broke. He felt a prickle of icy fear, despite the heat.

 

The hub planet of the Betelgeuse System was called Plantagenet III. It was a thriving junction for passenger carriers transporting settlers to undeveloped colony planets. As soon as Tirol's ship landed he hurried across the field to the taxi stand.

"Take me to Tirol Enterprises," he instructed, praying there was an outlet here. There had to be, but it might be operating under a front name. Years ago he lost track of the particulars of his sprawling empire.

"Tirol Enterprises," the cab driver repeated thoughtfully. "Nope, no such outfit, mister."

Stunned, Tirol said: "Who does the slaving around here?"

The driver eyed him. He was a wizened, dried-up little man with glasses; he peered turtle-wise, without compassion. "Well," he said, "I've been told you can get carried out-system without papers. There's a shipping contractor. . . called --" He reflected. Tirol, trembling, handed him a last bill.

"The Reliable Export-Import," the driver said.

That was one of Lantano's fronts. In horror Tirol said: "And that's it?"

The driver nodded.

 

Dazed, Tirol moved away from the cab. The buildings of the field danced around him; he settled down on a bench to catch his breath. Under his coat his heart pounded unevenly. He tried to breathe, but his breath caught painfully in his throat. The bruise on his head where Ellen Ackers had hit him began to throb. It was true, and he was gradually beginning to understand and believe it. He was not going to get to Earth; he was going to spend the rest of his life here on this rural world, cut off from his organization and everything he had built up over the years.

And, he realized, as he sat struggling to breathe, the rest of his life was not going to be very long.

He thought about Heimie Rosenburg.

"Betrayed," he said, and coughed wrackingly. "You betrayed me. You hear that? Because of you I'm here. It's your fault; I never should have hired you."

He thought about Ellen Ackers. "You too," he gasped, coughing. Sitting on the bench he alternately coughed and gasped and thought about the people who had betrayed him. There were hundreds of them.

 

The living room of David Lantano's house was furnished in exquisite taste. Priceless late nineteenth century Blue Willow dishes lined the walls in a rack of wrought iron. At his antique yellow plastic and chrome table, David Lantano was eating dinner, and the spread of food amazed Beam even more than the house.

Lantano was in good humor and he ate with enthusiasm. His linen napkin was tucked under his chin and once, as he sipped coffee, he dribbled and belched. His brief period of confinement was over; he ate to make up for the ordeal.

He had been informed, first by his own apparatus and now by Beam, that banishment had successfully carried Tirol past the point of return. Tirol would not be coming back and for that Lantano was thankful. He felt expansive toward Beam; he wished Beam would have something to eat.

Moodily, Beam said: "It's nice here."

"You could have something like this," Lantano said.

On the wall hung a framed folio of ancient paper protected by helium-filled glass. It was the first printing of a poem of Ogden Nash, a collector's item that should have been in a museum. It aroused in Beam a mixed feeling of longing and aversion.

"Yes," Beam said. "I could have this." This, he thought, or Ellen Ackers or the job at Interior or perhaps all three at once. Edward Ackers had been retired on pension and he had given his wife a divorce. Lantano was out of jeopardy. Tirol had been banished. He wondered what he did want.

"You could go a long way," Lantano said sleepily.

"As far as Paul Tirol?"

Lantano chuckled and yawned.

"I wonder if he left any family," Beam said. "Any children." He was thinking about Heimie.

Lantano reached across the table toward the bowl of fruit. He selected a peach and carefully brushed it against the sleeve of his robe. "Try a peach," he said.

"No thanks," Beam said irritably.

Lantano examined the peach but he did not eat it. The peach was made of wax; the fruit in the bowl was imitation. He was not really as rich as he pretended, and many of the artifacts about the living room were fakes. Each time he offered fruit to a visitor he took a calculated risk. Returning the peach to the bowl he leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee.

If Beam did not have plans, at least he had, and with Tirol gone the plans had a better than even chance of working out. He felt peaceful. Someday, he thought, and not too far off, the fruit in the bowl would be real.

 

Explorers We

"Golly," Parkhurst gasped, his red face tingling with excitement. "Come here, you guys. Look!" They crowded around the viewscreen. "There she is," Barton said. His heart beat strangely. "She sure looks good."

War Game

In his office at the Terran Import Bureau of Standards, the tall man gathered up the morning's memos from their wire basket, and, seating himself at… "Good morning," the first memo said in its tinny, chattery voice, as… Wiseman ran his thumb down to the speaker's name and title.

If There Were No Benny Cemoli

Scampering across the unplowed field the three boys shouted as they saw the ship: it had landed, all right, just where they expected, and they were… "Hey, that's the biggest I ever saw!" Panting, the first boy halted.… Back on the ridge, John LeConte stood by his steam-powered chauffeur-driven limousine, impatiently waiting for the…

Novelty Act

Lights burned late in the great communal apartment building Abraham Lincoln, because this was All Souls night: the residents, all six hundred of… "Hey Bruce, how much'd it set us back?" asked old Joe Purd, oldest… "Plenty," Bruce Corley said, "but it's error-proof; I mean, it isn't just subjective." Up to now,…

Waterspider

 

I

That morning, as he carefully shaved his head until it glistened, Aaron Tozzo pondered a vision too unfortunate to be endured. He saw in his mind fifteen convicts from Nachbaren Slager, each man only one inch high, in a ship the size of a child's balloon. The ship, traveling at almost the speed of light, continued on forever, with the men aboard neither knowing nor caring what became of them.

The worst part of the vision was just that in all probability it was true.

He dried his head, rubbed oil into his skin, then touched the button within his throat. When contact with the Bureau switchboard had been established, Tozzo said, "I admit we can do nothing to get those fifteen men back, but at least we can refuse to send any more."

His comment, recorded by the switchboard, was passed on to his co-workers. They all agreed; he listened to their voices chiming in as he put on his smock, slippers and overcoat. Obviously, the flight had been an error; even the public knew that now. But --

"But we're going on," Edwin Fermeti, Tozzo's superior, said above the clamor. "We've already got the volunteers."

"Also from Nachbaren Slager?" Tozzo asked. Naturally the prisoners there would volunteer; their lifespan at the camp was no more than five or six years. And if this flight to Proxima were successful, the men aboard would obtain their freedom. They would not have to return to any of the five inhab­ited planets within the Sol System.

"Why does it matter where they originate?" Fermeti said smoothly.

Tozzo said, "Our effort should be directed toward improving the U.S. Department of Penology, instead of trying to reach other stars." He had a sudden urge to resign his position with the Emigration Bureau and go into politics as a reform candidate.

Later, as he sat at the breakfast table, his wife patted him sympathetically on the arm. "Aaron, you haven't been able to solve it yet, have you?"

"No," he admitted shortly. "And now I don't even care." He did not tell her about the other ship loads of convicts which had fruitlessly been expended; it was forbidden to discuss that with anyone not employed by a department of the Government.

"Could they be re-entering on their own?"

"No. Because mass was lost here, in the Sol System. To re-enter they have to obtain equal mass back, to replace it. That's the whole point." Exasperated, he sipped his tea and ignored her. Women, he thought. Attractive but not bright. "They need mass back," he repeated. "Which would be fine if they were making a round trip, I suppose. But this is an attempt to colonize; it's not a guided tour that returns to its point of origin."

"How long does it take them to reach Proxima?" Leonore asked. "All reduced like that, to an inch high."

"About four years."

Her eyes grew large. "That's marvelous."

Grumbling at her, Tozzo pushed his chair back from the table and rose. I wish they'd take her, he said to himself, since she imagines it's so marvelous. But Leonore would be too smart to volunteer.

Leonore said softly, "Then I was right. The Bureau has sent people. You as much as admitted it just now."

Flushing, Tozzo said, "Don't tell anybody; none of your female friends especially. Or it's my job." He glared at her.

On that hostile note, he set off for the Bureau.

 

As Tozzo unlocked his office door, Edwin Fermeti hailed him. "You think Donald Nils is somewhere on a planet circling Proxima at this very moment?" Nils was a notorious murderer who had volunteered for one of the Bureau's flights. "I wonder -- maybe he's carrying around a lump of sugar five times his size."

"Not really very funny," Tozzo said.

Fermeti shrugged. "Just hoping to relieve the pessimism. I think we're all getting discouraged." He followed Tozzo into his office. "Maybe we should volunteer ourselves for the next flight." It sounded almost as if he meant it, and Tozzo glanced quickly at him. "Joke," Fermeti said.

"One more flight," Tozzo said, "and if it fails, I resign."

"I'll tell you something," Fermeti said. "We have a new tack." Now Tozzo's co-worker Craig Gilly had come sauntering up. To the two men, Fermeti said, "We're going to try using pre-cogs in obtaining our formula for re-entry." His eyes flickered as he saw their reaction.

Astonished, Gilly said, "But all the pre-cogs are dead. Destroyed by Presidential order twenty years ago."

Tozzo, impressed, said, "He's going to dip back into the past to obtain a pre-cog. Isn't that right, Fermeti?"

"We will, yes," his superior said, nodding. "Back to the golden age of pre-cognition. The twentieth century."

For a moment Tozzo was puzzled. And then he remembered. During the first half of the twentieth century so many pre-cogs -- people with the ability to read the future -- had come into existence that an organ­ized guild had been formed with branches in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Pennsylvania. This group of pre-cogs, all knowing one another, had put out a number of periodicals which had flourished for several decades. Boldly and openly, the members of the pre-cog guild had proclaimed in their writings their knowledge of the future. And yet -- as a whole, their society had paid little attention to them.

Tozzo said slowly, "Let me get this straight. You mean you're going to make use of the Department of Archaeology's time-dredges to scoop up a famous pre-cog of the past?"

Nodding, Fermeti said, "And bring him here to help us, yes."

"But how can he help us? He would have no knowledge of our future, only of his own."

Fermeti said, "The Library of Congress has already given us access to its virtually complete collection of pre-cog journals of the twentieth century." He smiled crookedly at Tozzo and Gilly, obviously enjoying the situation. "It's my hope -- and my expectation -- that among this great body of writings we will find an article specifically dealing with our re-entry problem. The chances, statistically speaking, are quite good . . . they wrote about innumerable topics of future civilization, as you know."

After a pause, Gilly said, "Very clever. I think your idea may solve our problem. Speed-of-light travel to other star systems may yet become a possi­bility."

Sourly, Tozzo said, "Hopefully, before we run out of convicts." But he, too, liked his superior's idea. And, in addition, he looked forward to seeing face to face one of the famous twentieth century pre-cogs. Theirs had been one brief, glorious period -- sadly, long since ended.

Or not so brief, if one dated it as starting with Jonathan Swift, rather than with H. G. Wells. Swift had written of the two moons of Mars and their unusual orbital characteristics years before telescopes had proved their exist­ence. And so today there was a tendency in the textbooks to include him.

 

 

II

It took the computers at the Library of Congress only a short while to scan the brittle, yellowed volumes, article by article, and to select the sole contri­bution dealing with deprivation of mass and restoration as the modus operandi of interstellar space travel. Einstein's formula that as an object increased its velocity its mass increased proportionally had been so fully accepted, so completely unquestioned, that no one in the twentieth century had paid any attention to the particular article, which had been put in print in August of 1955 in a pre-cog journal called If.

In Fermeti's office, Tozzo sat beside his superior as the two of them pored over the photographic reproduction of the journal. The article was titled Night Flight, and it ran only a few thousand words. Both men read it avidly, neither speaking until they had finished.

"Well?" Fermeti said, when they had come to the end.

Tozzo said, "No doubt of it. That's our Project, all right. A lot is garbled; for instance he calls the Emigration Bureau 'Outward, Incorporated,' and believes it to be a private commercial firm." He referred to the text. "It's really uncanny, though. You're obviously this character, Edmond Fletcher; the names are similar but still a little off, as is everything else. And I'm Alison Torelli." He shook his head admiringly. "Those pre-cogs . . . having a mental image of the future that was always askew and yet in the main --"

"In the main correct," Fermeti finished. "Yes, I agree. This Night Flight article definitely deals with us and the Bureau's Project. . . herein called Waterspider, because it has to be done in one great leap. Good lord, that would have been a perfect name, had we thought of it. Maybe we can still call it that."

Tozzo said slowly, "But the pre-cog who wrote Night Flight. . . in no place does he actually give the formula for mass-restoration or even for mass-deprivation. He just simply says that 'we have it.' " Taking the reproduction of the journal, he read aloud from the article:

 

Difficulty in restoring mass to the ship and its passengers at the termi­nation of the flight had proved a stumbling block for Torelli and his team of researchers and yet they had at last proved successful. After the fateful implosion of the Sea Scout, the initial ship to --

 

"And that's all," Tozzo said. "So what good does it do us? Yes, this pre-cog experienced our present situation a hundred years ago -- but he left out the technical details."

There was silence.

At last Fermeti said thoughtfully, "That doesn't mean he didn't know the technical data. We know today that the others in his guild were very often trained scientists." He examined the biographical report. "Yes, while not actually using his pre-cog ability he worked as a chicken-fat analyst for the University of California."

"Do you still intend to use the time-dredge to bring him up to the present?"

Fermeti nodded. "I only wish the dredge worked both ways. If it could be used with the future, not the past, we could avoid having to jeopardize the safety of this pre-cog --" He glanced down at the article. "This Poul Anderson."

Chilled, Tozzo said, "What hazard is there?"

"We may not be able to return him to his own time. Or --" Fermeti paused. "We might lose part of him along the way, wind up with only half of him. The dredge has bisected many objects before."

"And this man isn't a convict at Nachbaren Slager," Tozzo said. "So you don't have that rationale to fall back on."

Fermeti said suddenly, "We'll do it properly. We'll reduce the jeopardy by sending a team of men back to that time, back to 1954. They can apprehend this Poul Anderson and see that all of him gets into the time-dredge, not merely the top half or the left side."

So it had been decided. The Department of Archaeology's time-dredge would go back to the world of 1954 and pick up the pre-cog Poul Anderson; there was nothing further to discuss.

 

Research conducted by the U.S. Department of Archaeology showed that in September of 1954 Poul Anderson had been living in Berkeley, California, on Grove Street. In that month he had attended a top-level meeting of pre-cogs from all over the United States at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. It was probable that there, in that meeting, basic policy for the next year had been worked out, with Anderson, and other experts, participating.

"It's really very simple," Fermeti explained to Tozzo and Gilly. "A pair of men will go back. They will be provided with forged identification showing them to be part of the nation-wide pre-cog organization. . . squares of cello­phane-enclosed paper which are pinned to the coat lapel. Naturally, they will be wearing twentieth century garments. They will locate Poul Anderson, single him out and draw him off to one side."

"And tell him what?" Tozzo said skeptically.

"That they represent an unlicensed amateur pre-cog organization in Battlecreek, Michigan, and that they have constructed an amusing vehicle built to resemble a time-travel dredge of the future. They will ask Mr. Ander­son, who was actually quite famous in his time, to pose by their humbug dredge, and then they will ask for a shot of him within. Our research shows that, according to his contemporaries, Anderson was mild and easy-going, and also that at these yearly top-strategy assemblies he often became convivial enough to enter into the mood of optimism generated by his fellow pre-cogs."

Tozzo said, "You mean he sniffed what they called 'airplane dope'? He was a 'glue-sniffer'?"

With a faint smile, Fermeti said, "Hardly. That was a mania among ado­lescents and did not become widespread in fact until a decade later. No, I am speaking about imbibing alcohol."

"I see," Tozzo said, nodding.

Fermeti continued, "In the area of difficulties, we must cope with the fact that at this top-secret session, Anderson brought along his wife Karen, dressed as a Maid of Venus in gleaming breast-cups, short skirt and helmet, and that he also brought their new-born daughter Astrid. Anderson himself did not wear any disguise for purposes of concealing his identity. He had no anxieties, being a quite stable person, as were most twentieth century pre-cogs.

"However, during the discussion periods between formal sessions, the pre-cogs, minus their wives, circulating about, playing poker and arguing, some of them it is said stoning one another --"

"Stoning?"

"Or, as it was put, becoming stoned. In any case, they gathered in small groups in the antechambers of the hotel, and it is at such an occasion that we expect to nab him. In the general hubbub his disappearance would not be noted. We would expect to return him to that exact time, or at least no more than a few hours later or earlier. . . preferably not earlier because two Poul Andersons at the meeting might prove awkward."

Tozzo, impressed, said, "Sounds foolproof."

"I'm glad you like it," Fermeti said tartly, "because you will be one of the team sent."

Pleased, Tozzo said, "Then I had better get started learning the details of life in the mid twentieth century." He picked up another issue of If. This one, May of 1971, had interested him as soon as he had seen it. Of course, this issue would not be known yet to the people of 1954 . . . but eventually they would see it. And once having seen it they would never forget it. . .

Ray Bradbury's first textbook to be serialized, he realized as he examined the journal. The Fisher of Men, it was called, and in it the great Los Angeles pre-cog had anticipated the ghastly Gutmanist political revolution which was to sweep the inner planets. Bradbury had warned against Gutman, but the warning had gone -- of course -- unheeded. Now Gutman was dead and the fanatical supporters had dwindled to the status of random terrorists. But had the world listened to Bradbury --

"Why the frown?" Fermeti asked him. "Don't you want to go?"

"Yes," Tozzo said thoughtfully. "But it's a terrible responsibility. These are no ordinary men."

"That is certainly the truth," Fermeti said, nodding.

 

 

III

Twenty-four hours later, Aaron Tozzo stood surveying himself in his mid twentieth century clothing and wondering if Anderson would be deceived, if he actually could be duped into entering the dredge.

The costume certainly was perfection itself. Tozzo had even been equipped with the customary waist-length beard and handlebar mustache so popular circa 1950 in the United States. And he wore a wig.

Wigs, as everyone knew, had at that time swept the United States as the fashion note par excellence; men and women had both worn huge powdered perukes of bright colors, reds and greens and blues and of course dignified grays. It was one of the most amusing occurrences of the twentieth century.

Tozzo's wig, a bright red, pleased him. Authentic, it had come from the Los Angeles Museum of Cultural History, and the curator had vouched for it being a man's, not a woman's. So the fewest possible chances of detection were being taken. Little risk existed that they would be detected as members of another, future culture entirely.

And yet, Tozzo was still uneasy.

However, the plan had been arranged; now it was time to go. With Gilly, the other member selected, Tozzo entered the time-dredge and seated him­self at the controls. The Department of Archaeology had provided a full instruction manual, which lay open before him. As soon as Gilly had locked the hatch, Tozzo took the bull by the horns (a twentieth century expression) and started up the dredge.

Dials registered. They were spinning backward into time, back to 1954 and the San Francisco Pre-Cog Congress.

Beside him, Gilly practiced mid twentieth century phrases from a refer­ence volume. "Diz muz be da blace. . ." Gilly cleared his throat. "Kilroy was here," he murmured. "Wha' hoppen? Like man, let's cut out; this ball's a drag." He shook his head. "I can't grasp the exact sense of these phrases," he apologized to Tozzo. "Twenty-three skidoo."

Now a red light glowed; the dredge was about to conclude its journey. A moment later its turbines halted.

They had come to rest on the sidewalk outside the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in downtown San Francisco.

On all sides, people in quaint archaic costumes dragged along on foot. And, Tozzo saw, there were no monorails; all the visible traffic was surface-bound. What a congestion, he thought, as he watched the automobiles and buses moving inch by inch along the packed streets. An official in blue waved traffic ahead as best he could, but the entire enterprise, Tozzo could see, was an abysmal failure.

"Time for phase two," Gilly said. But he, too, was gaping at the stalled surface vehicles. "Good grief," he said, "look at the incredibly short skirts of the women; why, the knees are virtually exposed. Why don't the women die of whisk virus?"

"I don't know," Tozzo said, "but I do know we've got to get into the Sir Francis Drake Hotel."

Carefully, they opened the port of the time-dredge and stepped out. And then Tozzo realized something. There had been an error. Already.

The men of this decade were clean-shaven.

"Gilly," he said rapidly, "we've got to shed our beards and mustaches." In an instant he had pulled Gilly's off, leaving his bare face exposed. But the wig; that was correct. All the men visible wore head-dress of some type; Tozzo saw few if any bald men. The women, too, had luxurious wigs ... or were they wigs? Could they perhaps be natural hair?

In any case, both he and Gilly now would pass. Into the Sir Francis Drake, he said to himself, leading Gilly along.

 

They darted lithely across the sidewalk -- it was amazing how slowly the people of this time-period walked -- and into the inexpressibly old-fashioned lobby of the hotel. Like a museum, Tozzo thought as he glanced about him. I wish we could linger. . . but they could not.

"How's our identification?" Gilly said nervously. "Is it passing inspec­tion?" The business with the facehair had upset him.

On each of their lapels they carried the expertly made false identification. It worked. Presently they found themselves ascending by a lift, or rather elevator, to the correct floor.

The elevator let them off in a crowded foyer. Men, all clean-shaven, with wigs or natural hair, stood in small clusters everywhere, laughing and talking. And a number of attractive women, some of them in garments called leotards, which were skin-tight, loitered about smilingly. Even though the styles of the times required their breasts to be covered, they were a sight to see.

Sotto voce, Gilly said, "I am stunned. In this room are some of the --"

"I know," Tozzo murmured. Their Project could wait, at least a little while. Here was an unbelievably golden opportunity to see these pre-cogs, actually to talk to them and listen to them. . .

Here came a tall, handsome man in a dark suit that sparkled with tiny specks of some unnatural material, some variety of synthetic. The man wore glasses and his hair, everything about him, had a tanned, dark look. The name on his identification . . . Tozzo peered.

The tall, good-looking man was A. E. van Vogt.

"Say," another individual, perhaps a pre-cog enthusiast, was saying to van Vogt, stopping him. "I read both versions of your World of Null A and I still didn't quite get that about it being him; you know, at the end. Could you explain that part to me? And also when they started into the tree and then just --"

van Vogt halted. A soft smile appeared on his face and he said. "Well, I'll tell you a secret. I start out with a plot and then the plot sort of folds up. So then I have to have another plot to finish the rest of the story."

Going over to listen, Tozzo felt something magnetic about van Vogt. He was so tall, so spiritual. Yes, Tozzo said to himself; that was the word, a healing spirituality. There was a quality of innate goodness which emanated from him.

All at once van Vogt said, "There goes a man with my pants." And without a further word to the enthusiast, stalked off and disappeared into the crowd.

Tozzo's head swam. To actually have seen and heard A. E. van Vogt --

"Look," Gilly was saying, plucking at his sleeve. "That enormous, genial-looking man seated over there; that's Howard Browne, who edited the pre-cog journal Amazing at this time-period."

"I have to catch a plane," Howard Browne was saying to anyone who would listen to him. He glanced about him in a worried anxiety, despite his almost physical geniality.

"I wonder," Gilly said, "if Doctor Asimov is here."

We can ask, Tozzo decided. He made his way over to one of the young women wearing a blonde wig and green leotards. "WHERE IS DOCTOR ASIMOV?" he asked clearly in the argot of the times.

"Who's to know?" the girl said.

"Is he here, miss?"

"Naw," the girl said.

Gilly again plucked at Tozzo's sleeve. "We must find Poul Anderson, remember? Enjoyable as it is to talk to this girl --"

"I'm inquiring about Asimov," Tozzo said brusquely. After all, Isaac Asimov had been the founder of the entire twenty-first century positronic robot industry. How could he not be here?

A burly outdoorish man strode by them, and Tozzo saw that this was Jack Vance. Vance, he decided, looked more like a big game hunter than anything else . . . we must beware of him, Tozzo decided. If we got into any altercation Vance could take care of us easily.

He noticed now that Gilly was talking to the blonde-wigged girl in the green leotards. "MURRAY LEINSTER?" Gilly was asking. "The man whose paper on parallel time is still at the very forefront of theoretical studies; isn't he --"

"I dunno," the girl said, in a bored tone of voice.

 

A group had gathered about a figure opposite them; the central person whom everybody was listening to was saying, ". . .all right, if like Howard Browne you prefer air travel, fine. But I say it's risky. I don't fly. In fact even riding in a car is dangerous. I generally lie down in the back." The man wore a short-cropped wig and a bow tie; he had a round, pleasant face but his eyes were intense.

It was Ray Bradbury, and Tozzo started toward him at once.

"Stop!" Gilly whispered angrily. "Remember what we came for."

And, past Bradbury, seated at the bar, Tozzo saw an older, care-weathered man in a brown suit wearing small glasses and sipping a drink. He recognized the man from drawings in early Gernsback publications; it was the fabulously unique pre-cog from the New Mexico region, Jack Williamson.

"I thought Legion of Time was the finest novel-length science-fiction work I ever read," an individual, evidently another pre-cog enthusiast, was saying to Jack Williamson, and Williamson was nodding in pleasure.

"That was originally going to be a short story," Williamson said. "But it grew. Yes, I like that one, too."

Meanwhile Gilly had wandered on, into an adjoining room. He found, at a table, two women and a man in deep conversation. One of the women, dark-haired and handsome, with bare shoulders, was -- according to her identification plate -- Evelyn Paige. The taller woman he discovered was the renowned Margaret St. Clair, and Gilly at once said:

"Mrs. St. Clair, your article entitled The Scarlet Hexapodin the September 1959 was one of the finest --" And then he broke off.

Because Margaret St. Clair had not written that yet. Knew in fact nothing about it. Flushing with nervousness, Gilly backed away.

"Sorry," he murmured. "Excuse me; I became confused."

Raising an eyebrow, Margaret St. Clair said, "In the September 1959 issue, you say? What are you, a man from the future?"

"Droll," Evelyn Paige said, "but let's continue." She gave Gilly a hard stare from her black eyes. "Now Bob, as I understand what you're saying --" She addressed the man opposite her, and Gilly saw now to his delight that the dire-looking cadaverous individual was none other than Robert Bloch.

Gilly said, "Mr. Bloch, your article in Galaxy: Sabbatical, was --"

"You've got the wrong person, my friend," Robert Bloch said. "I never wrote any piece entitled Sabbatical."

Good Lord, Gilly realized. I did it again; Sabbatical is another work which has not been written yet. I had better get away from here. He moved back toward Tozzo. . . and found him standing rigidly.

Tozzo said, "I've found Anderson."

At once, Gilly turned, also rigid.

 

Both of them had carefully studied the pictures provide by the Library of Congress. There stood the famous pre-cog, tall and slender and straight, even a trifle thin, with curly hair -- or wig -- and glasses, a warm glint of friendliness in his eyes. He held a whiskey glass in one hand, and he was discoursing with several other pre-cogs. Obviously he was enjoying himself.

"Urn, uh, let's see," Anderson was saying, as Tozzo and Gilly came quietly up to join the group. "Pardon?" Anderson cupped his ear to catch what one of the other pre-cogs was saying. "Oh, uh, yup, that's right." Anderson nodded. "Yup, Tony, uh, I agree with you one hundred per cent."

The other pre-cog, Tozzo realized, was the superb Tony Boucher, whose pre-cognition of the religious revival of the next century had been almost supernatural. The word-by-word description of the Miracle in the Cave involving the robot. . . Tozzo gazed at Boucher with awe, and then he turned back to Anderson.

"Poul," another pre-cog said. "I'll tell you how the Italians intended to get the British to leave if they did invade in 1943. The British would stay at hotels, the best, naturally. The Italians would overcharge them."

"Oh, yes, yes," Anderson said, nodding and smiling, his eyes twinkling. "And then the British, being gentlemen, would say nothing --"

"But they'd leave the next day," the other pre-cog finished, and all in the group laughed, except for Gilly and Tozzo.

"Mr. Anderson," Tozzo said tensely, "we're from an amateur pre-cog organization at Battlecreek, Michigan and we would like to photograph you beside our model of a time-dredge."

"Pardon?" Anderson said, cupping his ear.

Tozzo repeated what he had said, trying to be audible above the back­ground racket. At last Anderson seemed to understand.

"Oh, um, well, where is it?" Anderson asked obligingly.

"Downstairs on the sidewalk," Gilly said. "It was too heavy to bring up."

"Well, uh, if it won't take too awfully long," Anderson said, "which I doubt it will." He excused himself from the group and followed after them as they started toward the elevator.

"It's steam-engine building time," a heavy-set man called to them as they passed. "Time to build steam engines, Poul."

"We're going downstairs," Tozzo said nervously.

"Walk downstairs on your heads," the pre-cog said. He waved goodbye goodnaturedly, as the elevator came and the three of them entered it.

"Kris is jolly today," Anderson said.

"And how," Gilly said, using one of his phrases.

"Is Bob Heinlein here?" Anderson asked Tozzo as they descended. "I understand he and Mildred Clingerman went off somewhere to talk about cats and nobody has seen them come back."

"That's the way the ball bounces," Gilly said, trying out another twentieth century phrase.

Anderson cupped his ear, smiled hesitantly, but said nothing.

At last, they emerged on the sidewalk. At the sight of their time-dredge, Anderson blinked in astonishment.

"I'll be gosh darned," he said, approaching it. "That's certainly imposing. Sure, I'd, uh, be happy to pose beside it." He drew his lean, angular body erect, smiling that warm, almost tender smile that Tozzo had noticed before. "Uh, how's this?" Anderson inquired, a little timidly.

With an authentic twentieth century camera taken from the Smithsonian, Gilly snapped a picture. "Now inside," he requested, and glanced at Tozzo.

"Why, uh, certainly," Poul Anderson said, and stepped up the stairs and into the dredge. "Gosh, Karen would, uh, like this," he said as he disappeared inside. "I wish to heck she'd come along."

Tozzo followed swiftly. Gilly slammed the hatch shut, and, at the control board, Tozzo, with the instruction manual in hand, punched buttons.

The turbines hummed, but Anderson did not seem to hear them; he was engrossed in staring at the controls, his eyes wide.

"Gosh," he said.

The time-dredge passed back to the present, with Anderson still lost in his scrutiny of the controls.

 

 

IV

Fermeti met them. "Mr. Anderson," he said, "this is an incredible honor." He held out his hand, but now Anderson was peering through the open hatch past him, at the city beyond; he did not notice the offered hand.

"Say," Anderson said, his face twitching. "Um, what's, uh, this?"

He was staring at the monorail system primarily, Tozzo decided. And this was odd, because at least in Seattle there had been monorails back in Anderson's time. . . or had there been? Had that come later? In any case, Anderson now wore a massively perplexed expression.

"Individual cars," Tozzo said, standing close beside him. "Your monorails had only group cars. Later on, after your time, it was made possible for each citizen's house to have a monorail outlet; the individual brought his car out of its garage and onto the rail-terminal, from which point he joined the collec­tive structure. Do you see?"

But Anderson remained perplexed; his expression in fact had deepened.

"Um," he said, "what do you mean 'my time'? Am I dead?" He looked morose now. "I thought it would be more along the lines of Valhalla, with Vikings and such. Not futuristic."

"You're not dead, Mr. Anderson," Fermeti said. "What you're facing is the culture-syndrome of the mid twenty-first century. I must tell you, sir, that you've been napped. But you will be returned; I give you both my personal and official word."

Andersen's jaw dropped, but he said nothing; he continued to stare.

 

Donald Nils, notorious murderer, sat at the single table in the reference room of the Emigration Bureau's interstellar speed-of-light ship and com­puted that he was, in Earth figures, an inch high. Bitterly, he cursed. "It's cruel and unusual punishment," he grated aloud. "It's against the Constitu­tion." And then he remembered that he had volunteered, in order to get out of Nachbaren Slager. That goddam hole, he said to himself. Anyhow, I'm out of there.

And, he said to himself, even if I'm only an inch high I've still made myself captain of this lousy ship, and if it ever gets to Proxima I'll be captain of the entire lousy Proxima System. I didn't study with Gutman himself for nothing. And if that don't beat Nachbaren Slager, I don't know what does. . .

His second-in-command, Pete Bailly, stuck his head into the reference room. "Hey, Nils, I have been looking over the micro-repro of this particular old pre-cog journal Astounding like you told me, this Venus Equilateral article about matter transmission, and I mean even though I was the top vid repair­man in New York City that don't mean I can build one of these things." He glared at Nils. "That's asking a lot."

Nils said tightly, "We've got to get back to Earth."

"You're out of luck," Bailly told him. "Better settle for Prox."

Furiously, Nils swept the micro-reproductions from the table, onto the floor of the ship. "That damn Bureau of Emigration! They tricked us!"

Bailly shrugged. "Anyhow we got plenty to eat and a good reference library and 3-D movies every night."

"By the time we get to Prox," Nils snarled, "we'll have seen every movie --" He calculated. "Two thousand times."

"Well, then don't watch. Or we can run them backwards. How's your research coming?"

"I got going the micro of an article in Space Science Fiction" Nils said thoughtfully, "called The Variable Man. It tells about faster-than-light trans­mission. You disappear and then reappear. Sonic guy named Cole is going to perfect it, according to the old-time pre-cog who wrote it." He brooded about that. "If we could build a faster-than-light ship we could return to Earth. We could take over."

"That's crazy talk," Bailly said.

Nils regarded him. "I'm in command."

"Then," Bailly said, "we got a nut in command. There's no returning to Terra; we better build our lives on Proxima's planets and forget forever about our home. Thank God we got women aboard. My God, even if we did get back. . . what could one-inch high people accomplish? We'd be jeered at."

"Nobody jeers at me," Nils said quietly.

But he knew Bailly was right. They'd be lucky if they could research the micros of the old pre-cog journals in the ship's reference room and develop for themselves a way of landing safely on Proxima's planets. . . even that was ask­ing a lot.

We'll succeed, Nils said to himself. As long as everyone obeys me, does exactly as I tell them, with no dumb questions.

Bending, he activated the spool of the December 1962 If. There was an article in it that particularly interested him ... and he had four years ahead of him in which to read, understand, and finally apply it.

 

Fermeti said, "Surely your pre-cog ability helped prepare you for this, Mr. Anderson." His voice faltered with nervous strain, despite his efforts to con­trol it.

"How about taking me back now?" Anderson said. He sounded almost calm.

Fermeti, after shooting a swift glance at Tozzo and Gilly, said to Anderson, "We have a technical problem, you see. That's why we brought you here to our own time-continuum. You see --"

"I think you had better, um, take me back," Anderson broke in. "Karen'll get worried." He craned his neck, peering in all directions. "I knew it would be somewhat on this order," he murmured. His face twitched. "Not too dif­ferent from what I expected. . . what's that tall thing over there? Looks like what the old blimps used to catch onto."

"That," Tozzo said, "is a prayer tower."

"Our problem," Fermeti said patiently, "is dealt with in your article Night Flight in the August 1955 If. We've been able to deprive an interstellar vehicle of its mass, but so far restoration of mass has --"

"Uh, oh, yes," Anderson said, in a preoccupied way. "I'm working on that yarn right now. Should have that off to Scott in another couple of weeks." He explained, "My agent."

Fermeti considered a moment and then said, "Can you give us the formula for mass-restoration, Mr. Anderson?"

"Um," Poul Anderson said slowly, "Yes, I guess that would be the correct term. Mass-restoration. . . I could go along with that." He nodded. "I haven't worked out any formula; I didn't want to make the yarn too technical. I guess I could make one up, if that's what they wanted." He was silent, then, appar­ently having withdrawn into a world of his own; the three men waited, but Anderson said nothing more.

"Your pre-cog ability," Fermeti said.

"Pardon?" Anderson said, cupping his ear. "Pre-cog?" He smiled shyly. "Oh, uh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. I know John believes in all that, but I can't say as I consider a few experiments at Duke University as proof."

Fermeti stared at Anderson a long time. "Take the first article in the January 1953 Galaxy" he said quietly. "The Defenders. . . about the people liv­ing beneath the surface and the robots up above, pretending to fight the war but actually not, actually faking the reports so interestingly that the people --"

"I read that," Poul Anderson agreed. "Very good, I thought, except for the ending. I didn't care too much for the ending."

Fermeti said, "You understand, don't you, that those exact conditions came to pass in 1996, during World War Three? That by means of the article we were able to penetrate the deception carried on by our surface robots? That virtually every word of that article was exactly prophetic --"

"Phil Dick wrote that," Anderson said. "The Defenders?'

"Do you know him?" Tozzo inquired.

"Met him yesterday at the Convention," Anderson said. "For the first time. Very nervous fellow, was almost afraid to come in."

Fermeti said, "Am I to understand that none of you are aware that you are pre-cogs?" His voice shook, completely out of control now.

"Well," Anderson said slowly, "some sf writers believe in it. I think Alf Van Vogt does," He smiled at Fermeti.

"But don't you understand?" Fermeti demanded. "You described us in an article -- you accurately described our Bureau and its interstellar Project!"

After a pause, Anderson murmured, "Gosh, I'll be darned. No, I didn't know that. Um, thanks a lot for telling me."

Turning to Tozzo, Fermeti said, "Obviously we'll have to recast our entire concept of the mid twentieth century." He looked weary.

Tozzo said, "For our purposes their ignorance doesn't matter. Because the pre-cognitive ability was there anyhow, whether they recognized it or not." That, to him, was perfectly clear.

Anderson, meanwhile, had wandered off a little and stood now inspecting the display window of a nearby gift store. "Interesting bric-a-brac in there. I ought to pick up something for Karen while I'm here. Would it be all right --" He turned questioningly to Fermeti. "Could I step in there for a moment and look around?"

"Yes, yes," Fermeti said irritably.

Poul Anderson disappeared inside the gift shop, leaving the three of them to argue the meaning of their discovery.

"What we've got to do," Fermeti said, "is sit him down in the situation familiar to him: before a typewriter. We must persuade him to compose an article on deprivation of mass and its subsequent restoration. Whether he himself takes the article to be factual or not has no bearing; it still will be. The Smithsonian must have a workable twentieth century typewriter and 8 1/2 by 11 white sheets of paper. Do you agree?"

Tozzo, meditating, said, "I'll tell you what I think. It was a cardinal error to permit him to go into that gift shop."

"Why is that?" Fermeti said.

"I see his point," Gilly said excitedly. "We'll never see Anderson again; he's skipped out on us through the pretext of gift-shopping for his wife."

Ashen-faced, Fermeti turned and raced into the gift ship. Tozzo and Gilly followed.

The store was empty. Anderson had eluded them; he was gone.

 

As he loped silently out the back door of the gift shop, Poul Anderson thought to himself, I don't believe they'll get me. At least not right away. I've got too much to do while I'm here, he realized. What an opportunity! When I'm an old man I can tell Astrid's children about this.

Thinking of his daughter Astrid reminded him of one very simple fact, however. Eventually he had to go back to 1954. Because of Karen and the baby. No matter what he found here -- for him it was temporary.

But meanwhile. . . first I'll go to the library, any library, he decided. And get a good look at history books that'll tell me what took place in the interven­ing years between 1954 and now.

I'd like to know, he said to himself, about the Cold War, how the U.S. and Russia came out. And -- space explorations. I'll bet they put a man on Luna by 1975. Certainly, they're exploring space now; heck, they even have a time-dredge so they must have that.

Ahead Poul Anderson saw a doorway. It was open and without hesitation he plunged into it. Another shop of some kind, but this one larger than the gift shop.

"Yes sir," a voice said, and a bald-headed man -- they all seemed to be bald-headed here -- approached him. The man glanced at Anderson's hair, his clothes. . . however the clerk was polite; he made no comment. "May I help you?" he asked.

"Um," Anderson said, stalling. What did this place sell, anyhow? He glanced around. Gleaming electronic objects of some sort. But what did they do?

The clerk said, "Haven't you been nuzzled lately, sir?"

"What's that?" Anderson said. Nuzzled?

"The new spring nuzzlers have arrived, you know," the clerk said, moving toward the gleaming spherical machine nearest him. "Yes," he said to Poul, "you do strike me as very, very faintly introve -- no offense meant, sir, I mean, it's legal to be introved." The clerk chuckled. "For instance, your rather odd clothing. . . made it yourself, I take it? I must say, sir, to make your own cloth­ing is highly introve. Did you weave it?" The clerk grimaced as if tasting something bad.

"No," Poul said, "as a matter of fact it's my best suit."

"Heh, heh," the clerk said. "I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven't shaved your head in weeks."

"Nope," Anderson admitted. "Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler." Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.

"How many in your family?" the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul's sleeve.

"Three," Poul answered, baffled.

"How old is the youngest?"

"Just born," Poul said.

The clerk's face lost all its color. "Get out of here," he said quietly. "Before I call for the polpol."

"Um, what's that? Pardon?" Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.

"You're a criminal," the clerk mumbled. "You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager."

"Well, thanks anyhow," Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.

 

"Are you a foreigner?" a voice asked, a woman's voice. At the curb she had halted her vehicle. It looked to Poul like a bed; in fact, he realized, it was a bed. The woman regarded him with astute calm, her eyes dark and intense. Although her glistening shaved head somewhat upset him, he could see that she was attractive.

"I'm from another culture," Poul said, finding himself unable to keep his eyes from her figure. Did all the women dress like this here in this society? Bare shoulders, he could understand. But not --

And the bed. The combination of the two was too much for him. What kind of business was she in, anyhow? And in public. What a society this was. . . morals had changed since his own time.

"I'm looking for the library," Poul said, not coming too close to the vehicle which was a bed with motor and wheels, a tiller for steering.

The woman said, "The library is one bight from here."

"Um," Poul said, "what's a 'bight'?"

"Obviously, you're wanging me," the woman said. All visible parts of her flushed a dark red. "It's not funny. Any more than your disgustingly hairy head is. Really, both your wanging and your head are not amusing, at least not to me." And yet she did not go on; she remained where she was, regarding him somberly. "Perhaps you need help," she decided. "Perhaps I should pity you. You know of course that the polpol could pick you up any time they want."

Poul said, "Could I, um, buy you a cup of coffee somewhere and we could talk? I'm really anxious to find the library."

"I'll go with you," the woman agreed. "Although I have no idea what 'coffee' is. If you touch me I'll nilp at once."

"Don't do that," Poul said, "it's unnecessary; all I want to do is look up some historical material." And then it occurred to him that he could make good use of any technical data he could get his hands on.

What one volume might he smuggle back to 1954 which would be of great value? He racked his brains. An almanac. A dictionary. . . a school text on science which surveyed all the fields for laymen; yes, that would do it. A seventh grade text or a high school text. He could rip the covers off, throw them away, put the pages inside his coat.

Poul said, "Where's a school? The closest school." He felt the urgency of it, now. He had no doubt that they were after him, close behind.

"What is a 'school'?" the woman asked.

"Where your children go," Poul said.

The woman said quietly, "You poor sick man."

 

 

V

For a time Tozzo and Fermeti and Gilly stood in silence. And then Tozzo said in a carefully controlled voice, "You know what's going to happen to him, of course. Polpol will pick him up and mono-express him to Nachbaren Slager. Because of his appearance. He may even be there already."

Fermeti sprinted at once for the nearest vidphone. "I'm going to contact the authorities at Nachbaren Slager. I'll talk to Potter; we can trust him, I think."

Presently Major Potter's heavy, dark features formed on the vidscreen. "Oh, hello, Fermeti. You want more convicts, do you?" He chuckled. "You use them up even faster than we do."

Behind Potter, Fermeti caught a glimpse of the open recreation area of the giant internment camp. Criminals, both political and nonpol, could be seen roaming about, stretching their legs, some of them playing dull, pointless games which, he knew, went on and on, sometimes for months, each time they were out of their work-cells.

"What we want," Fermeti said, "is to prevent an individual being brought to you at all." He described Poul Anderson. "If he's monoed there, call me at once. And don't harm him. You understand? We want him back safe."

"Sure," Potter said easily. "Just a minute; I'll have a scan put on our new admissions." He touched a button to his right and a 315 -R computer came on; Fermeti heard its low hum. Potter touched buttons and then said, "This'll pick him out if he's monoed here. Our admissions-circuit is prepared to reject him."

"No sign yet?" Fermeti asked tensely.

"Nope," Potter said, and purposefully yawned.

Fermeti broke the connection.

"Now what?" Tozzo said. "We could possibly trace him by means of a Ganymedean sniffer-sponge." They were a repellent life form, though; if one managed to find its quarry it fastened at once to its blood system leech-wise. "Or do it mechanically," he added. "With a detec beam. We have a print of Anderson's EEG pattern, don't we? But that would really bring in the polpol." The detec beam by law belonged only to the polpol; after all, it was the artifact which had, at last, tracked down Gutman himself.

Fermeti said bluntly, "I'm for broadcasting a planet-wide Type II alert. That'll activate the citizenry, the average informer. They'll know there's an automatic reward for any Type II found."

"But he could be manhandled that way," Gilly pointed out. "By a mob. Let's think this through."

After a pause Tozzo said, "How about trying it from a purely cerebral standpoint? If you had been transported from the mid twentieth century to our continuum, what would you want to do? Where would you go?"

Quietly, Fermeti said, "To the nearest spaceport, of course. To buy a ticket to Mars or the outplanets -- routine in our age but utterly out of the question at mid twentieth century." They looked at one another.

"But Anderson doesn't know where the spaceport is," Gilly said. "It'll take him valuable time to orient himself. We can go there directly by express subsurface mono."

A moment later the three Bureau of Emigration men were on their way. "A fascinating situation," Gilly said, as they rode along, jiggling up and down, facing one another in the monorail first-class compartment. "We totally misjudged the mid twentieth century mind; it should be a lesson to us. Once we've regained possession of Anderson we should make further inqui­ries. For instance, the Poltergeist Effect. What was their interpretation of it? And table-tapping -- did they recognize it for what it was? Or did they merely consign it to the realm of the so-called 'occult' and let it go at that?"

"Anderson may hold the clue to these questions and many others," Fer­meti said. "But our central problem remains the same. We must induce him to complete the mass-restoration formula in precise mathematical terms, rather than vague, poetic allusions."

Thoughtfully, Tozzo said, "He's a brilliant man, that Anderson. Look at the ease by which he eluded us."

"Yes," Fermeti agreed. "We mustn't underestimate him. We did that, and it's rebounded." His face was grim.

 

Hurrying up the almost-deserted sidestreet, Poul Anderson wondered why the woman had regarded him as sick. And the mention of children had set off the clerk in the store, too. Was birth illegal now? Or was it regarded as sex had been once, as something too private to speak of in public?

In any case, he realized, if I plan to stay here I've got to shave my head. And, if possible, acquire different clothing.

There must be barbershops. And, he thought, the coins in my pockets; they're probably worth a lot to collectors.

He glanced about, hopefully. But all he saw were tall, luminous plastic and metal buildings which made up the city, structures in which incomprehen­sible transactions took place. They were as alien to him as --

Alien, he thought, and the word lodged chokingly in his mind. Because something had oozed from a doorway ahead of him. And now his way was blocked -- deliberately, it seemed -- by a slime mold, dark yellow in color, as large as a human being, palpitating visibly on the sidewalk. After a pause the slime mold undulated toward at him at a regular, slow rate. A human evolu­tionary development? Poul Anderson wondered, recoiling from it. Good Lord . . . and then he realized what he was seeing.

This era had space travel. He was seeing a creature from another planet.

"Um," Poul said, to the enormous mass of slime mold, "can I bother you a second to ask a question?"

The slime mold ceased to undulate forward. And in Poul's brain a thought formed which was not his own. "I catch your query. In answer: I arrived yesterday from Callisto. But I also catch a number of unusual and highly interesting thoughts in addition. . . you are a time traveler from the past." The tone of the creature's emanations was one of considerate, polite amusement -- and interest.

"Yes," Poul said. "From 1954."

"And you wish to find a barbershop, a library and a school. All at once, in the precious time remaining before they capture you." The slime mold seemed solicitous. "What can I do to help you? I could absorb you, but it would be a permanent symbiosis, and you would not like that. You are think­ing of your wife and child. Allow me to inform you as to the problem regarding your unfortunate mention of children. Terrans of this period are experiencing a mandatory moratorium on childbirth, because of the almost infinite sport­ing of the previous decades. There was a war, you see. Between Gutman's fanatical followers and the more liberal legions of General McKinley. The latter won."

Poul said, "Where should I go? I'm confused." His head throbbed and he felt tired. Too much had happened. Just a short while ago he had been standing with Tony Boucher in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, drinking and chatting. . . and now this. Facing this great slime mold from Callisto. It was difficult -- to say the least -- to make such an adjustment.

 

The slime mold was transmitting to him. "I am accepted here while you, their ancestor, are regarded as odd. Ironic. To me, you look quite like them, except for your curly brown hair and of course your silly clothing." The creature from Callisto pondered. "My friend, the polpol are the political police, and they search for deviants, followers of the defeated Gutman, who are terrorists now, and hated. Many of these followers are drawn from the potentially criminal classes. That is, the non-conformists, the so-called introves. Individuals who set their own subjective value-system up in place of the objective system in vogue. It is a matter of life and death to the Terrans, since Gutman almost won."

"I'm going to hide," Poul decided.

"But where? You can't really. Not unless you wish to go underground and join the Gutmanites, the criminal class of bomb-throwers. . . and you won't want to do that. Let us stroll together, and if anyone challenges you, I will say you're my servant. You have manual extensors and I have not. And I have, by a quirk, decided to dress you oddly and to have you retain your head-hair. The responsibility then becomes mine. It is actually not unusual for higher out-world organisms to employ Terran help."

"Thanks," Poul said tautly, as the slime mold resumed its slow forward motion along the sidewalk. "But there are things I want to do --"

"I am on my way to the zoo," the slime mold continued. An unkind thought came to Poul.

"Please," the slime mold said. "Your anachronistic twentieth century humor is not appreciated. I am not an inhabitant of the zoo; it is for life forms of low mental order such as Martian glebs and trawns. Since the initiation of interplanetary travel, zoos have become the center of --"

Poul said, "Could you lead me to the space terminal?" He tried to make his request sound casual.

"You take a dreadful risk," the slime mold said, "in going to any public place. The polpol watch constantly."

"I still want to go." If he could board an interplanetary ship, if he could leave Earth, see other worlds --

But they would erase his memory; all at once he realized that, in a rush of horror. I've got to make notes, he told himself. At once!

"Do, um, you have a pencil?" he asked the slime mold. "Oh, wait; I have one. Pardon me." Obviously the slime mold didn't.

On a piece of paper from his coat pocket -- it was convention material of some sort -- he wrote hurriedly, in brief, disjointed phrases, what had hap­pened to him, what he had seen in the twenty-first century. Then he quickly stuck the paper back in his pocket.

"A wise move," the slime mold said. "And now to the spaceport, if you will accompany me at my slow pace. And, as we go, I will give you details of Terra's history from your period on." The slime mold moved down the sidewalk. Poul accompanied it eagerly; after all, what choice did he have? "The Soviet Union. That was tragic. Their war with Red China in 1983 which finally involved Israel and France. . . regrettable, but it did solve the problem of what to do with France -- a most difficult nation to deal with in the latter half of the twentieth century."

On his piece of paper Poul jotted that down, too.

"After France had been defeated --" The slime mold went on, as Poul scratched against time.

 

Fermeti said, "We must glin, if we're to catch Anderson before he boards a ship." And by "glin" he did not mean glinning a little; he meant a full search with the cooperation of the polpol. He hated to bring them in, and yet their help now seemed vital. Too much time had passed and Anderson had not yet been found.

The spaceport lay ahead, a great disk miles in diameter, with no vertical obstructions. In the center was the Burned Spot, seared by years of tail-exhausts from landing and departing ships. Fermeti liked the spaceport, because here the denseness of the close-packed buildings of the city abruptly ceased. Here was openness, such as he recalled from childhood. . . if one dared to think openly of childhood.

The terminal building was set hundreds of feet beneath the rexeroid layer built to protect the waiting people in case of an accident above. Fermeti reached the entrance of the descent ramp, then halted impatiently to wait for Tozzo and Gilly to catch up with him.

"I'll nilp," Tozzo said, but without enthusiasm. And he broke the band on his wrist with a single decisive motion.

The polpol ship hovered overhead at once.

"We're from the Emigration Bureau," Fermeti explained to the polpol lieutenant. He outlined their Project, described -- reluctantly -- their bringing Poul Anderson from his time-period to their own.

"Hair on head," the polpol lieutenant nodded. "Quaint duds. Okay, Mr. Fermeti; we'll glin until we find him." He nodded, and his small ship shot off.

"They're efficient," Tozzo admitted.

"But not likeable," Fermeti said, finishing Tozzo's thought.

"They make me uncomfortable," Tozzo agreed. "But I suppose they're supposed to."

The three of them stepped onto the descent ramp -- and dropped at breathtaking speed to level one below. Fermeti shut his eyes, wincing at the loss of weight. It was almost as bad as takeoff itself. Why did everything have to be so rapid, these days? It certainly was not like the previous decade, when things had gone leisurely.

They stepped from the ramp, shook themselves, and were approached instantly by the building's polpol chief.

"We have a report on your man," the gray-uniformed officer told them.

"He hasn't taken off?" Fermeti said. "Thank God." He looked around.

"Over there," the officer said, pointing.

At a magazine rack, Poul Anderson was looking intently at the display. It took only a moment for the three Emigration Bureau officials to sur­round him.

"Oh, uh, hello," Anderson said. "While I was waiting for my ship I thought I'd take a look and see what's still in print."

Fermeti said, "Anderson, we require your unique abilities. I'm sorry, but we're taking you back to the Bureau."

All at once Anderson was gone. Soundlessly, he had ducked away; they saw his tall, angular form become smaller as he raced for the gate to the field proper.

Reluctantly, Fermeti reached within his coat and brought out a sleep-gun. "There's no other choice," he murmured, and squeezed.

The racing figure tumbled, rolled. Fermeti put the sleep-gun away and in a toneless voice said, "He'll recover. A skinned knee, nothing worse." He glanced at Gilly and Tozzo. "Recover at the Bureau, I mean."

Together, the three of them advanced toward the prone figure on the floor of the spaceport waiting room.

 

"You may return to your own time-continuum," Fermeti said quietly, "when you've given us the mass-restoration formula." He nodded, and a Bureau workman approached, carrying the ancient Royal typewriter.

Seated in the chair across from Fermeti in the Bureau's inner business office, Poul Anderson said, "I don't use a portable."

"You must cooperate," Fermeti informed him. "We have the scientific know-how to restore you to Karen; remember Karen and remember your newly-born daughter at the Congress in San Francisco's Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Without full cooperation from you, Anderson, there will be no cooper­ation from the Bureau. Surely, with your pre-cog ability you can see that."

After a pause Anderson said, "Urn, I can't work unless I have a pot of fresh coffee brewing around me at all times, somewhere."

Curtly, Fermeti signaled. "We'll obtain coffee beans for you," he declared. "But the brewing is up to you. We'll also supply a pot from the Smithsonian collection and there our responsibility ends."

Taking hold of the carriage of the typewriter, Anderson began to inspect it. "Red and black ribbon," he said. "I always use black. But I guess I can make do." He seemed a trifle sullen. Inserting a sheet of paper, he began to type. At the top of the page appeared the words:

NIGHT FLIGHT

- Poul Anderson

"You say If bought it?" he asked Fermeti.

"Yes," Fermeti replied tensely.

Anderson typed:

 

Difficulties at Outward, Incorporated had begun to nettle Edmond Fletcher. For one thing, an entire ship had disappeared, and although the individuals aboard were not personally known to him he felt a twinge of responsibility. Now, as he lathered himself with hormone-impregnated soap

 

"He starts at the beginning," Fermeti said bitingly. "Well, if there's no alternative we'll simply have to bear with him." Musingly, he murmured, "I wonder how long it takes. . . I wonder how fast he writes. As a pre-cog he can see what's coming next; it should help him to do it in a hurry." Or was that just wishful thinking?

"Have the coffee beans arrived yet?" Anderson asked, glancing up.

"Any time now," Fermeti said.

"I hope some of the beans are Colombian," Anderson said.

 

Long before the beans arrived the article was done.

Rising stiffly, uncoiling his lengthy limbs, Poul Anderson said, "I think you have what you want, there. The mass restoration formula is on typescript page 20."

Eagerly, Fermeti turned the pages. Yes, there it was; peering over his shoulder, Tozzo saw the paragraph:

 

If the ship followed a trajectory which would carry it into the star Proxima, it would, he realized, regain its mass through a process of leeching solar energy from the great star-furnace itself. Yes, it was Proxima itself which held the key to Torelli's problem, and now, after all this time, it had been solved. The simple formula revolved in his brain.

 

And, Tozzo saw, there lay the formula. As the article said, the mass would be regained from solar energy converted into matter, the ultimate source of power in the universe. The answer had stared them in the face all this time!

Their long struggle was over.

"And now," Poul Anderson said, "I'm free to go back to my own time?"

Fermeti said simply, "Yes."

"Wait," Tozzo said to his superior. "There's evidently something you don't understand." It was a section which he had read in the instruction manual attached to the time-dredge. He drew Fermeti to one side, where Anderson could not hear. "He can't be sent back to his own time with the knowledge he has now."

"What knowledge?" Fermeti inquired.

"That -- well, I'm not certain. Something to do with our society, here. What I'm trying to tell you is this: the first rule of time travel, according to the manual, is don't change the past. In this situation just bringing Anderson here has changed the past merely by exposing him to our society."

Pondering, Fermeti said, "You may be correct. While he was in that gift shop he may have picked up some object which, taken back to his own time, might revolutionize their technology."

"Or at the magazine rack at the spaceport," Tozzo said. "Or on his trip between those two points. And -- even the knowledge that he and his colleagues are pre-cogs"

"You're right," Fermeti said. "The memory of this trip must be wiped from his brain." He turned and walked slowly back to Poul Anderson. "Look here," he addressed him. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but everything that's happened to you must be wiped from your brain."

After a pause, Anderson said, "That's a shame. Sorry to hear that." He looked downcast. "But I'm not surprised," he murmured. He seemed philo­sophical about the whole affair. "It's generally handled this way."

Tozzo asked, "Where can this alteration of the memory cells of his brain be accomplished?"

"At the Department of Penology," Fermeti said. "Through the same channels we obtained the convicts." Pointing his sleep-gun at Poul Anderson he said, Come along with us. I regret this. . . but it has to be done."

 

 

VI

At the Department of Penology, painless electroshock removed from Poul Anderson's brain the precise cells in which his most recent memories were stored. Then, in a semi-conscious state, he was carried back into the time-dredge. A moment later he was on his trip back to the year 1954, to his own society and time. To the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in downtown San Francisco, California and his waiting wife and child.

When the time-dredge returned empty, Tozzo, Gilly and Fermeti breathed a sigh of relief and broke open a bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch which Fermeti had been saving. The mission had been successfully accom­plished; now they could turn their attention back to the Project.

"Where's the manuscript that he wrote?" Fermeti said, putting down his glass to look all around his office.

There was no manuscript to be found. And, Tozzo noticed, the antique Koyal typewriter which they had brought from the Smithsonian -it was gone, too. But why?

Suddenly chill fear traveled up him. He understood.

"Good Lord," he said thickly. He put down his glass. "Somebody get a copy of the journal with his article in it. At once."

Fermeti said, "What is it, Aaron? Explain."

"When we removed his memory of what had happened we made it impos­sible for him to write the article for the journal," Tozzo said. "He must have based Night Flight on his experience with us, here." Snatching up the August 1955 copy of If he turned to the table-of-contents page.

No article by Poul Anderson was listed. Instead, on page 78, he saw Philip K. Dick's The Mold of Yancy listed instead.

They had changed the past after all. And now the formula for their Project was gone -- gone entirely.

"We shouldn't have tampered," Tozzo said in a hoarse voice. "We should never have brought him out of the past." He drank a little more of the cen­tury-old Scotch, his hands shaking.

"Brought who?" Gilly said, with a puzzled look.

"Don't you remember?" Tozzo stared at him, incredulous.

"What's this discussion about?" Fermeti said impatiently. "And what are you two doing in my office? You both should be busy at work." He saw the bottle of Scotch and blanched. "How'd that get open?"

His hands trembling, Tozzo turned the pages of the journal over and over again. Already, the memory was growing diffuse in his mind; he struggled in vain to hold onto it. They had brought someone from the past, a pre-cog, wasn't it? But who? A name, still in his mind but dimming with each passing moment. . . Anderson or Anderton, something like that. And in connection with the Bureau's interstellar mass-deprivation Project. Or was it?

Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, "I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?"

"Night Flight" Fermeti echoed. "No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though - it certainly would be an effective name for our Project."

"Yes," Gilly agreed. "That must be what it refers to."

"But our Project is called Waterspider, isn't it?" Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.

"The truth of the matter, " Fermeti said, "is that we've never titled it." Brusquely, he added, "But I agree with you; that's an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that."

The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded mes­senger. "From the Smithsonian," he informed them. "You requested this." He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti's desk.

"I don't remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian," Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.

The three men looked at one another blankly.

"Strange," Torelli murmured. "There must be some mistake."

"Well," Fletcher said, "in any case, back to Project Waterspider." Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heart­aches and setbacks, for so long.

 

At the Science Fiction Convention at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, Poul Anderson looked around him in bewilderment. Where had he been? Why had he gone out of the building? And it was an hour later; Tony Boucher and Jim Gunn had left for dinner by now, and he saw no sign of his wife Karen and the baby, either.

The last he remembered was two fans from Battlecreek who wanted him to look at a display outside on the sidewalk. Perhaps he had gone to see that. In any case, he had no memory of the interval.

Anderson groped about in his coat pocket for his pipe, hoping to calm his oddly jittery nerves -- and found, not his pipe, but instead a folded piece of paper.

"Got anything for our auction, Poul?" a member of the Convention com­mittee asked, halting beside him. "The auction is just about to start -- we have to hurry."

Still looking at the paper from his pocket, Poul murmured, "Urn, you mean something here with me?"

"Like a typescript of some published story, the original manuscript or earlier versions or notes. You know." He paused, waiting.

"I seem to have some notes in my pocket," Poul said, still glancing over them. They were in his handwriting but he didn't remember having made them. A time-travel story, from the look of them. Must have been from those Bourbons and water, he decided, and not enough to eat. "Here," he said uncertainly, "it isn't much but I guess you can auction these." He took one final glance at them. "Notes for a story about a political figure called Gutman and a kidnapping in time. Intelligent slime mold, too, I notice." On impulse, he handed them over.

"Thanks," the man said, and hurried on toward the other room, where the auction was being held.

"I bid ten dollars," Howard Browne called, smiling broadly. "Then I have to catch a bus to the airport." The door closed after him.

Karen, with Astrid, appeared beside Poul. "Want to go into the auction?" she asked her husband. "Buy an original Finlay?"

"Um, sure," Poul Anderson said, and with his wife and child walked slowly after Howard Browne.

 

 

What the Dead Men Say

 

I

The body of Louis Sarapis, in a transparent plastic shatterproof case, had lain on display for one week, exciting a continual response from the public. Distended lines filed past with the customary sniffling, pinched faces, dis­traught elderly ladies in black cloth coats.

In a corner of the large auditorium in which the casket reposed, Johnny Barefoot impatiently waited for his chance at Sarapis's body. But he did not intend merely to view it; his job, detailed in Sarapis's will, lay in another direction entirely. As Sarapis's public relations manager, his job was -- simply -- to bring Louis Sarapis back to life.

"Keerum," Barefoot murmured to himself, examining his wristwatch and discovering that two more hours had to pass before the auditorium doors could be finally closed. He felt hungry. And the chill, issuing from the quick-pack envelope surrounding the casket, had increased his discomfort minute by minute.

His wife Sarah Belle approached him, then, with a thermos of hot coffee. "Here, Johnny." She reached up and brushed the black, shiny Chiricahua hair back from his forehead. "You don't look so good."

"No," he agreed. "This is too much for me. I didn't care for him much when he was alive -- I certainly don't like him any better this way." He jerked his head at the casket and the double line of mourners.

Sarah Belle said softly, "Nil nisi bonum."

He glowered at her, not sure of what she had said. Some foreign language, no doubt. Sarah Belle had a college degree.

"To quote Thumper Rabbit," Sarah Belle said, smiling gently, " 'if you can't say nothing good, don't say nothing at all.' " She added, "From Bambi, an old film classic. If you attended the lectures at the Museum of Modern Art with me every Monday night --"

"Listen," Johnny Barefoot said desperately, "I don't want to bring the old crook back to life, Sarah Belle; how'd I get myself into this? I thought sure when the embolism dropped him like a cement block it meant I could kiss the whole business goodbye forever." But it hadn't quite worked out that way.

"Unplug him," Sarah Belle said.

"W-what?"

She laughed. "Are you afraid to? Unplug the quick-pack power source and he'll warm up. And no resurrection, right?" Her blue-gray eyes danced with amusement. "Scared of him, I guess. Poor Johnny." She patted him on the arm. "I should divorce you, but I won't; you need a mama to take care of you."

"It's wrong," he said. "Louis is completely helpless, lying there in the casket. It would be -- unmanly to unplug him."

Sarah Belle said quietly, "But someday, sooner or later, you'll have to confront him, Johnny. And when he's in half-life you'll have the advantage. So it will be a good time; you might come out of it intact." Turning, she trotted off, hands thrust deep in her coat pockets because of the chill.

Gloomily, Johnny lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall behind him. His wife was right, of course. A half-lifer was no match, in direct physical tete-a-tete, for a living person. And yet -- he still shrank from it, because ever since childhood he had been in awe of Louis, who had dominated 3-4 shipping, the Earth to Mars commercial routes, as if he were a model rocket-ship enthusiast pushing miniatures over a paper-mache board in his base­ment. And now, at his death, at seventy years of age, the old man through Wilhelmina Securities controlled a hundred related -- and non-related -- industries on both planets. His net worth could not be calculated, even for tax purposes; it was not wise, in fact, to try, even for Government tax experts.

It's my kids, Johnny thought; I'm thinking about them, in school back in Oklahoma. To tangle with old Louis would be okay if he wasn't a family man. . . nothing meant more to him than the two little girls and of course Sarah Belle, too. I got to think of them, not myself, he told himself now as he waited for the opportunity to remove the body from the casket in accordance with the old man's detailed instructions. Let's see. He's probably got about a year in total half-life time, and he'll want it divided up strategically, like at the end of each fiscal year. He'll probably proportion it out over two decades, a month here and there, then towards the end as he runs out, maybe just a week. And then -- days.

And finally old Louis would be down to a couple of hours; the signal would be weak, the dim spark of electrical activity hovering in the frozen brain cells. . . it would flicker, the words from the amplifying equipment would fade, grow indistinct. And then -- silence, at last the grave. But that might be twenty-five years from now; it would be the year 2100 before the old man's cephalic processes ceased entirely.

Johnny Barefoot, smoking his cigarette rapidly, thought back to the day he had slouched anxiously about the personnel office of Archimedean Enter­prises, mumbling to the girl at the desk that he wanted a job; he had some brilliant ideas that were for sale, ideas that would help untangle the knot of strikes, the spaceport violence growing out of jurisdictional overlapping by rival unions -- ideas that would, in essence, free Sarapis of having to rely on union labor at all. It was a dirty scheme, and he had known it then, but he had been right; it was worth money. The girl had sent him on to Mr. Pershing, the Personnel Manager, and Pershing had sent him to Louis Sarapis.

"You mean," Sarapis had said, "I launch from the ocean? From the Atlan­tic, out past the three mile limit?"

"A union is a national organization," Johnny had said. "Neither outfit has a jurisdiction on the high seas. But a business organization is international."

"I'd need men out there; I'd need the same number, even more. Where'll I get them?"

"Go to Burma or India or the Malay States," Johnny had said. "Get young unskilled laborers and bring them over. Train them yourself on an indentured servant basis. In other words, charge the cost of their passage against their earnings." It was peonage, he knew. And it appealed to Louis Sarapis. A little empire on the high seas, worked by men who had no legal rights. Ideal.

Sarapis had done just that and hired Johnny for his public relations department; that was the best place for a man who had brilliant ideas of a non-technical nature. In other words, an uneducated man: a noncol. A useless misfit, an outsider. A loner lacking college degrees.

"Hey Johnny," Sarapis had said once. "How come since you're so bright you never went to school? Everyone knows that's fatal, nowadays. Self-destructive impulse, maybe?" He had grinned, showing his stainless-steel teeth.

Moodily, he had replied, "You've got it, Louis. I want to die. I hate myself." At that point he had recalled his peonage idea. But that had come after he had dropped out of school, so it couldn't have been that. "Maybe I should see an analyst," he had said.

"Fakes," Louis had told him. "All of them -- I know because I've had six on my staff, working for me exclusively at one time or another. What's wrong with you is you're an envious type; if you can't have it big you don't want it, you don't want the climb, the long struggle."

But I've got it big, Johnny Barefoot realized, had realized even then. This is big, working for you. Everyone wants to work for Louis Sarapis; he gives all sorts of people jobs.

The double lines of mourners that filed past the casket. . . he wondered if all these people could be employees of Sarapis or relatives of employees. Either that or people who had benefited from the public dole that Sarapis had pushed through Congress and into law during the depression three years ago. Sarapis, in his old age the great daddy for the poor, the hungry, the out of work. Soup kitchens, with lines there, too. Just as now.

Perhaps the same people had been in those lines who were here today.

Startling Johnny, an auditorium guard nudged him. "Say, aren't you Mr. Barefoot, the P.R. man for old Louis?"

"Yes," Johnny said. He put out his cigarette and then began to unscrew the lid of the thermos of coffee which Sarah Belle had brought him. "Have some," he said. "Or maybe you're used to the cold in these civic halls." The City of Chicago had lent this spot for Louis to lie in state; it was gratitude for what he had done here in this area. The factories he had opened, the men he had put on the payroll.

"I'm not used," the guard said, accepting a cup of coffee. "You know, Mr. Barefoot, I've always admired you because you're a noncol, and look how you rose to a top job and lots of salary, not to mention fame. It's an inspiration to us other noncols."

Grunting, Johnny sipped his own coffee.

"Of course," the guard said, "I guess it's really Sarapis we ought to thank; he gave you the job. My brother-in-law worked for him; that was back five years ago when nobody in the world was hiring except Sarapis. You hear what an old skinflint he was -- wouldn't permit the unions to come in, and all. But he gave so many old folks pensions. . . my father was living on a Sarapis pension-plan until the day he died. And all those bills he got through Con­gress; they wouldn't have passed any of the welfare for the needy bills without pressure from Sarapis."

Johnny grunted.

"No wonder there're so many people here today," the guard said. "I can see why. Who's going to help the little fellow, the noncols like you and me, now that he's gone?"

Johnny had no answer, for himself or for the guard.

 

As owner of the Beloved Brethren Mortuary, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang found himself required by law to consult with the late Mr. Sarapis's legal counsel, the well-known Mr. Claude St. Cyr. In this connection it was essential for him to know precisely how the half-life periods were to be proportioned out; it was his job to execute the technical arrangements.

The matter should have been routine, and yet a snag developed almost at once. He was unable to get in touch with Mr. St. Cyr, trustee for the estate.

Drat, Schoenheit von Vogelsang thought to himself as he hung up the unresponsive phone. Something must be wrong; this is unheard of in connection with a man so important.

He had phoned from the bin -- the storage vaults in which the half-lifers were kept in perpetual quick-pack. At this moment, a worried-looking cleri­cal sort of individual waited at the desk with a claim check stub in his hand. Obviously he had shown up to collect a relative. Resurrection Day -- the holiday on which the half-lifers were publicly honored -- was just around the corner; the rush would soon be beginning.

"Yes sir," Herb said to him, with an affable smile. "I'll take your stub personally."

"It's an elderly lady," the customer said. "About eighty, very small and wizened. I didn't want just to talk to her; I wanted to take her out for a while." He explained, "My grandmother."

"Only a moment," Herb said, and went back into the bin to search out number 3054039-B.

When he located the correct party he scrutinized the lading report attached; it gave but fifteen days of half-life remaining. Automatically, he pressed a portable amplifier into the hull of the glass casket, tuned it, listened at the proper frequency for indication of cephalic activity.

Faintly from the speaker came, ". . .and then Tillie sprained her ankle and we never thought it'd heal; she was so foolish about it, wanting to start walking immediately. . ."

Satisfied, he unplugged the amplifier and located a union man to perform the actual task of carting 3054039-B to the loading platform, where the customer could place her in his 'copter or car.

"You checked her out?" the customer asked as he paid the money due.

"Personally," Herb answered. "Functioning perfectly." He smiled at the customer. "Happy Resurrection Day, Mr. Ford."

"Thank you," the customer said, starting off for the loading platform. When I pass, Herb said to himself, I think I'll will my heirs to revive me one day a century. That way I can observe the fate of all mankind. But that meant a rather high maintenance cost to the heirs, and no doubt sooner or later they would kick over the traces, have the body taken out of quick-pack and -- God forbid -- buried.

"Burial is barbaric," Herb murmured aloud. "Remnant of the primitive origins of our culture."

"Yes sir," his secretary Miss Beasman agreed, at her typewriter. In the bin, several customers communed with their half-lifer relations, in rapt quiet, distributed at intervals along the aisles which separated the cas­kets. It was a tranquil sight, these faithfuls, coming as they did so regularly, to pay homage. They brought messages, news of what took place in the outside world; they cheered the gloomy half-lifers in these intervals of cerebral activity. And -- they paid Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang; it was a profitable business, operating a mortuary.

"My dad seems a little frail," a young man said, catching Herb's attention. "I wonder if you could take a moment to check him over. I'd really appreciate

it."

'Certainly," Herb said, accompanying the customer down the aisle to his deceased relative. The lading report showed only a few days remaining; that explained the vitiated quality of cerebration. But still -- he turned up the gain, and the voice from the half-lifer became a trifle stronger. He's almost at an end, Herb thought. It was obvious that the son did not want to see the lading, did not actually care to know that contact with his dad was diminish­ing, finally. So Herb said nothing; he merely walked off, leaving the son to commune. Why tell him? Why break the bad news?

A truck had now appeared at the loading platform, and two men hopped down from it, wearing familiar pale blue uniforms. Atlas Interplan Van and Storage, Herb realized. Delivering another half-lifer, or here to pick up one which had expired. He strolled toward them. "Yes, gentlemen," he said.

The driver of the truck leaned out and said, "We're here to deliver Mr. Louis Sarapis. Got room all ready?"

"Absolutely," Herb said at once. "But I can't get hold of Mr. St. Cyr to make arrangements for the schedule. When's he to be brought back?"

Another man, dark-haired, with shiny-button black eyes, emerged from the truck. "I'm John Barefoot. According to the terms of the will I'm in charge of Mr. Sarapis. He's to be brought back to life immediately; that's the instruc­tions I'm charged with."

"I see," Herb said, nodding. "Well, that's fine. Bring him in and we'll plug him right in."

"It's cold, here," Barefoot said. "Worse than the auditorium."

"Well of course," Herb answered.

The crew from the van began wheeling the casket. Herb caught a glimpse of the dead man, the massive, gray face resembling something cast from a break-mold. Impressive old pirate, he thought. Good thing for us all he's dead finally, in spite of his charity work. Because who wants charity? Especially his. Of course, Herb did not say that to Barefoot; he contented himself with guiding the crew to the prearranged spot.

"I'll have him talking in fifteen minutes," he promised Barefoot, who looked tense. "Don't worry; we've had almost no failures at this stage; the initial residual charge is generally quite vital."

I suppose it's later," Barefoot said, "as it dims. . . then you have the technical problems."

"Why does he want to be brought back so soon?" Herb asked.

Barefoot scowled and did not answer.

"Sorry," Herb said, and continued tinkering with the wires which had to be seated perfectly to the cathode terminals of the casket. "At low tempera­tures," he murmured, "the flow of current is virtually unimpeded. There's no measurable resistance at minus 150. So --" He fitted the anode cap in place. "The signal should bounce out clear and strong." In conclusion, he clicked the amplifier on.

A hum. Nothing more.

"Well?" Barefoot said.

"I'll recheck," Herb said, wondering what had gone afoul.

"Listen," Barefoot said quietly, "if you slip up here and let the spark flicker out --" It was not necessary for him to finish; Herb knew.

"Is it the Democratic-Republican National Convention that he wants to participate in?" Herb asked. The Convention would be held later in the month, in Cleveland. In the past, Sarapis had been quite active in the behind-the-scenes activities at both the Democratic-Republican and the Liberal Party nominating conventions. It was said, in fact, that he had personally chosen the last Democratic-Republican Presidential candidate, Alfonse Gam. Tidy, handsome Gam had lost, but not by very much.

"Are you still getting nothing?" Barefoot asked.

"Um, it seems --" Herb said.

"Nothing. Obviously." Now Barefoot looked grim. "If you can't rouse him in another ten minutes I'll get hold of Claude St. Cyr and we'll take Louis out of your mortuary and lodge charges of negligence against you."

"I'm doing what I can," Herb said, perspiring as he fiddled with the leads to the casket. "We didn't perform the quick-pack installation, remember; there may have been a slip-up at that point."

Now static supervened over the steady hum.

"Is that him coming in?" Barefoot demanded.

"No," Herb admitted, thoroughly upset by now. It was, in fact, a bad sign.

"Keep trying," Barefoot said. But it was unnecessary to tell Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang that; he was struggling desperately, with all he had, with all his years of professional competence in this field. And still he achieved nothing; Louis Sarapis remained silent.

I'm not going to be successful, Herb realized in fear. I don't understand why, either. WHAT'S WRONG? A big client like this, and it has to get fouled up. He toiled on, not looking at Barefoot, not daring to.

 

At the radio telescope at Kennedy Slough, on the dark side of Luna, Chief Technician Owen Angress discovered that he had picked up a signal emanat­ing from a region one light-week beyond the solar system in the direction of Proxima. Ordinarily such a region of space would have held little of interest for the U.N. Commission on Deep-Space Communications, but this, Owen Angress realized, was unique.

What reached him, thoroughly amplified by the great antennae of the radio telescope, was, faintly but clearly, a human voice.

". . .probably let it slide by," the voice was declaring. "If I know them, and I believe I do. That Johnny; he'd revert without my keeping my eye on him, but at least he's not a crook like St. Cyr. I did right to fire St. Cyr. Assuming I can make it stick. . ." The voice faded momentarily.

What's out there? Angress wondered, dazedly. "At one fifty-second of a light-year," he murmured, making a quick mark on the deep-space map which he had been recharting. "Nothing. That's just empty dust-clouds." He could not understand what the signal implied; was it being bounced back to Luna from some nearby transmitter? Was this, in other words, merely an echo?

Or was he reading his computation incorrectly?

Surely this couldn't be correct. Some individual ruminating at a transmit­ter out beyond the solar system. . . a man not in a hurry, thinking aloud in a kind of half-slumbering attitude, as if free-associating. . . it made no sense.

I'd better report this to Wycoff at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he said to himself. Wycoff was his current supervisor; next month it would be Jamison of MIT. Maybe it's a long-haul ship that --

The voice filtered in clearly once again. ". . .that Gam is a fool; did wrong to select him. Know better now but too late. Hello?" The thoughts became sharp, the words more distinct. "Am I coming back? -- for god's sake, it's about time. Hey! Johnny! Is that you?"

Angress picked up the telephone and dialed the code for the line to the Soviet Union.

"Speak up, Johnny!" the voice from the speaker demanded plaintively. "Come on, son; I've got so damn much on my mind. So much to do. Conven­tion's started yet, has it? Got no sense of time stuck in here, can't see or hear; wait'll you get here and you'll find out. . ." Again the voice faded.

This is exactly what Wycoff likes to call a "phenomenon," Angress realized.

And I can understand why.

 

 

II

On the evening television news, Claude St. Cyr heard the announcer babbling about a discovery made by the radio telescope on Luna, but he paid little attention: he was busy mixing martinis for his guests.

"Yes," he said to Gertrude Harvey, "ironic as it is, I drew up the will myself, including the clause that automatically dismissed me, canceled my services out of existence the moment he died. And I'll tell you why Louis did that; he had paranoid suspicions of me, so he figured that with such a clause he'd insure himself against being --" He paused as he measured out the iota of dry wine which accompanied the gin. "Being prematurely dispatched." He grinned, and Gertrude, arranged decoratively on the couch beside her hus­band, smiled back.

"A lot of good it did him," Phil Harvey said.

"Hell," St. Cyr protested. "I had nothing to do with his death; it was an embolus, a great fat clot stuck like a cork in a bottleneck." He laughed at the image. "Nature's own remedy."

Gertrude said, "Listen. The TV; it's saying something strange." She rose, walked over to it and bent down, her «ar close to the speaker.

"It's probably that oaf Kent Margrave," St. Cyr said. "Making another political speech." Margrave had been their President now for four years; a Liberal, he had managed to defeat Alfonse Gam, who had been Louis Sarapis' hand-picked choice for the office. Actually Margrave, for all his faults, was quite a politician; he had managed to convince large blocs of voters that having a puppet of Sarapis' for their President was not such a good idea.

"No," Gertrude said, carefully arranging her skirt over her bare knees. "This is -- the space agency, I think. Science."

"Science!" St. Cyr laughed. "Well, then let's listen; I admire science. Turn it up." I suppose they've found another planet in the Orionus System, he said to himself. Something more for us to make the goal of our collective existence.

"A voice," the TV announcer was saying, "emanating from outer space, tonight has scientists both in the United States and the Soviet Union com­pletely baffled."

"Oh no," St. Cyr choked. "A voice from outer space -- please, no more." Doubled up with laughter, he moved off, away from the TV set; he could not bear to listen any more. "That's what we need," he said to Phil. "A voice that turns out to be -- you know Who it is."

"Who?" Phil asked.

"God, of course. The radio telescope at Kennedy Slough has picked up the voice of God and now we're going to receive another set of divine com­mandments or at least a few scrolls." Removing his glasses he wiped his eyes with his Irish linen handkerchief.

Dourly, Phil Harvey said, "Personally I agree with my wife; I find it fascinating."

"Listen, my friend," St. Cyr said, "you know it'll turn out to be a transistor radio that some Jap student lost on a trip between Earth and Callisto. And the radio just drifted on out of the solar system entirely and now the telescope has picked it up and it's a huge mystery to all the scientists." He became more sober. "Shut it off, Gert; we've got serious things to consider."

Obediently but reluctantly she did so. "Is it true, Claude," she asked, rising to her feet, "that the mortuary wasn't able to revive old Louis? That he's not in half-life as he's supposed to be by now?"

"Nobody tells me anything from the organization, now," St. Cyr answered. "But I did hear a rumor to that effect." He knew, in fact, that it was so; he had many friends within Wilhelmina, but he did not like to talk about these surviving links. "Yes, I suppose that's so," he said.

Gertrude shivered. "Imagine not coming back. How dreadful."

"But that was the old natural condition," her husband pointed out as he drank his martini. "Nobody had half-life before the turn of the century."

"But we're used to it," she said stubbornly.

To Phil Harvey, St. Cyr said, "Let's continue our discussion."

Shrugging, Harvey said, "All right. If you really feel there's something to discuss." He eyed St. Cyr critically. "I could put you on my legal staff, yes. If that's what you're sure you want. But I can't give you the kind of business that Louis could. It wouldn't be fair to the legal men I have in there now."

"Oh, I recognize that," St. Cyr said. After all, Harvey's drayage firm was small in comparison with the Sarapis outfits; Harvey was in fact a minor figure in the 3-4 shipping business.

But that was precisely what St. Cyr wanted. Because he believed that within a year with the experience and contacts he had gained working for Louis Sarapis he could depose Harvey and take over Elektra Enterprises.

Harvey's first wife had been named Elektra. St. Cyr had known her, and after she and Harvey had split up St. Cyr had continued to see her, now in a more personal -- and more spirited -- way. It had always seemed to him that Elektra Harvey had obtained a rather bad deal; Harvey had employed legal talent of sufficient caliber to outwit Elektra's attorney. . . who had been, as a matter of fact, St. Cyr's junior law partner, Harold Faine. Ever since her defeat in the courts, St. Cyr had blamed himself; why hadn't he taken the case personally? But he had been so tied up with Sarapis business . . . it had simply not been possible.

Now, with Sarapis gone and his job with Atlas, Wilhelmina and Archime­dean over, he could take some time to rectify the imbalance; he could come to the aid of the woman (he admitted it) whom he loved.

But that was a long step from this situation; first he had to get into Harvey's legal staff -- at any cost. Evidently, he was succeeding.

"Shall we shake on it, then?" he asked Harvey, holding out his hand.

"Okay," Harvey said, not very much stirred by the event. He held out his hand, however, and they shook. "By the way," he said, then, "I have some knowledge -- fragmentary but evidently accurate -- as to why Sarapis cut you off in his will. And it isn't what you said at all."

"Oh?" St. Cyr said, trying to sound casual.

"My understanding is that he suspected someone, possibly you, of desir­ing to prevent him from returning to half-life. That you were going to select a particular mortuary which certain contacts of yours operate . . . and they'd somehow fail to revive the old man." He eyed St. Cyr. "And oddly, that seems to be exactly what has happened."

There was silence.

Gertrude said, at last, "Why would Claude not want Louis Sarapis to be resurrected?"

"I have no idea," Harvey said. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I don't even fully understand half-life itself. Isn't it true that the half-lifer often finds himself in possession of a sort of insight, of a new frame of reference, a perspective, that he lacked while alive?"

"I've heard psychologists say that," Gertrude agreed. "It's what the old theologists called conversion."

"Maybe Claude was afraid of some insight that Louis might show up with," Harvey said. "But that's just conjecture."

"Conjecture," Claude St. Cyr agreed, "in its entirety, including that as to any such plan as you describe; in actual fact I know absolutely no one in the mortuary business." His voice was steady, too; he made it come out that way. But this all was very sticky, he said to himself. Quite awkward.

The maid appeared, then, to tell them that dinner was ready. Both Phil and Gertrude rose, and Claude joined them as they entered the dining room together.

"Tell me," Phil Harvey said to Claude. "Who is Sarapis' heir?" St. Cyr said, "A granddaughter who lives on Callisto; her name is Kathy Egmont and she's an odd one . . . she's about twenty years old and already she's been in jail five times, mostly for narcotics addiction. Lately, I understand, she's managed to cure herself of the drug habit and now she's a religious convert of some kind. I've never met her but I've handled volumes of corre­spondence passing between her and old Louis."

"And she gets the entire estate, when it's out of probate? With all the political power inherent in it?"

"Haw," St. Cyr said. "Political power can't be willed, can't be passed on. All Kathy gets is the economic syndrome. It functions, as you know, through the parent holding company licensed under the laws of the state of Delaware, Wilhelmina Securities, and that's hers, if she cares to make use of it -- if she can understand what it is she's inheriting."

Phil Harvey said, "You don't sound very optimistic."

"All the correspondence from her indicates -- to me at least -- that she's a sick, criminal type, very eccentric and unstable. The very last sort I'd like to see inherit Louis's holdings."

On that note, they seated themselves at the dinner table.

 

In the night, Johnny Barefoot heard the phone, drew himself to a sitting position and fumbled until his hands touched the receiver. Beside him in the bed Sarah Belle stirred as he said gratingly, "Hello. Who the hell is it?"

A fragile female voice said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Barefoot. . . I didn't mean to wake you up. But I was told by my attorney to call you as soon as I arrived on Earth." She added, "This is Kathy Egmont, although actually my real name is Mrs. Kathy Sharp. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," Johnny said, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He shivered from the cold of the room; beside him, Sarah Belle drew the covers back up over her shoulders and turned the other way. "Want me to come and pick you up? Do you have a place to stay?"

"I have no friends here on Terra," Kathy said. "But the spaceport people told me that the Severely is a good hotel, so I'm going there. I started from Callisto as soon as I heard that my grandfather had died,"

"You made good time," he said. He hadn't expected her for another twenty-four hours.

"Is there any chance --" The girl sounded timid. "Could I possibly stay with you, Mr. Barefoot? It scares me, the idea of a big hotel where no one knows me."

"I'm sorry," he said at once. "I'm married." And then he realized that such a retort was not only inappropriate . . . it was actually abusive. "What I mean is," he explained, "I have no spare room. You stay at the Severely tonight and tomorrow we'll find you a more acceptable apartment."

"All right," Kathy said. She sounded resigned but still anxious. "Tell me, Mr. Barefoot, what luck have you had with my grandfather's resurrection? Is he in half-life, now?"

"No," Johnny said. "It's failed, so far. They're working on it."

When he had left the mortuary, five technicians had been busy at work, trying to discover what was wrong.

Kathy said, "I thought it might work out that way."

"Why?"

"Well, my grandfather -- he was so different from everyone else. I realize you know that, perhaps even better than I. . . after all, you were with him daily. But -- I just couldn't imagine him inert, the way the half-lifers are. Passive and helpless, you know. Can you imagine him like that, after all he's done?"

Johnny said, "Let's talk tomorrow; I'll come by the hotel about nine. Okay?"

"Yes, that's fine. I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Barefoot. I hope you'll stay on with Archimedean, working for me. Goodbye." The phone clicked; she had rung off.

My new boss, Johnny said to himself. Wow.

"Who was that?" Sarah Belle murmured. "At this hour?"

"The owner of Archimedean," Johnny said. "My employer."

"Louis Sarapis?" His wife sat up at once. "Oh. . . you mean his grand­daughter; she's here already. What's she sound like?"

"I can't tell," he said meditatively. "Frightened, mostly. It's a finite, small world she comes from, compared with Terra, here." He did not tell his wife the things he knew about Kathy, her drug addiction, her terms in jail.

"Can she take over now?" Sarah Belle asked. "Doesn't she have to wait until Louis's half-life is over?"

"Legally, he's dead. His will has come into force." And, he thought acidly, he's not in half-life anyhow; he's silent and dead in his plastic casket, in his quick-pack, which evidently wasn't quite quick enough.

"How do you think you'll get along with her?"

"I don't know," he said candidly. "I'm not even sure I'm going to try." He did not like the idea of working for a woman, especially one younger than himself. And one who was -- at least according to hearsay -- virtually psy­chopathic. But on the phone she had certainly not sounded psychopathic. He mulled that over in his mind, wide-awake now.

"She's probably very pretty," Sarah Belle said. "You'll probably fall in love with her and desert me."

"Oh no," he said. "Nothing as startling as that. I'll probably try to work for her, drag out a few miserable months, and then give up and look elsewhere." And meanwhile, he thought, WHAT ABOUT LOUIS? Are we, or are we not, going to be able to revive him? That was the really big unknown.

If the old man could be revived, he could direct his granddaughter; even though legally and physically dead, he could continue to manage his complex economic and political sphere, to some extent. But right now this was simply not working out, and the old man had planned on being revived at once, certainly before the Democratic-Republican Convention. Louis certainly knew -- or rather had known -- what sort of person he was willing his hold­ings to. Without help she surely could not function. And, Johnny thought, there's little I can do for her. Claude St. Cyr could have, but by the terms of the will he's out of the picture entirely. So what is left? We must keep trying to revive old Louis, even if we have to visit every mortuary in the United States, Cuba and Russia.

"You're thinking confused thoughts," Sarah Belle said. "I can tell by your expression." She turned on the small lamp by the bed, and was now reaching for her robe. "Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night."

This must be how half-life feels, he thought groggily. He shook his head, trying to clear it, to wake up fully.

 

The next morning he parked his car in the underground garage of the Beverely and ascended by elevator to the lobby and the front desk where he was greeted by the smiling day clerk. It was not much of a hotel, Johnny decided. Clean, however; a respectable family hotel which probably rented many of its units by the month, some no doubt to elderly retired people. Evidently Kathy was accustomed to living modestly.

In answer to his query, the clerk pointed to the adjoining coffee shop. "You'll find her in there, eating breakfast. She said you might be calling, Mr. Barefoot."

In the coffee shop he found a good number of people having breakfast; he stopped short, wondering which was Kathy. The dark-haired girl with the stilted, frozen features, over in the far corner out of the way? He walked toward her. Her hair, he decided, was dyed. Without makeup she looked unnaturally pale; her skin had a stark quality, as if she had known a good deal of suffering, and not the sort that taught or informed one, made one into a "better" person. It had been pure pain, with no redemptive aspects, he decided as he studied her.

"Kathy?" he asked.

The girl turned her head. Her eyes, empty; her expression totally flat­tened. In a little voice she said, "Yes. Are you John Barefoot?" As he came up to the booth and seated himself opposite her she watched as if she imagined he would spring at her, hurl himself on her and -- God forbid -- sexually assault her. It's as if she's nothing more than a lone, small animal, he thought. Backed into a corner to face the entire world.

The color, or rather lack of it, could stem from the drug addiction, he decided. But that did not explain the flatness of her tone, and her utter lack of facial expression. And yet -- she was pretty. She had delicate, regular features. . . animated, they would have been interesting. And perhaps they had been, once. Years ago.

"I have only five dollars left," Kathy said. "After I paid for my one-way ticket and my hotel and my breakfast. Could you --" She hesitated. "I'm not sure exactly what to do. Could you tell me. . . do I own anything yet? Anything that was my grandfather's? That I could borrow against?"

Johnny said, "I'll write you a personal check for one hundred dollars and you can pay me back sometime." He got out his checkbook.

"Really?" She looked stunned, and now, faintly, she smiled. "How trust­ing of you. Or are you trying to impress me? You were my grandfather's public relations man, weren't you? How were you dealt with in the will? I can't remember; it's all happened so fast, it's been so blurred."

"Well," he said, "I wasn't fired, as was Claude St. Cyr."

"Then you're staying on." That seemed to relieve her mind. "I wonder. . . would it be correct to say you're now working for me?"

"You could say that," Johnny said. "Assuming you feel you need a P.R. man. Maybe you don't. Louis wasn't sure, half the time."

"Tell me what efforts have been made to resurrect him."

He explained to her, briefly, what he had done.

"And this is not generally known?" she asked.

"Definitely not. I know it, a mortuary owner with the unnatural name of Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang knows it, and possibly news has trickled to a few high people in the drayage business, such as Phil Harvey. Even Claude St. Cyr may know it, by now. Of course, as time goes on and Louis has nothing to say, no political pronouncements for the press --"

"We'll have to make them up," Kathy said. "And pretend they're from him. That will be your job, Mr. Funnyfoot." She smiled once more. "Press-releases by my grandfather, until he's finally revived or we give up. Do you think we'll have to give up?" After a pause she said softly, "I'd like to see him. If I may. If you think it's all right."

"I'll take you there, to the Blessed Brethren Mortuary. I have to go there within the hour anyhow."

Nodding, Kathy resumed eating her breakfast.

 

As Johnny Barefoot stood beside the girl, who gazed intently at the trans­parent casket, he thought bizarrely, Maybe she'll rap on the glass and say, "Grandfather, you wake up." And, he thought, maybe that will accomplish it. Certainly nothing else has.

Wringing his hands, Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang burbled miserably, "I just don't understand it, Mr. Barefoot. We worked all night, in relays, and we just aren't getting a single spark. And yet we ran an electrocephalograph and the 'gram shows faint but unmistakable cerebral activity. So the after-life is there, but we can't seem to contact it. We've got probes at every part of the skull, now, as you can see." He pointed to the maze of hair-wires connecting the dead man's head to the amplifying equipment surrounding the casket. "I don't know what else we can do, sir."

"Is there measurable brain metabolism?" Johnny asked.

"Yes sir. We called in outside experts and they detected it; it's a normal amount, too, just what you'd expect, immediately after death."

Kathy said calmly, "I know it's hopeless. He's too big a man for this. This is for aged relatives. For grandmothers, to be trotted out once a year on Resurrection Day." She turned away from the casket. "Let's go," she said to Johnny.

Together, he and the girl walked along the sidewalk from the mortuary, neither speaking. It was a mild spring day, and the trees here and there at the curb had small pink flowers. Cherry trees, Johnny decided.

"Death," Kathy murmured, at last. "And rebirth. A technological mira­cle. Maybe when Louis saw what it was like on the other side he changed his mind about coming back. . . maybe he just doesn't want to return."

"Well," Johnny said, "the electrical spark is there; he's inside there, thinking something." He let Kathy take his arm as they crossed the street. "Someone told me," he said quietly, "that you're interested in religion."

"Yes, I am," Kathy said quietly. "You see, when I was a narcotics addict I took an overdose -- never mind of what -- and as a result my heart action ceased. I was officially, medically, dead for several minutes; they brought me back by open-chest heart massage and electroshock. . . you know. During that time I had an experience, probably much like what those who go into half-life have experienced."

"Was it better than here?"

"No," she said. "But it was different. It was -- dreamlike. I don't mean vague or unreal. I mean the logic, the weightlessness; you see, that's the main difference. You're free of gravity. It's hard to realize how important that is, but just think how many of the characteristics of the dream derive from that one fact."

Johnny said, "And it changed you."

"I managed to overcome the oral addictive aspects of my personality, if that's what you mean. I learned to control my appetites. My greed." At a newspaper stand Kathy halted to read the headlines. "Look," she said.

 

VOICE FROM OUTER SPACE BAFFLES SCIENTISTS

 

"Interesting," Johnny said.

Kathy, picking up the newspaper, read the article which accompanied the headline. "How strange," she said. "They've picked up a sentient, living entity. . . here, you can read it, too." She passed the newspaper to him. "I did that, when I died. . . I drifted out, free of the solar system, first planetary gravity then the sun's. I wonder who it is." Taking the newspaper back she reread the article.

"Ten cents, sir or madam," the robot vender said, suddenly.

Johnny tossed it the dime.

"Do you think it's my grandfather?" Kathy asked.

"Hardly," Johnny said.

"I think it is," Kathy said, staring past him, deep in thought. "I know it is; look, it began one week after his death, and it's one light-week out. The time fits, and here's the transcript of what it's saying." She pointed to the column. "All about you, Johnny, and about me and about Claude St. Cyr, that lawyer he fired, and the Convention; it's all there, but garbled. That's the way your thoughts run, when you're dead; all compressed, instead of in sequence." She smiled up at Johnny. "So we've got a terrible problem. We can hear him, by use of the radio telescope at Kennedy Slough. But he can't hear us."

"You don't actually --"

"Oh, I do," she said matter-of-factly. "I knew he wouldn't settle for half-life; this is a whole, entire life he's leading now, out in space, there, beyond the last planet of our system. And there isn't going to be any way we can interfere with him; whatever it is he's doing --" She began to walk on, once more; Johnny followed. "Whatever it is, it's going to be at least as much as he did when he was alive here on Terra. You can be sure of that. Are you afraid?"

"Hell," Johnny protested, "I'm not even convinced, let alone afraid." And yet -- perhaps she was right. She seemed so certain about it. He could not help being a little impressed, a little convinced.

"You should be afraid," Kathy said. "He may be very strong, out there. He may be able to do a lot. Affect a lot. . . affect us, what we do and say and believe. Even without the radio telescope -- he may be reaching us, even now. Subliminally."

"I don't believe it," Johnny said. But he did, in spite of himself. She was right; it was just what Louis Sarapis would do.

Kathy said, "We'll know more when the Convention begins, because that's what he cares about. He failed to get Gam elected last time, and that was one of the few times in his life that he was beaten."

"Gam!" Johnny echoed, amazed. "That has-been? Is he even still in existence? Why, he completely disappeared, four years ago --"

"My grandfather won't give up with him," Kathy said meditatively. "And he is alive; he's a turkey farmer or some such thing, on Io. Perhaps it's ducks. Anyhow, he's there. Waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

Kathy said, "For my grandfather to contact him again. As he did before, four years ago, at the Convention then."

"No one would vote for Gam again!" Repelled, he gazed at her.

Smiling, Kathy said nothing. But she squeezed his arm, hugging him. As if, he thought, she were afraid again, as she had been in the night, when he had talked to her. Perhaps even more so.

 

 

III

The handsome, dapper, middle-aged man wearing vest and narrow, old-fashioned necktie, rose to his feet as Claude St. Cyr entered the outer office of St. Cyr and Faine, on his way to court. "Mr. St. Cyr --"

Glancing at him, St. Cyr murmured, "I'm in a rush; you'll have to make an appointment with my secretary." And then he recognized the man. He was talking to Alfonse Gam.

"I have a telegram," Gam said. "From Louis Sarapis." He reached into his coat pocket.

"Sorry," St. Cyr said stiffly. "I'm associated with Mr. Phil Harvey now; my business relationship with Mr. Sarapis was terminated several weeks ago." But he paused, curious. He had met Gam before; at the time of the national campaign, four years ago, he had seen a good deal of the man -- in fact, he had represented Gam in several libel suits, one with Gam as the plaintiff, the other as defendant. He did not like the man.

Gam said, "This wire arrived the day before yesterday."

"But Sarapis has been --" Claude St. Cyr broke off. "Let me see it." He held out his hand, and Gam passed him the wire.

It was a statement from Louis Sarapis to Gam, assuring Gam of Louis's utter and absolute support in the forthcoming struggle at the Convention. And Gam was correct; the wire was dated only three days before. It did not make sense.

"I can't explain it, Mr. St. Cyr," Gam said dryly. "But it sounds like Louis. He wants me to run again. As you can see. It never occurred to me; as far as I'm concerned I'm out of politics and in the guinea-fowl business. I thought you might know something about this, who sent it and why." He added, "Assuming that old Louis didn't."

St. Cyr said, "How could Louis have sent it?"

"I mean, written it before his death and had someone send it just the other day. Yourself, perhaps." Gam shrugged. "Evidently it wasn't you. Perhaps Mr. Barefoot, then." He reached out for his wire.

"Do you actually intend to run again?" St. Cyr asked.

"If Louis wants me to."

"And lose again? Drag the party to defeat again, just because of one stubborn, vindictive old man --" St. Cyr broke off. "Go back to raising guinea fowl. Forget politics. You're a loser, Gam. Everyone in the party knows it. Everyone in America, in fact."

"How can I contact Mr. Barefoot?"

St. Cyr said, "I have no idea." He started on.

"I'll need legal help," Gam said.

"For what? Who's suing you now? You don't need legal help, Mr. Gam; you need medical help, a psychiatrist to explain why you want to run again. Listen --" He leaned toward Gam. "If Louis alive couldn't get you into office, Louis dead certainly can't." He went on, then, leaving Gam standing there.

"Wait," Gam said.

Reluctantly, Claude St. Cyr turned around.

"This time I'm going to win," Gam said. He sounded as if he meant it; his voice, instead of its usual reedy flutter, was firm.

Uneasy, St. Cyr said, "Well, good luck. To both you and Louis."

"Then he is alive." Gam's eyes flickered.

"I didn't say that; I was being ironic."

Gam said thoughtfully, "But he is alive; I'm sure of it. I'd like to find him. I went to some of the mortuaries, but none of them had him, or if they did they wouldn't admit it. I'll keep looking; I want to confer with him." He added, "That's why I came here from Io."

At that point, St. Cyr managed to break away and depart. What a nonentity, he said to himself. A cypher, nothing but a puppet of Louis's. He shuddered. God protect us from such a fate: that man as our President.

Imagine us all becoming like Gam!

It was not a pleasant thought; it did not inspire him for the day ahead. And he had a good deal of work on his shoulders.

This was the day that he, as attorney for Phil Harvey, would make Mrs. Kathy Sharp -- the former Kathy Egmont -- an offer for Wilhelmina Securi­ties. An exchange of stock would be involved; voting stock, redistributed in such a fashion that Harvey gained control of Wilhelmina. The worth of the corporation being almost impossible to calculate, Harvey was offering not money but real estate in exchange; he had enormous tracts of land on Gany­mede, deeded to him by the Soviet Government a decade ago in exchange for technical assistance he had rendered it and its colonies.

The chance of Kathy accepting was nil.

And yet, the offer had to be made. The next step -- he shrank from even thinking about it -- involved a fracas to the death in the area of direct eco­nomic competition, between Harvey's drayage firm and hers. And hers, he knew, was now in a state of decay; there had been union trouble since the old man's death. The thing that Louis hated the most had started to take place: union organizers had begun to move in on Archimedean.

He himself sympathized with the unions; it was about time they came onto the scene. Only the old man's dirty tactics and his boundless energy, not to speak of his ruthless, eternal imagination, had kept them out. Kathy had none of these. And Johnny Barefoot --

What can you ask of a noncol? St. Cyr asked himself caustically. Brilliant strategy-purse out of the sow's ear of mediocrity?

And Barefoot had his hands full building up Kathy's image before the public; he had barely begun to succeed in that when the union squabbles broke out. An ex-narcotics addict and religious nut, a woman who had a criminal record. . . Johnny had his work cut out for him.

Where he had been productive lay in the area of the woman's physical appearance. She looked sweet, even gentle and pure; almost saintly. And Johnny had seized on this. Instead of quoting her in the press he had photo­graphed her, a thousand wholesome poses: with dogs, children, at county fairs, at hospitals, involved in charity drives -- the whole business.

But unfortunately Kathy had spoiled the image he had created, spoiled it in a rather unusual way.

Kathy maintained -- simply -- that she was in communication with her grandfather. That it was he who lay a light-week out in space, picked up by Kennedy Slough. She heard him, as the rest of the world did. . . and by some miracle he heard her, too.

St. Cyr, riding the self-service elevator up to the 'copter port on the roof, laughed aloud. Her religious crankery couldn't be kept from the gossip columnists. . . Kathy had said too much in public places, in restaurants and small, famous bars. And even with Johnny beside her. Even he couldn't keep her quiet.

Also, there had been that incident at that party in which she had taken off her clothes, declaring the hour of purification to be momentarily arriving; she had daubed herself in certain spots with crimson nail polish, as well, a sort of ritual ceremony. . . of course she had been drinking.

And this is the woman, St. Cyr thought, who operates Archimedean. The woman we must oust, for our good and the public's. It was, to him, practically a mandate in the name of the people. Virtually a public service to be performed, and the only one who did not see it that way was Johnny.

St. Cyr thought, Johnny LIKES her. There's the motive.

I wonder, he mused, what Sarah Belle thinks of that.

Feeling cheerful, St. Cyr entered his 'copter, closed the hatch and inserted his key in the ignition. And then he thought once again of Alfonse Gam. And his good humor vanished at once; again he felt glum.

There are two people, he realized, who are acting on the assumption that old Louis Sarapis is alive; Kathy Egmont Sharp and Alfonse Gam.

Two most unsavory people, too. And, in spite of himself, he was being forced to associate with both of them. It seemed to be his fate.

He thought, I'm no better off than I was with old Louis. In some respects, I'm even worse off.

The 'copter rose into the sky, on its way to Phil Harvey's building in downtown Denver.

Being late, he snapped on the little transmitter, picked up the microphone and put in a call to Harvey. "Phil," he said, "Can you hear me? This is St. Cyr and I'm on my way west." He listened, then.

Listened, and heard from the speaker a far-off weird babble, a murmur as if many words were being blended into a confusion. He recognized it; he had come onto it several times now, on the TV news programs.

"... spite of personal attacks, much superior to Chambers, who couldn't win an election for house of ill repute janitor. You keep up faith in yourself, Alfonse. People know a good man, value him; you wait. Faith moves moun­tains. I ought to know, look what I've accomplished in my life. . ."

It was, St. Cyr realized, the entity a light-week out, now emitting an even more powerful signal; like sunspots, it beclouded normal transmission chan­nels. He cursed, scowled, then snapped off the receiver.

Fouling up communications, he said to himself. Must be against the law; I ought to consult the FCC.

Shaken, he piloted his 'copter on, across open farm land.

My God, he thought, it did sound like old Louis!

Could Kathy Egmont Sharp possibly be right?

 

At the Michigan plant of Archimedean, Johnny Barefoot appeared for his appointment with Kathy and found her in a state of gloom.

"Don't you see what's happening?" she demanded, facing him across the office which had once been Louis's. "I'm not managing things right at all; everybody knows that. Don't you know that?" Wild-eyed, she stared at him.

"I don't know that," Johnny said. But inside he did know it; she was correct. "Take it easy and sit down," he said. "Harvey and St. Cyr will be here any minute now, and you want to be in command of yourself when you meet with them." It was a meeting which he had hoped to avoid. But, he had realized, sooner or later it would take place, and so he had let Kathy agree to it.

Kathy said, "I have something terrible to tell you."

"What is it? It can't be so terrible." He set himself, waiting in dread to hear.

"I'm back on drugs, Johnny. All this responsibility and pressure; it's too much for me. I'm sorry." She gazed down at the floor sadly.

"What is the drug?"

"I'd rather not say. It's one of the amphetamines. I've read the literature; I know it can cause a psychosis, in the amounts I'm taking. But I don't care." Panting, she turned away, her back to him. He saw, now, how thin she had gotten. And her face was gaunt, hollow-eyed; he now understood why. The overdosage of amphetamines wasted the body away, turned matter into energy. Her metabolism was altered so that she became, as the addiction returned, a pseudo-hyperthyroid, with all the somatic processes speeded up.

Johnny said, "I'm sorry to hear it." He had been afraid of this. And yet when it had come he had not understood; he had had to wait until she told him. "I think," he said, "you should be under a doctor's care." He wondered where she got the drug. But probably for her, with her years of experience, it was not difficult.

"It makes a person very unstable emotionally," Kathy said. "Given to sudden rages and also crying jags. I want you to know that, so you won't blame me. So you'll understand that it's the drug." She tried to smile; he saw her making the effort.

Going over to her he put his hand on her shoulder. "Listen," he said, "when Harvey and St. Cyr get here, I think you better accept their offer."

"Oh," she said, nodding. "Well."

"And then," he said, "I want you to go voluntarily into a hospital."

"The cookie factory," Kathy said bitterly.

"You'd be better off," he said, "without the responsibility you have, here at Archimedean. What you need is deep, protracted rest. You're in a state of mental and physical fatigue, but as long as you're taking that amphet­amine --"

"Then it doesn't catch up with me," Kathy finished. "Johnny, I can't sell out to Harvey and St. Cyr."

"Why not?"

"Louis wouldn't want me to. He --" She was silent a moment. "He says no."

Johnny said, "Your health, maybe your life --"

"My sanity, you mean, Johnny."

"You have too much personally at stake," he said. "The hell with Louis. The hell with Archimedean; you want to find yourself in a mortuary, too, in half-life? It's not worth it; it's just property, and you're a living creature."

She smiled. And then, on the desk, a light came on and a buzzer sounded. The receptionist outside said, "Mrs. Sharp, Mr. Harvey and Mr. St. Cyr are here, now. Shall I send them in?"

"Yes," she answered.

The door opened, and Claude St. Cyr and Phil Harvey came swiftly in. "Hey, Johnny," St. Cyr said. He seemed to be in a confident mood; beside him, Harvey looked confident, too.

Kathy said, "I'll let Johnny do most of the talking."

He glanced at her. Did that mean she had agreed to sell? He said, "What kind of deal is this? What do you have to offer in exchange for a controlling interest in Wilhelmina Securities of Delaware? I can't imagine what it could be."

"Ganymede," St. Cyr said. "An entire moon." He added, "Virtually."

"Oh yes," Johnny said. "The USSR land deed. Has it been tested in the international courts?"

"Yes," St. Cyr said, "and found totally valid. Its worth is beyond estimate. And each year it will increase, perhaps double, in value. My client will put that up. It's a good offer, Johnny; you and I know each other, and you know when I say it that it's true."

Probably it was, Johnny decided. It was in many respects a generous offer; Harvey was not trying to bilk Kathy.

"Speaking for Mrs. Sharp," Johnny began. But Kathy cut him off.

"No," she said in a quick, brisk voice. "I can't sell. He says not to."

Johnny said, "You've already given me authority to negotiate, Kathy."

"Well," she said in a hard voice, "I'm taking it back."

"If I'm to work with you and for you at all," Johnny said, "you must go on my advice. We've already talked it over and agreed --"

The phone in the office rang.

"Listen to him yourself," Kathy said. She picked up the phone and held it out to Johnny. "He'll tell you."

Johnny accepted the phone and put it to his ear. "Who is this?" he demanded. And then he heard the drumming. The far-off uncanny drum­ming noise, as if something were scratching at a long metal wire.

". . . imperative to retain control. Your advice absurd. She can pull herself together; she's got the stuff. Panic reaction; you're scared because she's ill. A good doctor can fix her up. Get a doctor for her; get medical help. Get an attorney and be sure she stays out of the hands of the law. Make sure her supply of drugs is cut. Insist on . . ." Johnny yanked the receiver away from his ear, refusing to hear more. Trembling, he hung the phone back up.

"You heard him," Kathy said. "Didn't you? That was Louis."

"Yes," Johnny said.

"He's grown," Kathy said. "Now we can hear him direct; it's not just the radio telescope at Kennedy Slough. I heard him last night, clearly, for the first time, as I lay down to go to sleep."

To St. Cyr and Harvey, Johnny said, "We'll have to think your proposition over, evidently. We'll have to get an appraisal of the worth of the unimproved real estate you're offering and no doubt you want an audit of Wilhelmina. That will take time." He heard his voice shake; he had not gotten over the shock of picking up the telephone and hearing the living voice of Louis Sarapis.

 

After making an appointment with St. Cyr and Harvey to meet with them once more later in the day, Johnny took Kathy out to a late breakfast; she had admitted, reluctantly, that she had eaten nothing since the night before.

"I'm just not hungry," she explained, as she sat picking listlessly at her plate of bacon and eggs, toast with jam.

"Even if that was Louis Sarapis," Johnny said, "you don't --"

"It was. Don't say 'even'; you know it's him. He's gaining power all the time, out there. Perhaps from the sun."

"So it's Louis," he said doggedly. "Nonetheless, you have to act in your own interest, not in his."

"His interests and mine are the same," Kathy said. "They involve main­taining Archimedean."

"Can he give you the help you need? Can he supply what's missing? He doesn't take your drug-addiction seriously; that's obvious. All he did was preach at me." He felt anger. "That's damn little help, for you or for me, in this situation."

"Johnny," she said, "I feel him near me all the time; I don't need the TV or the phone -- I sense him. It's my mystical bent, I think. My religious intuition; it's helping me maintain contact with him." She sipped a little orange juice.

Bluntly, Johnny said, "It's your amphetamine psychosis, you mean."

"I won't go into the hospital, Johnny. I won't sign myself in; I'm sick but not that sick. I can get over this bout on my own, because I'm not alone. I have my grandfather. And --" She smiled at him. "I have you. In spite of Sarah Belle."

"You won't have me, Kathy," he said quietly, "unless you sell to Harvey. Unless you accept the Ganymede real estate."

"You'd quit?"

"Yes," he said.

After a pause, Kathy said, "My grandfather says go ahead and quit." Her eyes were dark, enlarged, and utterly cold.

"I don't believe he'd say that."

"Then talk to him."

"How?"

Kathy pointed to the TV set in the corner of the restaurant. "Turn it on and listen."

Rising to his feet, Johnny said, "I don't have to; I've already given my decision. I'll be at my hotel, if you should change your mind." He walked away from the table, leaving her sitting there. Would she call after him? He listened as he walked. She did not call.

A moment later he was out of the restaurant, standing on the sidewalk. She had called his bluff, and so it ceased to be a bluff; it became the real thing. He actually had quit.

Stunned, he walked aimlessly on. And yet -- he had been right. He knew that. It was just that. . . damn her, he thought. Why didn't she give in? Because of Louis, he realized. Without the old man she would have gone ahead and done it, traded her controlling, voting stock for the Ganymede property. Damn Louis Sarapis, not her, he thought furiously.

What now? he asked himself. Go back to New York? Look for a new job? For instance approach Alfonse Gam? There was money in that, if he could land it. Or should he stay here in Michigan, hoping that Kathy would change her mind?

She can't keep on, he decided. No matter what Sarapis tells her. Or rather, what she believes he's telling her. Whichever it is.

Hailing a cab, he gave the driver the address of his hotel room. A few moments later he was entering the lobby of the Antler Hotel, back where he had started early in the morning. Back to the forbidding empty room, this time merely to sit and wait. To hope that Kathy would change her mind and call him. This time he had no appointment to go to; the appointment was over.

When he reached his hotel room he heard his phone ringing.

 

For a moment Johnny stood at the door, key in hand, listening to the phone on the other side of the door, the shrill noise reaching him as he stood in the hall. Is it Kathy? he wondered. Or is it him?

He put the key in the lock, turned it and entered the room; sweeping the receiver off its hook he said, "Hello."

Drumming and far-off, the voice, in the middle of its monotonous mono­logue, its recitation to itself, was murmuring, ". . . no good at all, Barefoot, to leave her. Betrayal of your job; thought you understood your responsibilities. Same to her as it was to me, and you never would have walked off in a fit of pique and left me. I deliberately left the disposition of my body to you so you'd stay on. You can't. . ." At that point Johnny hung up, chilled.

The phone rang again, at once.

This time he did not take it off the hook. The hell with you, he said to himself. He walked to the window and stood looking down at the street below, thinking to himself of the conversation he had held with old Louis years ago, the one that had made such an impression in his mind. The conversation in which it had come out that he had failed to go to college because he wanted to die. Looking down at the street below, he thought, Maybe I ought to jump. At least there'd be no more phones. . . no more of it.

The worse part, he thought, is its senility. Its thoughts are not clear, not distinct; they're dream-like; irrational. The old man is not genuinely alive. He is not even in half-life. This is a dwindling away of consciousness toward a nocturnal state. And we are forced to listen to it as it unwinds, as it develops step by step, to final, total death.

But even in this degenerative state, it had desires. It wanted, and strongly. It wanted him to do something; it wanted Kathy to do something; the rem­nants of Louis Sarapis were vital and active, and clever enough to find ways of pursuing him, of getting what was wanted. It was a travesty of Louis's wishes during his lifetime, and yet it could not be ignored; it could not be escaped.

The phone continued to ring.

Maybe it isn't Louis, he thought then. Maybe it's Kathy. Going to it he lifted the receiver. And put it back down at once. The drumming once more, the fragments of Louis Sarapis's personality. . . he shuddered. And is it just here, is it selective?

He had a terrible feeling that it was not selective.

Going to the TV set at the far end of the room he snapped the switch. The screen grew into lighted animation, and yet, he saw, it was strangely blurred. The dim outlines of -- it seemed to be a face.

And everyone, he realized, is seeing this. He turned to another channel. Again the dully-formed features, the old man half-materialized here on the television screen. And from the set's speaker the murmur of indistinct words. ". . .told you time and again your primary responsibility is to. . ." Johnny shut the set off; the ill-formed face and words sank out of existence, and all that remained, once more, was the ringing phone.

He picked up the phone and said, "Louis, can you hear me?"

". . . when election time comes they'll see. A man with the spirit to cam­paign a second time, take the financial responsibility, after all it's only for the wealthy men, now, the cost of running. . ." The voice droned on. No, the old man could not hear him. It was not a conversation; it was a monologue. It was not authentic communication.

And yet the old man knew what was occurring on Earth; he seemed to understand, to somehow see, that Johnny had quit his job.

Hanging up the phone he seated himself and lit a cigarette.

I can't go back to Kathy, he realized, unless I'm willing to change my mind and advise her not to sell. And that's impossible; I can't do that. So that's out. What is there left for me?

How long can Sarapis hound me? Is there any place I can go?

Going to the window once more he stood looking down at the street below.

 

At a newsstand, Claude St. Cyr tossed down coins, picked up the news­paper.

"Thank you, sir or madam," the robot vender said.

The lead article. . . St. Cyr blinked and wondered if he had lost his mind. He could not grasp what he was reading -- or rather unable to read. It made no sense; the homeostatic news-printing system, the fully automated micro-relay newspaper, had evidently broken down. All he found was a procession of words, randomly strung together. It was worse than Finnegans Wake.

Or was it random? One paragraph caught his eye.

 

At the hotel window now ready to leap. If you expect to conduct any more business with her you better get over there. She's dependent on him, needs a man since her husband, that Paul Sharp, abandoned her. The Antler Hotel, room 604. I think you have time. Johnny is too hot-headed; shouldn't have tried to bluff her. With my blood you can't be bluffed and she's got my blood, I. . .

 

St. Cyr said rapidly to Harvey, who stood beside him, "Johnny Barefoot's in a room at the Antler Hotel about to jump, and this is old Sarapis telling us, warning us. We better get over there."

Glancing at him, Harvey said, "Barefoot's on our side; we can't afford to have him take his life. But why would Sarapis --"

"Let's just get over there," St. Cyr said, starting toward his parked 'copter. Harvey followed on the run.

 

 

IV

All at once the telephone stopped ringing. Johnny turned from the window -- and saw Kathy Sharp standing by it, the receiver in her hand. "He called me," she said. "And he told me, Johnny, where you were and what you were going to do."

"Nuts," he said, "I'm not going to do anything." He moved back from the window.

"He thought you were," Kathy said.

"Yes, and that proves he can be wrong." His cigarette, he saw, had burned down to the filter; he dropped it into the ashtray on the dresser and stubbed it out.

"My grandfather was always fond of you," Kathy said. "He wouldn't like anything to happen to you."

Shrugging, Johnny said, "As far as I'm concerned I have nothing to do with Louis Sarapis any more."

Kathy had put the receiver to her ear; she paid no attention to Johnny -- she was listening to her grandfather, he saw, and so he ceased talking. It was futile.

"He says," Kathy said, "that Claude St. Cyr and Phil Harvey are on their way up here. He told them to come, too."

"Nice of him," he said shortly.

Kathy said, "I'm fond of you, too, Johnny. I can see what my grandfather found about you to like and admire. You genuinely take my welfare seriously, don't you? Maybe I could go into the hospital voluntarily, for a short period anyhow, a week or a few days."

"Would that be enough?" he asked.

"It might." She held the phone out to him. "He wants to talk to you. I think you'd better listen; he'll find a way to reach you, in any case. And you know that."

Reluctantly, Johnny accepted the phone.

". . . trouble is you're out of a job and that depresses you. If you're not working you feel you don't amount to anything; that's the kind of person you are. I like that. The same way myself. Listen, I've got a job for you. At the Convention. Doing publicity to make sure Alfonse Gam is nominated; you'd do a swell job. Call Gam. Call Alfonse Gam. Johnny, call Gam. Call --"

Johnny hung up the phone.

I've got a job," he told Kathy. "Representing Gam. At least Louis says so."

Would you do that?" Kathy asked. "Be his P.R. man at the nominating convention?"

He shrugged. Why not? Gam had the money; he could and would pay well. And certainly he was no worse than the President, Kent Margrave. And I must get a job, Johnny realized. I have to live. I've got a wife and two children; this is no joke.

"Do you think Gam has a chance this time?" Kathy asked.

"No, not really. But miracles in politics do happen; look at Richard Nixon's incredible comeback in 1968."

"What is the best route for Gam to follow?"

He eyed her. "I'll talk that over with him. Not with you."

"You're still angry," Kathy said quietly. "Because I won't sell. Listen, Johnny. Suppose I turned Archimedean over to you."

After a moment he said, "What does Louis say to that?"

"I haven't asked him."

"You know he'd say no. I'm too inexperienced. I know the operation, of course; I've been with it from the start. But --"

"Don't sell yourself short," Kathy said softly.

"Please," Johnny said. "Don't lecture me. Let's try to stay friends; cool, distant friends." And if there's one thing I can't stand, he said to himself, it's being lectured by a woman. And for my own good.

The door of the room burst open. Claude St. Cyr and Phil Harvey leaped inside, then saw Kathy, saw him with her, and sagged. "So he got you to come here, too," St. Cyr said to her, panting for breath.

"Yes," she said. "He was very concerned about Johnny." She patted him on the arm. "See how many friends you have? Both warm and cool?"

"Yes," he said. But for some reason felt deeply, miserably sad.

 

That afternoon Claude St. Cyr found time to drop by the house of Elektra Harvey, his present employer's ex-wife.

"Listen, doll," St. Cyr said, "I'm trying to do good for you in this present deal. If I'm successful --" He put his arms around her and gave her a bear hug. "You'll recover a little of what you lost. Not all, but enough to make you a trifle happier about life in general." He kissed her and, as usual, she responded; she squirmed effectively, drew him down to her, pressed close in a manner almost uncannily satisfying. It was very pleasant, and in addition it lasted a long time. And that was not usual.

Stirring, moving away from him finally, Elektra said, "By the way, can you tell me what ails the phone and the TV? I can't call -- there always seems to be someone on the line. And the picture on the TV screen; it's all fuzzy and distorted, and it's always the same, just a sort of face."

"Don't worry about it," Claude said. "We're working on that right now; we've got a crew of men out scouting." His men were going from mortuary to mortuary; eventually they'd find Louis's body. And then this nonsense would come to an end. . . to everyone's relief.

Going to the sideboard to fix drinks, Elektra Harvey said, "Does Phil know about us?" She measured out bitters into the whiskey glasses, three drops to each.

"No," St. Cyr said, "and it's none of his business anyhow."

"But Phil has a strong prejudice about ex-wives. He wouldn't like it. He'd get ideas about you being disloyal; since he dislikes me, you're supposed to, too. That's what Phil calls 'integrity'."

"I'm glad to know that," St. Cyr said, "but there's damn little I can do about it. Anyhow, he isn't going to find out."

"I can't help being worried, though," Elektra said, bringing him his drink. "I was tuning the TV, you see, and -- I know this sounds crazy, but it actually seemed to me --" She broke off. "Well, I actually thought I heard the TV announcer mention us. But he was sort of mumbling, or the reception was bad. But anyhow I did hear that, your name and mine." She looked soberly up at him, while absent-mindedly rearranging the strap of her dress.

Chilled, he said, "Dear, it's ridiculous." Going over to the TV set he clicked it on.

Good Lord, he thought. Is Louis Sarapis everywhere? Does he see everything we do from that locus of his out there in deep space?

It was not exactly a comforting thought, especially since he was trying to involve Louis's granddaughter in a business deal which the old man disap­proved of.

He's getting back at me, St. Cyr realized as he reflexively tuned the television set with numbed fingers.

 

Alfonse Gam said, "As a matter of fact, Mr. Barefoot, I intended to call you. I have a wire from Mr. Sarapis advising me to employ you. I do think, however, we'll have to come up with something entirely new. Margrave has a considerable advantage over us."

"True," Johnny admitted. "But let's be realistic; we're going to get help this time. Help from Louis Sarapis."

"Louis helped last time," Gam pointed out, "and it wasn't sufficient."

"But his help now will be on a different order." After all, Johnny thought, the old man controls all the communication media, the newspapers, radio and TV, even the telephones, God forbid. With such power Louis could do almost any­thing he chose.

He hardly needs me, he thought caustically. But he did not say that to Alfonse Gam; apparently Gam did not understand about Louis and what Louis could do. And after all, a job was a job.

"Have you turned on a TV set lately?" Gam asked. "Or tried to use the phone, or even bought a newspaper? There's nothing but a sort of decaying gibberish coming out. If that's Louis, he's not going to be much help at the Convention. He's -- disjointed. Just rambles."

"I know," Johnny said guardedly.

"I'm afraid whatever scheme Louis had for his half-life period has gone wrong," Gam said. He looked morose; he did not look like a man who expected to win an election. "Your admiration for Louis is certainly greater than mine, at this stage," Gam said. "Frankly, Mr. Barefoot, I had a long talk with Mr. St. Cyr, and his concepts were totally discouraging. I'm determined to press on, but frankly --" He gestured. "Claude St. Cyr told me to my face I'm a loser."

"You're going to believe St. Cyr? He's on the other side, now, with Phil Harvey." Johnny was astonished to find the man so naive, so pliable.

"I told him I was going to win," Gam murmured. "But honest to God, this drivel from every TV set and phone -- it's awful. It discourages me; I want to get as far away from it as possible."

Presently Johnny said, "I understand."

"Louis didn't use to be like that," Gam said plaintively. "He just drones on, now. Even if he can swing the nomination to me. . . do I want it? I'm tired, Mr. Barefoot. Very tired." He was silent, then.

"If you're asking me to give you pep," Johnny said, "you've got the wrong man." The voice from the phone and the TV affected him much the same way. Much too much for him to say anything encouraging to Gam.

"You're in P.R.," Gam said. "Can't you generate enthusiasm where there is none? Convince me, Barefoot, and then I'll convince the world." From his pocket he brought a folded-up telegram. "This is what came from Louis, the other day. Evidently he can interfere with the telegraph lines as well as the other media." He passed it over and Johnny read it.

"Louis was more coherent then," Johnny said. "When he wrote this."

"That's what I mean! He's deteriorating rapidly. When the Convention begins -- and it's only one more day, now -- what'll he be like? I sense some­thing dreadful, here. And I don't care to get mixed up in it." He added, "And yet I want to run. So Barefoot -- you deal with Louis for me; you can be the go-between." He added, "The psychopomp."

"What's that mean?"

"The go-between God and man," Gam said.

Johnny said, "If you use words like that you won't get the nomination; I can promise you that."

Smiling wryly, Gam said, "How about a drink?" He started from his living room, toward the kitchen. "Scotch? Bourbon?"

"Bourbon," Johnny said.

"What do you think of the girl, Louis's granddaughter?"

"I like her," he said. And that was true; he certainly did.

"Even though she's a psychotic, a drug addict, been in jail and on top of that a religious nut?"

"Yes," Johnny said tightly.

"I think you're crazy," Gam said, returning with the drinks. "But I agree with you. She's a good person. I've known her for some time, as a matter of fact. Frankly, I don't know why she took the bent that she has. I'm not a psychologist. . . probably though it has something to do with Louis. She has a peculiar sort of devotion to him, a kind of loyalty that's both infantile and fanatic. And, to me, touchingly sweet."

Sipping his drink, Johnny said, "This is terrible bourbon."

"Old Sir Muskrat," Gam said, grimacing. "I agree."

"You better serve a better drink," Johnny said, "or you really are through in politics."

"That's why I need you," Gam said. "You see?"

"I see," Johnny said, carrying his drink into the kitchen to pour it back in the bottle -- and to take a look at the Scotch instead.

"How are you going about getting me elected?" Alfonse Gam asked.

Johnny said, "I think our best approach, our only approach, is to make use of the sentimentality people feel about Louis's death. I saw the lines of mourners; it was impressive, Alfonse. Day after day they came. When he was alive, many persons feared him, feared his power. But now they can breathe easier; he's gone, and the frightening aspects of --"

Gam interrupted. "But Johnny, he's not gone; that's the whole point. You know that gibbering thing on the phones and on TV -- that's him!"

"But they don't know it," Johnny said. "The public is baffled -- just as the first person to pick it up was baffled. That technician at Kennedy Slough." Emphatically, he said, "Why should they connect an electrical emanation one light-week away from Earth with Louis Sarapis?"

After a moment Gam said, "I think you're making an error, Johnny. But Louis said to hire you, and I'm going to. And you have a free hand; I'll depend on your expertise."

"Thanks," Johnny said. "You can depend on me." But inside, he was not so sure. Maybe the public is smarter than I realize, he thought. Maybe I'm making a mistake. But what other approach was there? None that he could dream up; either they made use of Gam's tie with Louis or they had absolutely nothing by which to recommend him.

A slender thread on which to base the campaign for nomination -- and only a day before the Convention convened. He did not like it.

The telephone in Gam's living room rang.

"That's probably him," Gam said. "You want to talk to him? To be truth­ful, I'm afraid to take it off the hook."

"Let it ring," Johnny said. He agreed with Gam; it was just too damn unpleasant.

"But we can't evade him," Gam pointed out. "If he wants to get in touch with us; if it isn't the phone it's the newspaper. And yesterday I tried to use my electric typewriter. . . instead of the letter I intended to compose I got the same mishmash -- I got a text from him."

Neither of them moved to take the phone, however. They let it ring on.

"Do you want an advance?" Gam asked. "Some cash?"

"I'd appreciate it," Johnny said. "Since today I quit my job with Archime­dean."

Reaching into his coat for his wallet, Gam said, "I'll give you a check." He eyed Johnny. "You like her but you can't work with her; is that it?"

"That's it," Johnny said. He did not elaborate, and Gam did not press him any further. Gam was, if nothing else, gentlemanly. And Johnny appreciated it.

As the check changed hands the phone stopped ringing.

Was there a link between the two? Johnny wondered. Or was it just chance? No way to tell. Louis seemed to know everything. . . anyhow, this was what Louis had wanted; he had told both of them that.

"I guess we did the right thing," Gam said tartly. "Listen, Johnny. I hope you can get back on good terms with Kathy Egmont Sharp. For her sake; she needs help. Lots of it."

Johnny grunted.

"Now that you're not working for her, make one more try," Gam said. "Okay?"

"I'll think about it," Johnny said.

"She's a very sick girl, and she's got a lot of responsibility now. You know that, too. Whatever caused the rift between you -- try to come to some kind of understanding before it's too late. That's the only proper way."

Johnny said nothing. But he knew, inside him, that Gam was right.

And yet -- how did he do it? He didn't know how. How to you approach a psychotic person? he wondered. How do you repair such a deep rift? It was hard enough in regular situations. . . and this had so many overtones.

If nothing else, this had Louis mixed in it. And Kathy's feelings about Louis. Those would have to change. The blind adoration -- that would have to cease.

"What does your wife think of her?" Gam asked.

Startled, he said, "Sarah Belle? She's never met Kathy." He added, "Why do you ask?"

Gam eyed him and said nothing.

"Damn odd question," Johnny said.

"Damn odd girl, that Kathy," Gam said. "Odder than you think, my friend. There's a lot you don't know." He did not elaborate.

 

To Claude St. Cyr, Phil Harvey said, "There's something I want to know. Something we must have the answer to, or we'll never get control of the voting stock of Wilhelmina. Where's the body?"

"We're looking," St. Cyr said patiently. "We're trying all of the mor­tuaries, one by one. But money's involved; undoubtedly someone's paying them to keep quiet, and if we want them to talk --"

"That girl," Harvey said, "is going on instructions from beyond the grave. Despite the fact that Louis is devolving. . . she still pays attention to him. It's -- unnatural." He shook his head, repelled.

"I agree," St. Cyr said. "In fact, you expressed it perfectly. This morning when I was shaving I picked him up on the TV." He shuddered visibly. "I mean, it's coming at us from every side, now."

"Today," Harvey said, "is the first day of the Convention." He looked out of the window, at the cars and people. "Louis's attention will be tied up there, trying to swing the vote onto Alfonse Gam. That's where Johnny is, working for Gam -- that was Louis's idea. Now perhaps we can operate with more success. Do you see? Maybe he's forgotten about Kathy; my God, he can't watch everything at once."

St. Cyr said quietly, "But Kathy is not at Archimedean now."

"Where is she, then? In Delaware? At Wilhelmina Securities? It ought to be easy to find her."

"She's sick," St. Cyr said. "In a hospital, Phil. She was admitted during the late evening, last night. For her drug addiction, I presume."

There was silence.

"You know a lot," Harvey said finally. "Where'd you learn this, anyhow?"

"From listening to the phone and the TV. But I don't know where the hospital is. It could even be off Earth, on Luna or on Mars, even back where she came from. I got the impression she's extremely ill. Johnny's abandoning her set her back greatly." He gazed at his employer somberly. "That's all I know, Phil."

"Do you think Johnny Barefoot knows where she is?"

"I doubt it."

Pondering, Harvey said, "I'll bet she tries to call him. I'll bet he either knows or will know, soon. If we only could manage to put a snoop-circuit on his phone. . . get his calls routed through here."

"But the phones," St. Cyr said wearily. "All it is now -- just the gibberish. The interference from Louis." He wondered what became of Archimedean Enterprises if Kathy was declared unable to manage her affairs, if she was forcibly committed. Very complicated, depending on whether Earth law or --

Harvey was saying, "We can't find her and we can't find the body. And meanwhile the Convention's on, and they'll nominate that wretched Gam, that creature of Louis's. And next we know, he'll be President." He eyed St. Cyr with antagonism. "So far you haven't done me much good, Claude."

"We'll try all the hospitals. But there's tens of thousands of them. And if it isn't in this area it could be anywhere." He felt helpless. Around and around we go, he thought, and we get nowhere.

Well, we can keep monitoring the TV, he decided. That's some help.

"I'm going to the Convention," Harvey announced. "I'll see you later. If you should come up with something -- which I doubt -- you can get in touch with me there." He strode to the door, and a moment later St. Cyr found himself alone.

Doggone it, St. Cyr said to himself. What'll I do now? Maybe I ought to go to the Convention, too. But there was one more mortuary he wanted to check; his men had been there, but he also wanted to give it a try personally. It was just the sort that Louis would have liked, run by an unctuous individual named, revoltingly, Herbert Schoenheit von Vogelsang, which meant, in German, Herbert Beauty of the Bird's Song -- a fitting name for a man who ran the Beloved Brethren Mortuary in downtown Los Angeles, with branches in Chicago and New York and Cleveland.

 

When he reached the mortuary, Claude St. Cyr demanded to see Schoen­heit von Vogelsang personally. The place was doing a rush business; Resur­rection Day was just around the corner and the petite bourgeoisie, who flocked in great numbers to just such ceremonies, were lined up waiting to retrieve their half-lifer relatives.

"Yes sir," Schoenheit von Vogelsang said, when at last he appeared at the counter in the mortuary's business office. "You asked to speak to me."

St. Cyr laid his business card down on the counter; the card still described him as legal consultant for Archimedean Enterprises. "I am Claude St. Cyr," he declared. "You may have heard of me."

Glancing at the card, Schoenheit von Vogelsang blanched and mumbled, "I give you my word, Mr. St. Cyr, we're trying, we're really trying. We've spent out of our own funds over a thousand dollars in trying to make contact with him; we've had high-gain equipment flown in from Japan where it was devel­oped and made. And still no results." Tremulously, he backed away from the counter. "You can come and see for yourself. Frankly, I believe someone's doing it on purpose; a complete failure like this can't occur naturally, if you see what I mean."

St. Cyr said, "Let me see him."

"Certainly." The mortuary owner, pale and agitated, led the way through the building into the chill bin, until, at last, St. Cyr saw ahead the casket which had lain in state, the casket of Louis Sarapis. "Are you planning any sort of litigation?" the mortuary owner asked fearfully. "I assure you, we --"

"I'm here," St. Cyr stated, "merely to take the body. Have your men load it onto a truck for me."

"Yes, Mr. St. Cyr," Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang said in meek obe­dience; he waved two mortuary employees over and began giving them instructions. "Do you have a truck with you, Mr. St. Cyr?" he asked.

"You may provide it," St. Cyr said, in a forbidding voice.

Shortly, the body in its casket was loaded onto a mortuary truck, and the driver turned to St. Cyr for instructions.

St. Cyr gave him Phil Harvey's address.

"And the litigation," Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang was murmuring, as St. Cyr boarded the truck to sit beside the driver. "You don't infer malpractice on our part, do you, Mr. St. Cyr? Because if you do --"

"The affair is closed as far as we're concerned," St. Cyr said to him laconically, and signaled the driver to drive off.

As soon as they left the mortuary, St. Cyr began to laugh.

"What strikes you so funny?" the mortuary driver asked.

"Nothing," St. Cyr said, still chuckling.

 

When the body in its casket, still deep in its original quick-pack, had been left off at Harvey's home and the driver had departed, St. Cyr picked up the telephone and dialed. But he found himself unable to get through to the Convention Hall. All he heard, for his trouble, was the weird distant drum­ming, the monotonous litany of Louis Sarapis -- he hung up, disgusted but at the same time grimly determined.

We've had enough of that, St. Cyr said to himself. / won't wait for Harvey's approval; I don't need it.

Searching the living room he found, in a desk drawer, a heat gun. Pointing it at the casket of Louis Sarapis he pressed the trigger.

The envelope of quick-pack steamed up, the casket itself fizzed as the plastic melted. Within, the body blackened, shriveled, charred away at last into a baked, coal-like clinker, small and nondescript.

Satisfied, St. Cyr returned the heat gun to the desk drawer.

Once more he picked up the phone and dialed.

In his ear the monotonous voice intoned, "... no one but Gam can do it; Gam's the man what am -- good slogan for you, Johnny. Gam's the man what am; remember that. I'll do the talking. Give me the mike and I'll tell them; Gam's the man what am. Gam's --"

Claude St. Cyr slammed down the phone, turned to the blackened deposit that had been Louis Sarapis; he gaped mutely at what he could not compre­hend. The voice, when St. Cyr turned on the television set, emanated from that, too, just as it had been doing; nothing had changed.

The voice of Louis Sarapis was not originating in the body. Because the body was gone. There simply was no connection between them.

Seating himself in a chair, Claude St. Cyr got out his cigarettes and shakily lit up, trying to understand what this meant. It seemed almost as if he had it, almost had the explanation.

But not quite.

 

V

By monorail -- he had left his 'copter at the Beloved Brethren Mortuary -- Claude St. Cyr numbly made his way to Convention Hall. The place, of course, was packed; the noise was terrible. But he managed to obtain the services of a robot page; over the public address system, Phil Harvey's pres­ence was requested in one of the side rooms used as meeting places by delegations wishing to caucus in secret.

Harvey appeared, disheveled from shoving through the dense pack of spectators and delegates. "What is it, Claude?" he asked, and then he saw his attorney's face. "You better tell me," he said quietly.

St. Cyr blurted, "The voice we hear. It isn't Louis! It's someone else trying to sound like Louis!"

"How do you know?"

He told him.

Nodding, Harvey said, "And it definitely was Louis's body you destroyed; there was no deceit there at the mortuary -- you're positive of that."

"I'm not positive," St. Cyr said. "But I think it was; I believe it now and I believed it at the time." It was too late to find out now, in any case, not enough remained of the body for such an analysis to be successfully made.

"But who could it be, then?" Harvey said. "My God, it's coming to us from beyond the solar system -- could it be nonterrestrials of some kind? Some sort of echo or mockery, a non-living reaction unfamiliar to us? An inert process without intent?"

St. Cyr laughed. "You're babbling, Phil. Cut it out."

Nodding, Harvey said, "Whatever you say, Claude. If you think it's some­one here --"

"I don't know," St. Cyr said candidly. "But I'd guess it's someone right on this planet, someone who knew Louis well enough to have introjected his characteristics sufficiently thoroughly to imitate them." He was silent, then. That was as far as he could carry his logical processes. . . beyond that he saw nothing. It was a blank, and a frightening one at that.

There is, he thought, an element of the deranged in it. What we took to be decay -- it's more a form of madness than degeneration. Or is madness itself degener­ation? He did not know; he wasn't trained in the field of psychiatry, except regarding its legal aspects. And the legal aspects had no application, here.

"Has anyone nominated Gam yet?" he asked Harvey.

"Not yet. It's expected to come sometime today, though. There's a dele­gate from Montana who'll do it, the rumor is."

"Johnny Barefoot is here?"

"Yes." Harvey nodded. "Busy as can be, lining up delegates. In and out of the different delegations, very much in evidence. No sign of Gam, of course. He won't come in until the end of the nominating speech and then of course all hell will break loose. Cheering and parading and waving banners. . . the Gam supporters are all prepared."

"Any indication of --" St. Cyr hesitated. "What we've assumed to be Louis? His presence?" Or its presence, he thought. Whatever it is.

"None as yet," Harvey said.

"I think we'll hear from it," St. Cyr said. "Before the day is over."

Harvey nodded; he thought so, too.

"Are you afraid of it?" St. Cyr asked.

"Sure," Harvey said. "A thousand times more so than ever, now that we don't even know who or what it is."

"You're right to take that attitude," St. Cyr said. He felt the same way.

"Perhaps we should tell Johnny," Harvey said.

St. Cyr said, "Let him find out on his own."

"All right, Claude," Harvey said. "Anything you say. After all, it was you who finally found Louis's body; I have complete faith in you."

In a way, St. Cyr thought, I wish I hadn't found it. I wish I didn 't know what I know now; we were better off believing it was old Louis talking to us from every phone, newspaper and TV set.

That was bad -- but this is far worse. Although, he thought, it seems to me that the answer is there, somewhere, just waiting.

I must try, he told himself. Try to get it. TRY!

 

Off by himself in a side room, Johnny Barefoot tensely watched the events of the Convention on closed-circuit TV. The distortion, the invading pres­ence from one light-week away, had cleared for a time, and he could see and hear the delegate from Montana delivering the nominating speech for Alfonse Gam.

He felt tired. The whole process of the Convention, its speeches and parades, its tautness, grated on his nerves, ran contrary to his disposition. So damn much show, he thought. Display for what? If Gam wanted to gain the nomination he could get it, and all the rest of this was purposeless. His own thoughts were on Kathy Egmont Sharp.

He had not seen her since her departure for U.C. Hospital in San Fran­cisco. At this point he had no idea of her condition, whether she had responded to therapy or not.

The deep intuition could not be evaded that she had not. How sick really was Kathy? Probably very sick, with or without drugs; he felt that strongly. Perhaps she would never be discharged from U.C. Hospital; he could imagine that.

On the other hand -- if she wanted out, he decided, she would find a way to get out. That he intuited, too, even more strongly.

So it was up to her. She had committed herself, gone into the hospital voluntarily. And she would come out -- if she ever did -- the same way. No one could compel Kathy. . . she was simply not that sort of person. And that, he realized, could well be a symptom of the illness-process.

The door to the room opened. He glanced up from the TV screen. And saw Claude St. Cyr standing in the entrance. St. Cyr held a heat gun in his hand, pointed at Johnny. He said, "Where's Kathy?"

"I don't know," Johnny said. He got slowly, warily, to his feet.

"You do. I'll kill you if you don't tell me."

"Why?" he said, wondering what had brought St. Cyr to this point, this extreme behavior.

St. Cyr said, "Is it on Earth?" Still holding the gun pointed at Johnny he came toward him.

"Yes," Johnny said, with reluctance.

"Give me the name of the city."

"What are you going to do?" Johnny said. "This isn't like you, Claude; you used to always work within the law."

St. Cyr said, "I think the voice is Kathy. I know it's not Louis, now; we have that to go on but beyond that it's just a guess. Kathy is the only one I know deranged enough, deteriorated enough. Give me the name of the hospital."

"The only way you could know it isn't Louis," Johnny said, "would be to destroy the body."

"That's right," St. Cyr said, nodding.

Then you have, Johnny realized. You found the correct mortuary; you got to Herb Schoenheit van Vogehang. So that was that.

The door to the room burst open again; a group of cheering delegates, Gam supporters, marched in, blowing horns and hurling streamers, carrying huge hand-painted placards. St. Cyr turned toward them, waving his gun at them -- and Johnny Barefoot sprinted past the delegates, to the door and out into the corridor.

He ran down the corridor and a moment later emerged at the great central hall in which Gam's demonstration was in full swing. From the loudspeakers mounted at the ceiling a voice boomed over and over.

"Vote for Gam, the man what am. Gam, Gam, vote for Gam, vote for Gam, the one fine man; vote for Gam who really am. Gam, Gam, Gam, he really am --"

Kathy, he thought. It can't be you; it just can't. He ran on, out of the hall, squeezing past the dancing, delirious delegates, past the glazed-eyed men and women in their funny hats, their banners wiggling. . . he reached the street, the parked 'copters and cars, throngs of people clustered about, trying to push inside.

If it is you, he thought, then you're too sick ever to come back. Even if you want to, will yourself to. Had you been waiting for Louis to die, is that it? Do you hate us? Or are you afraid of us? What explains what it is you're doing. . . what's the reason for it?

He hailed a 'copter marked TAXI. "To San Francisco," he instructed the driver.

Maybe you're not conscious that you're doing it, he thought. Maybe it's an autonomous process, rising out of your unconscious mind. Your mind split into two portions, one on the surface which we see, the other one --

The one we hear.

Should we feel sorry for you? he wondered. Or should we hate you, fear you? HOW MUCH HARM CAN YOU DO? I guess that's the real issue. I love you, he thought. In some fashion, at least. I care about you, and that's a form of love, not such as I feel toward my wife or my children, but it is a concern. Damn it, he thought, this is dreadful. Maybe St. Cyr is wrong; maybe it isn't you.

The 'copter swept upward into the sky, cleared the buildings and turned west, its blade spinning at peak velocity.

 

On the ground, standing in front of the convention hall, St. Cyr and Phil Harvey watched the 'copter go.

"Well, so it worked," St. Cyr said. "I got him started moving. I'd guess he's on his way either to Los Angeles or to San Francisco."

A second 'copter slid up before them, hailed by Phil Harvey; the two men entered it and Harvey said, "You see the taxi that just took off? Stay behind it, just within sight. But don't let it catch a glimpse of you if you can help it."

"Heck," the driver said, "If I can see it, it can see me." But he clicked on his meter and began to ascend. Grumpily, he said to Harvey and St. Cyr, "I don't like this kind of stuff; it can be dangerous."

"Turn on your radio," St. Cyr told him. "If you want to hear something that's dangerous."

"Aw hell," the driver said, disgusted. "The radio don't work; some kind of interference, like sun spots or maybe some amateur operator -- I lost a lot of fares because the dispatcher can't get hold of me. I think the police ought to do something about it, don't you?"

St. Cyr said nothing. Beside him, Harvey peered at the 'copter ahead.

 

When he reached U.C. Hospital at San Francisco, and had landed at the field on the main building's roof, Johnny saw the second ship circling, not passing on, and he knew that he was right; he had been followed all the way. But he did not care. It didn't matter.

Descending by means of the stairs, he came out on the third floor and approached a nurse. "Mrs. Sharp," he said. "Where is she?"

"You'll have to ask at the desk," the nurse said. "And visiting hours aren't until --"

He rushed on until he found the desk.

"Mrs. Sharp's room is 309," the bespectacled, elderly nurse at the desk said. "But you must have Doctor Gross's permission to visit her. And I believe Doctor Gross is having lunch right now and probably won't be back until two o'clock, if you'd care to wait." She pointed to a waiting room.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll wait." He passed through the waiting room and out the door at the far end, down the corridor, watching the numbers on the doors until he saw room number 309. Opening the door he entered the room, shut the door after him and looked around for her.

There was the bed, but it was empty.

"Kathy," he said.

At the window, in her robe, she turned, her face sly, bound up by hatred; her lips moved and, staring at him, she said with loathing, "I want Gam because he am." Spitting at him, she crept toward him, her hands raised, her fingers writhing. "Gam's a man, a real man," she whispered, and he saw, in her eyes, the dissolved remnants of her personality expire even as he stood there. "Gam, gam, gam," she whispered, and slapped him.

He retreated. "It's you," he said. "Claude St. Cyr was right. Okay. I'll go." He fumbled for the door behind him, trying to get it open. Panic passed through him, like a wind, then; he wanted nothing but to get away. "Kathy," he said, "let go." Her nails had dug into him, into his shoulder, and she hung onto him, peering sideways into his face, smiling at him.

"You're dead," she said. "Go away. I smell you, the dead inside you."

"I'll go," he said, and managed to find the handle of the door. She let go of him, then; he saw her right hand flash up, the nails directed at his face, possibly his eyes -- he ducked, and her blow missed him. "I want to get away," he said, covering his face with his arms.

Kathy whispered, "I am Gam, I am. I'm the only one who am. Am alive. Gam, alive." She laughed. "Yes, I will," she said, mimicking his voice per­fectly. "Claude St. Cyr was right; okay, I'll go. I'll go. I'll go." She was now between him and the door. "The window," she said. "Do it now, what you wanted to do when I stopped you." She hurried toward him, and he retreated, backward, step by step, until he felt the wall behind him.

"It's all in your mind," he said, "this hate. Everyone is fond of you; I am, Gam is, St. Cyr and Harvey are. What's the point of this?"

"The point," Kathy said, "is that I show you what you're really like. Don't you know yet? You're even worse than me. I'm just being honest."

"Why did you pretend to be Louis?" he said.

"I am Louis," Kathy said. "When he died he didn't go into half-life because I ate him; he became me. I was waiting for that. Alfonse and I had it all worked out, the transmitter out there with the recorded tape ready -- we frightened you, didn't we? You're all scared, too scared to stand in his way. He'll be nominated; he's been nominated already, I feel it, I know it."

"Not yet," Johnny said.

"But it won't be long," Kathy said. "And I'll be his wife." She smiled at him. "And you'll be dead, you and the others." Coming at him she chanted, "I am Gam, I am Louis and when you're dead I'll be you, Johnny Barefoot, and all the rest; I'll eat you all." She opened her mouth wide and he saw the sharp, jagged, pale-as-death teeth.

"And rule over the dead," Johnny said, and hit her with all his strength, on the side of her face, near the jaw. She spun backward, fell, and then at once was up and rushing at him. Before she could catch him he sprinted away, to one side, caught then a glimpse of her distorted, shredded features, ruined by the force of his blow -- and then the door to the room opened, and St. Cyr and Phil Harvey, with two nurses, stood there. Kathy stopped. He stopped, too. "Come on, Barefoot," St. Cyr said, jerking his head. Johnny crossed the room and joined them.

Tying the sash of her robe, Kathy said matter-of-factly, "So it was planned; he was to kill me, Johnny was to. And the rest of you would all stand and watch and enjoy it."

"They have an immense transmitter out there," Johnny said. "They placed it a long time ago, possibly years back. All this time they've been waiting for Louis to die; maybe they even killed him, finally. The idea's to get Gam nominated and elected, while keeping everyone terrorized with that transmission. She's sick, much sicker than we realized, even sicker than you realized. Most of all it was under the surface where it didn't show."

St. Cyr shrugged. "Well, she'll have to be certified." He was calm but unusually slow-spoken. "The will named me as trustee; I can represent the estate against her, file the commitment papers and then come forth at the sanity hearing."

"I'll demand a jury trial," Kathy said. "I can convince a jury of my sanity; it's actually quite easy and I've been through it before."

"Possibly," St. Cyr said. "But anyhow the transmitter will be gone; by that time the authorities will be out there."

"It'll take months to reach it," Kathy said. "Even by the fastest ship. And by then the election will be over; Alfonse will be President."

St. Cyr glanced at Johnny Barefoot. "Maybe so," he murmured.

"That's why we put it out so far," Kathy said. "It was Alfonse's money and my ability; I inherited Louis's ability, you see. I can do anything. Nothing is impossible for me if I want it; all I have to do is want it enough."

"You wanted me to jump," Johnny said. "And I didn't."

"You would have," Kathy said, "in another minute. If they hadn't come in." She seemed quite poised, now. "You will, eventually; I'll keep after you. And there's no place you can hide; you know I'll follow you and find you. All three of you." Her gaze swept from one of them to the next, taking them all in.

Harvey said, "I've got a little power and wealth, too. I think we can defeat Gam, even if he's nominated."

"You have power," Kathy said, "but not imagination. What you have isn't enough. Not against me." She spoke quietly, with complete confidence.

"Let's go," Johnny said, and started down the hall, away from room 309 and Kathy Egmont Sharp.

 

Up and down San Francisco's hilly streets Johnny walked, hands in his pockets, ignoring the buildings and people, seeing nothing, merely walking on and on. Afternoon faded, became evening; the lights of the city came on and he ignored that, too. He walked block after block until his feet ached, burned, until he became aware that he was very hungry -- that it was now ten o'clock at night and he had not eaten anything since morning. He stopped, then, and looked around him.

Where were Claude St. Cyr and Phil Harvey? He could not remember having parted from them; he did not even remember leaving the hospital. But Kathy; he remembered that. He could not forget it even if he wanted to. And he did not want to. It was too important ever to be forgotten, by any of them who had witnessed it, understood it.

At a newsstand he saw the massive, thick-black headlines.

GAM WINS NOMINATION, PROMISES BATTLING CAMPAIGN

FOR NOVEMBER ELECTION

 

So she did get that, Johnny thought. They did, the two of them; they got what they're after exactly. And now -- all they have to do is defeat Kent Margrave. And that thing out there, a light-week away; it's still yammering. And will be for months.

They'll win, he realized.

At a drugstore he found a phone booth; entering it he put money into the slot and dialed Sarah Belle, his own home phone number.

The phone clicked in his ear. And then the familiar monotonous voice chanted, "Gam in November, Gam in November; win with Gam, President Alfonse Gam, our man -- I am for Gam. I am for Gam. For GAM!" He rang off, then, and left the phone booth. It was hopeless.

At the counter of the drugstore he ordered a sandwich and coffee; he sat eating mechanically, filling the requirements of his body without pleasure or desire, eating by reflex until the food was gone and it was time to pay the bill. What can I do? he asked himself. What can anyone do? All the means of communi­cation are gone; the media have been taken over. They have the radio, TV, news­papers, phone, wire services. . . everything that depends on microwave transmission or open-gap electric circuitry. They've captured it all, left nothing for us, the opposition, by which to fight back.

Defeat, he thought. That's the dreary reality that lies ahead for us. And then, when they enter office, it'll be our-death.

"That'll be a dollar ten," the counter girl said.

He paid for his meal and left the drugstore.

When a 'copter marked TAXI came spiralingby, he hailed it.

"Take me home," he said.

"Okay," the driver said amiably. "Where is home, buddy?"

He gave him the address in Chicago and then settled back for the long ride. He was giving up; he was quitting, going back to Sarah Belle, to his wife and children. The fight -- for him -- apparently was over.

 

When she saw him standing in the doorway, Sarah Belle said, "Good God, Johnny -- you look terrible." She kissed him, led him inside, into the warm, familiar living room. "I thought you'd be out celebrating."

"Celebrating?" he said hoarsely.

"Your man won the nomination." She went to put the coffee pot on for him.

"Oh yeah," he said, nodding. "That's right. I was his P.R. man; I forgot."

"Better lie down," Sarah Belle said. "Johnny, I've never seen you look so beaten; I can't understand it. What happened to you?"

He sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette.

"What can I do for you?" she asked, with anxiety.

"Nothing," he said.

"Is that Louis Sarapis on all the TV and phones? It sounds like him. I was talking with the Nelsons and they said it's Louis's exact voice."

"No," he said. "It's not Louis. Louis is dead."

"But his period of half-life --"

"No," he said. "He's dead. Forget about it."

"You know who the Nelsons are, don't you? They're the new people who moved into the apartment that --"

"I don't want to talk," he said. "Or be talked at."

Sarah Belle was silent, for a minute. And then she said, "One thing they said -- you won't like to hear it, I guess. The Nelsons are plain, quite com­monplace people. . . they said even if Alfonse Gam got the nomination they wouldn't vote for him. They just don't like him."

He grunted.

"Does that made you feel bad?" Sarah Belle asked. "I think they're reacting to the pressure, Louis's pressure on the TV and phones; they just don't care for it. I think you've been excessive in your campaign, Johnny." She glanced at him hesitantly. "That's the truth; I have to say it."

Rising to his feet, he said, "I'm going to visit Phil Harvey. I'll be back later on."

She watched him go out the door, her eyes darkened with concern.

 

When he was admitted to Phil Harvey's house he found Phil and Gertrude Harvey and Claude St. Cyr sitting together in the living room, each with a glass in hand, but no one speaking. Harvey glanced up briefly, saw him, and then looked away.

"Are we going to give up?" he asked Harvey.

Harvey said, "I'm in touch with Kent Margrave. We're going to try to knock out the transmitter. But it's a million to one shot, at that distance. And with even the fastest missile it'll take a month."

"But that's at least something," Johnny said. It would at least be before the election; it would give them several weeks in which to campaign. "Does Margrave understand the situation?"

"Yes," Claude St. Cyr said. "We told him virtually everything."

"But that's not enough," Phil Harvey said. "There's one more thing we must do. You want to be in on it? Draw for the shortest match?" He pointed to the coffee table; on it Johnny saw three matches, one of them broken in half. Now Phil Harvey added a fourth match, a whole one.

St. Cyr said, "Her first. Her right away, as soon as possible. And then later on if necessary, Alfonse Gam."

Weary, cold fright filled Johnny Barefoot.

"Take a match," Harvey said, picking up the four matches, arranging and rearranging them in his hand and then holding out the four even tops to the people in the room. "Go ahead, Johnny. You got here last so I'll have you go first."

"Not me," he said.

"Then we'll draw without you," Gertrude Harvey said, and picked a match. Phil held the remaining ones out to St. Cyr and he drew one also. Two remained in Phil Harvey's hand.

"I was in love with her," Johnny said. "I still am."

Nodding, Phil Harvey said, "Yes, I know."

His heart leaden, Johnny said, "Okay. I'll draw." Reaching, he selected one of the two matches.

It was the broken one.

"I got it," he said. "It's me."

"Can you do it?" Claude St. Cyr asked him.

He was silent for a time. And then he shrugged and said, "Sure. I can do it. Why not?" Why not indeed? he asked himself. A woman that I was falling in love with; certainly I can murder her. Because it has to be done. There is no other way out for us.

"It may not be as difficult as we think," St. Cyr said. "We've consulted some of Phil's technicians and we picked up some interesting advice. Most of their transmissions are coming from nearby, not a light-week away by any means. I'll tell you how we know. Their transmissions have kept up with changing events. For example, your suicide-attempt at the Antler Hotel. There was no time-lapse there or anywhere else!'

"And they're not supernatural, Johnny," Gertrude Harvey said.

"So the first thing to do," St. Cyr continued, "is to find their base here on Earth or at least here in the solar system. It could be Gam's guinea fowl ranch on Io. Try there, if you find she's left the hospital."

"Okay," Johnny said, nodding slightly.

"How about a drink?" Phil Harvey said to him.

Johnny nodded.

The four of them, seated in a circle, drank, slowly and in silence.

"Do you have a gun?" St. Cyr asked.

"Yes." Rising to his feet he set his glass down.

"Good luck," Gertrude said, after him.

Johnny opened the front door and stepped outside alone, out into the dark, cold evening.

 

 

Orpheus With Clay Feet

At the offices of Concord Military Service Consultants, Jesse Slade looked through the window at the street below and saw everything denied him in… "Sorry, sir," the client opposite his desk mumbled apologetically.… "Not at all," Slade said, reawakening to his onerous duties. "Let's see. . ." He examined the…

The Days of Perky Pat

At ten in the morning a terrific horn, familiar to him, hooted Sam Regan out of his sleep, and he cursed the careboy upstairs; he knew the racket… We'll get them, we'll get them, Sam Regan said to himself as he zipped his… "He's early today," Tod Morrison complained. "And I'll bet it's all staples, sugar and flour and lard…

Stand-by

An hour before his morning program on channel six, ranking news clown Jim Briskin sat in his private office with his production staff, conferring on… Peggy Jones, his secretary, lit a cigarette and said, "Don't alarm them,… It had been the homeostatic problem-solving structure Unicephalon 40-D at the White House in Washington, D.C. which…

What'll We Do with Ragland Park?

In his demesne near the logging town of John Day, Oregon, Sebastian Hada thoughtfully ate a grape as he watched the TV screen. The grapes, flown to… If only I could get Jim Briskin on my network, Hada thought gloomily. The… But their society, at the moment, was being run by the idiotic -- but pecu­liarly able -- President Maximilian…

Oh, To Be A Blobel!

He put a twenty-dollar platinum coin into the slot and the analyst, after a pause, lit up. Its eyes shone with sociability and it swiveled about in… "Hello, Dr. Jones. I guess you're not the same Dr. Jones who did the… Dr. Jones said, "Perhaps you could begin by telling me who you are und warum mich -- why you have selected…

Notes

 

All notes in italics are by Philip K. Dick. The year when the note was written appears in parentheses following the note. Most of these notes were written as story notes for the collections THE BEST OF PHILIP K. DICK (published 1977) and THE GOLDEN MAN (published 1980). A few were written at the request of editors publishing or reprinting a PKD story in a book or magazine.

When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first received by Dick's agent, per the records of the Scott Mere­dith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is available. The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story. An alternate name following a story indicates Dick's original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.

These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick's short fiction, with the exception of short novels later published as or included in novels, childhood writ­ings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.

 

AUTOFAC 10/11/54. Galaxy, Nov 1955.

Tom Disch said of this story that it was one of the earliest ecology warnings in sf. What I had in mind in writing it, however, was the thought that if factories became fully auto­mated, they might begin to show the instinct for survival which organic living entities have. . . and perhaps develop similar solutions. (1976)

 

SERVICE CALL 10/11/54. Science Fiction Stories, July 1955.

When this story appeared many fans objected to it because of the negative attitude I expressed in it. But I was already beginning to suppose in my head the growing domination of machines over man, especially the machines we voluntarily surround ourselves with, which should, by logic, be the most harmless. I never assumed that some huge clanking monster would stride down Fifth Avenue, devouring New York; I always feared that my own TV set or iron or toaster would, in the privacy of my apartment, when no one else was around to help me, announce to me that they had taken over, and here was a list of rules I was to obey. I never like the idea of doing what a machine says. I hate having to salute something built in a factory. (Do you suppose all those White House tapes came out of the back of the President's head? And programmed him as to what he was to say and do?) (1976)

 

CAPTIVE MARKET 10/18/54. If, April 1955.

 

THE MOLD OF YANCY 10/18/54. If, Aug 1955.

Obviously, Yancy is based on President Eisenhower. During his reign we all were worrying about the man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit problem; we feared that the entire country was turning into one person and a whole lot of clones. (Although in those days the word "clone" was unknown to us.) I liked this story enough to use it as the basis for my novel THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH; in particular the part where everything the government tells you is a lie. I still like that part; I mean, I still believe it's so. Watergate, of course, bore the basic idea of this story out. (1978)

 

THE MINORITY REPORT 12/22/54. Fantastic Universe, Jan 1956.

 

RECALL MECHANISM. If, July 1959.

 

THE UNRECONSTRUCTED M 6/2/55. Science Fiction Stories, Jan 1957.

If the main theme throughout my writing is, "Can we consider the universe real, and if so, in what way?" my secondary theme would be, "Are we all humans?"Here a machine does not imitate a human being, but instead fakes evidence of a human being, a given human being. Fakery is a topic which absolutely fascinates me; I am convinced that any­thing can be faked, or anyhow evidence pointing to any given thing. Spurious clues can lead us to believe anything they want us to believe. There is really no theoretical upper limit to this. Once you have mentally opened the door to the reception of the notion of fake, you are ready to think yourself into another kind of reality entirely. It's a trip from which you never return. And, I think, a healthy trip. . . unless you take it too seriously. (1978)

 

EXPLORERS WE 5/6/58. Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan 1959.

 

WAR GAME ("Diversion") 10/31/58. Galaxy, Dec 1959.

 

IF THERE WERE NO BENNY CEMOLI ("Had There Never Been A Benny Cemoli") 2/27/63. Galaxy, Dec 1963.

I have always believed that at least half the famous people in history never existed. You invent what you need to invent. Perhaps even Karl Marx was invented, the product of some hack writer. In which case -- (1976)

 

NOVELTY ACT ("At Second Jug") 3/23/63. Fantastic, Feb 1964. [Included in PKD's novel THE SIMULACRA.]

 

WATERSPIDER 4/10/63. If, Jan 1964.

 

WHAT THE DEAD MEN SAY ("Man With a Broken Match") 4/15/63. Worlds of Tomorrow, June 1964.

 

ORPHEUS WITH CLAY FEET 4/16/63 [published in Escapade circa 1964 under the pseudonym Jack Dowland].

 

THE DAYS OF PERKY PAT ("In the Days of Perky Pat") 4/18/63. Amazing, Dec 1963.

The Days of Perky Pat came to me in one lightning-swift flash when I saw my children playing with Barbie dolls. Obviously these anatomically super-developed dolls were not intended for the use of children, or, more accurately, should not have been. Barbie and Ken consisted of two adults in miniature. The idea was that the purchase of countless new clothes for these dolls was necessary if Barbie and Ken were to live in the style to which they were accustomed. I had visions of Barbie coming into my bedroom at night and saying, "I need a mink coat." Or, even worse, "Hey, big fellow. . . want to take a drive to Vegas in my Jaguar XKE?" I was afraid my wife would find me and Barbie together and my wife would shoot me.

The sale of The Days of Perky Pat to Amazing was a good one because in those days Cele Goldsmith edited Amazing and she was one of the best editors in the field. Avram Davidson at Fantasy & Science Fiction had turned it down, but later he told me that had he known about Barbie dolls he probably would have bought it. I could not imagine anyone not knowing about Barbie. I had to deal with her and her expensive purchases constantly. It was as bad as keeping my TV set working; the TV set always needed something and so did Barbie. I always felt that Ken should buy his own clothes.

In those days -- the early Sixties -- I wrote a great deal, and some of my best stories and novels emanated from that period. My wife wouldn't let me work in the house, so I rented a little shack for $25 a month and walked over to it each morning. This was out in the country. All I saw on my walk to my shack were a few cows in their pastures and my own flock of sheep who never did anything but trudge along after the bell-sheep. I was terribly lonely, shut up by myself in my shack all day. Maybe I missed Barbie, who was back at the big house with the children. So perhaps The Days of Perky Pat is a wishful fantasy on my part; I would have loved to see Barbie -- or Perky Pat or Connie Companion -- show up at the door of my shack.

What did show up was something awful: my vision of the face of Palmer Eldritch which became the basis of the novel THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH which the Perky Pat story generated.

There I went, one day, walking down the country road to my shack, looking forward to eight hours of writing, in total isolation from all other humans, and I looked up at the sky and saw a face. I didn't really see it, but the face was there, and it was not a human face; it was a vast visage of perfect evil. I realize now (and I think I dimly realized at the time) what caused me to see it: the months of isolation, of deprivation of human contact, in fact sensory deprivation as such. . . anyhow the visage could not be denied. It was immense; it filled a quarter of the sky. It had empty slots for eyes -- it was metal and cruel and, worst of all, it was God.

I drove over to my church, Saint Columbia's Episcopal Church, and talked to my priest. He came to the conclusion that I had had a glimpse of Satan and gave me unction -- not supreme unction; just healing unction. It didn't do any good; the metal face in the sky remained. I had to walk along every day as it gazed down at me.

Years later -- after I had long since written THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and sold it to Doubleday, my first sale to Doubleday -- I came across a picture of the face in an issue of Life magazine. It was, very simply, a World War One observation cupola on the Marne, built by the French. My father had fought in the Second Battle of the Marne; he had been with the Fifth Marines, about the first group of American soldiers to go over to Europe and fight in that ghastly war. When I was a very small child he had showed me his uniform and gasmask, the entire gas-filtration equipment, and told me how the soldiers became panic-stricken during gas attacks as the charcoal in their filtration systems became saturated, and how sometimes a soldier would freak and tear off his mask and run. As a child I felt a lot of anxiety listening to my father's war stories and looking at and playing with the gasmask and helmet; but what scared me the most was when my father would put on the gasmask. His face would disappear. This was not my father any longer. This was not a human being at all. I was only four years old. After that my mother and father got divorced and I did not see my father for years. But the sight of him wearing his gasmask, blending as it did with his accounts of men with their guts hanging from them, men destroyed by shrapnel -- decades later, in 1963, as I walked alone day after day along that country road with no one to talk to, no one to be with, that metal, blind, inhuman visage appeared to me again, but now transcendent and vast, and absolutely evil.

I decided to exorcise it by writing about it, and I did write about it, and it did go away. But I had seen the evil one himself, and I said then and say now, "The evil one wears a metal face." If you want to see this yourself, look at a picture of the war masks of the Attic Greeks. When men wish to inspire terror and kill they put on such metal faces. The invading Christian knights that Alexander Nevsky fought wore such masks; if you saw Eisenstein's film you know what I am talking about. They all looked alike. I had not seen Nevsky when I wrote THE THREE STIGMATA, but I saw it later and saw again the thing that had hung in the sky back in 1963, the thing into which my own father had been transformed when I was a child.

So THE THREE STIGMATA is a novel that came out of powerful atavistic fears in me, fears dating back to my early childhood and no doubt connected with my grief and loneliness when my father left my mother and me. In the novel my father appears as both Palmer Eldritch (the evil father, the diabolic mask-father) and as Leo Bulero, the tender, gruff, warm, human, loving man. The novel which emerged came out of the most intense anguish possible; in 1963 I was reliving the original isolation I had experienced upon the loss of my father, and the horror and fear expressed in the novel are not fictional sentiments ground out to interest the reader; they come from the deepest part of me: yearning for the good father and fear of the evil father, the father who left me.

I found in the story The Days of Perky Pat a vehicle that I could translate into a thematic basis for the novel I wanted to write. Now, you see, Perky Pat is the eternally beckoning fair one, das ewige Weiblichkeit -- "the eternally feminine," as Goethe put it. Isolation generated the novel and yearning generated the story; so the novel is a mixture of the fear of being abandoned and the fantasy of the beautiful woman who waits for you -- somewhere, but God only knows where; I have still to figure it out. But if you are sitting alone day after day at your typewriter, turning out one story after another and having no one to talk to, no one to be with, and yet pro forma having a wife and four daughters from whose house you have been expelled, banished to a little single-walled shack that is so cold in winter that, literally, the ink would freeze in my typewriter ribbon, well, you are going to write about iron slot-eyed faces and warm young women. And thus I did. And thus I still do.

Reaction to THE THREE STIGMATA was mixed. In England some reviewers described it as blasphemy. Terry Carr, who was my agent at Scott Meredith at the time, told me later, "That novel is crazy," although subsequent to that he reversed his opinion. Some reviewers found it a profound novel. I only find it frightening. I was unable to proofread the galleys because the novel frightened me so. It is a dark journey into the mystical and the supernatural and the absolutely evil as I understood it at the time. Let us say, I would like Perky Pat to show up at my door, but I dread the possibility that, when I hear the knock, it will be Palmer Eldritch waiting outside and not Perky Pat. Actually, to be honest, neither has shown up in the seventeen or so years since I wrote the novel. I guess that is the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure. (1979)

 

STAND-BY ("Top Stand-By Job") 4/18/63. Amazing, Oct 1963.

 

WHAT'LL WE DO WITH RAGLAND PARK? ("No Ordinary Guy") 4/29/63. Amazing, Nov 1963.

 

OH, TO BE A BLOBEL! ("Well, See, There Were These Blobels. . .") 5/6/63. Galaxy, Feb 1964.

At the beginning of my writing career in the early Fifties, Galaxy was my economic mainstay. Horace Gold at Galaxy liked my writing whereas John W Campbell, Jr. at Astounding considered my writing not only worthless but as he put it, "Nuts." By and large I liked reading Galaxy because it had the broadest range of ideas, venturing into the soft sciences such as sociology and psychology, at a time when Campbell (as he once wrote me!) considered psionics a necessary premise for science fiction. Also, Campbell said, the psionic character in the story had to be in charge of what was going on. So Galaxy provided a latitude which Astounding did not. However, I was to get into an awful quarrel with Horace Gold; he had the habit of changing your stories without telling you: adding scenes, adding characters, removing downbeat endings in favor of upbeat endings. Many writers resented this. I did more than resent this; despite the fact that Galaxy was my main source of income I told Gold that I would not sell to him unless he stopped altering my stories -- after which he bought nothing from me at all.

It was not, then, until Fred Pohl became editor of Galaxy that I began to appear there again. Oh, To Be A Blobel! is a story which Fred Pohl bought. In this story my enormous anti-war bias is evident, a bias which had, ironically, pleased Gold. I wasn't thinking of the Viet Nam War but war in general; in particular, how a war forces you to become like your enemy. Hitler had once said that the true victory of the Nazis would be to force its enemies, the United States in particular, to become like the Third Reich -- i.e. a totalitarian society -- in order to win. Hitler, then, expected to win even in losing. As I watched the American military-industrial complex grow after World War Two I kept remembering Hitler's analy­sis, and I kept thinking how right the son of a bitch was. We had beaten Germany, but both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were getting more and more like the Nazis with their huge police systems every day. Well, it seemed to me there was a little wry humor in this (but not much). Maybe I could write about it without getting too deep into polemics. But the issue presented in this story is real. Look what we had to become in Viet Nam just to lose, let alone to win; can you imagine what we'd have had to become to win? Hitler would have gotten a lot of laughs out of it, and the laughs would have been on us. . . and to a very great extent in fact were. And they were hollow and grim laughs, without humor of any kind. (1979)

Here I nailed down the ultimate meaningless irony of war; the human turns into a Blobel, and the Blobel, his enemy, turns into a human, and there it all is, the futility, the black humor, the stupidity. And in the story they all wind up happy. (1976)

 

 

Scan Notes, v4.0:Released in RTF only, with italics intact. Proofed carefully against DT.

 

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