Colossus and Crab (14 page)

Life in the complex differed in many ways from life outside, not least in eating. The staff either ate in their own apartments or in the staff restaurant, where the food was not so much predictable as absolutely certain. For higher living, one had to go to the mainland. The journey by hovercraft took only ten minutes, but waiting for the craft at either end took the gilt off the gingerbread, and anyway, such a visit, for Forbin, was unthinkable.

He began uncertainly, “My dear, I’m afraid I’ve a confession to -“

She got in quickly. “You’d better hear mine first, Chief.” Taking his blank expression as permission, she hurried on. “You see, I know you’ve a whole lot on your mind. I took the liberty of calling your housekeeper, just in case you’d overlooked dinner,”

“Oh, good! I’m most grateful. I fear it did slip my mind.”

She smiled, but not for long.

“Well, now that’s settled, do have another martini. I’ve made plenty.”

So dinner was much better than the host was entitled to expect. Much sounder on wines than on cocktails, he produced his best, which was very good. They had a splendid Spanish sherry with the soup, a monumental Chateau Talbot with the saddle of mutton, and a far-from-inconsiderable sauterne with the wild strawberries and Devon cream, each course arriving silently in the servery at a touch of the host’s button.

With the coffee, he introduced her to the insidious strength of his personal cognac, not appreciating that Blake the stud, at the height of his powers, could have done no better. Not that he did it intentionally, or that he was free of the spirit’s influence himself. Side by side on a sofa, they talked with increasing ease. Both had objectives in mind which, revealed, would have staggered the other.

“Y’know, my dear -” He took her hand carelessly. “- you’ve worked very hard lately. Very hard, yes … Everyone needs a rest, including you.”

Intent on her own project, she did not realize that he, too, pushed his own purpose.

“Aw, Chief.” Much as she wanted to get to first names, she daren’t do it, not yet. “Who hasn’t worked hard? There’s nothing special about me.”

He insisted there was, shaking her hand gently. “What I’d have done without you I don’t know, and I don’t just mean today. I can’t risk you folding on me. Okay, okay, I know, you feel fine.” He gazed earnestly into her eyes. “But we all need a vacation now and then.”

Totally misconstruing him, she relented, her heart beating faster. “A - a break would be nice.” Already part of her mind was busy with her wardrobe. He felt he was home and dry, relieved she put up so little fight. “Splendid! There is one slight snag. There’s a job to do on the way. But you go ahead and get your deputy lined up.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll fix it.” She breathed the words huskily. “Where do -” She stopped short of “we.”

“The States. Can’t tell you yet exactly when, but be ready.”

Ready! She was ready right now… .

“I think it may be in three or fours days’ time, and it will be quite a short, um, vacation.” His eyes were overbright; this could be their last time together, and he was very fond of her. “I can’t spare you for long.”

Her brilliant world collapsed. “Spare me!”

Forbin went on blindly. “There’s something coming up. I can’t tell you much, but I’d like you to help Ted Blake over there -“

“Blake!” All the drink evaporated in a flash, replaced by angry disappointment.

“Yes, my dear,” he continued, happily unaware of the effect he had. “It’s a very important assignment -“

She snatched her hand away, her voice icy. “What’s so important about Blake - and where’s the vacation?”

Her change of mood got through to him, and he couldn’t think of a convincing answer to her question. He fell back on anger. “Don’t damn well argue with me, woman! You go with Blake!”

His intensity short-circuited her rage. He was up to something; beneath the anxiety in his face, he looked somehow shifty. She proceeded more cautiously.

“But why me - and Blake? I need a vacation - with him?”

“Perhaps I used the wrong word,” he said lamely. “More of a change than a vacation. Yes, that’s it - a change.”

Now she was sure he was lying, and very badly. Whatever his game, she did not care for it.

She shook her head very slowly at him, her lips compressed. “You’ll have to be a lot more convincing than that, Chief.”

He could have shaken her, hard. To gain time he refilled his glass and drank. “Now you listen to me, my girl,” he began belligerently, “you do as you’re told. I want you to go, so that’s enough!”

“It’s nothing like enough!” Frustration fueled her rage, her eyes hard. “Why should I hold that bum’s hand? No, to hell with it, and him-and you! I won’t go!”

Ignorant of the fact, he was confronted by a woman who counted herself scorned. She jumped up, hardly able to keep her hands off him. He sat, head bent, the glass trembling in his hand, appalled, as her bitter tongue lashed him.

She stopped, breasts heaving, face flushed. He guessed this was only the interval.

“My dear -“

“Don’t ‘my dear’ me!” she screamed, and he shut up at once. She stared at him, at this Number One Human, cowed by a woman old enough to know better, a woman who had let her silly, secret hopes outrun discretion. Yes, he had lied to her - but not for his own personal ends. That at least was clear. With lightning speed her mood changed to one of contrition; she dropped on her knees beside him. In her madness, she’d said so much she no longer cared.

“How can I say I’m sorry? Chief - no, to hell with it all, even if you kick me out - Charles, darling Charles, I didn’t mean it… .” Words tumbled out; she hardly knew what she was saying, and he hardly heard, bemused and shaken as he was. Her apologia petered out in choking tears, woman’s last refuge, and one she seldom used.

Her words meant little, but her tears got through. He stroked her hair, his voice soothing, even if the words were unmemorable.

Blessed silence filled the room. He continued stroking her head, completely unable to take charge of the scene, and she knew it. Gently she disengaged, stood up, found a tissue, and blew her nose.

Watery-eyed, she looked at his embarrassed face. She tried to smile, achieving a crooked grin. “What can I say? What can I say?”

He reached across the yawning gap between them. “My d - Angela - forget it. It’s strain, it’s been a fearful day.” He pressed his advantage. “You see, I was right, you need -“

That got her back on the rails. “No. That’s something else. Okay, go ahead and fire me. I’ve no kick coming, but vacations, with or without Blake, that you can forget.”

He tried another angle. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you! What I don’t trust is your judgment of me! These are tough times, tougher than I know, and that’s all the more reason for me standing by you - if you still want me.”

He caught the pathetic appeal in those last words, even as he had heard her cry “darling Charles.” Nothing engenders love more than being loved, and Forbin was only human, male, and alone.

“Don’t be silly. You know I want you to stay.”

At once the ruthless female was on top. “Then why do you want me to go -” She made it sound as if he was selling her off to an Arabian harem. “- with Blake?”

He frowned. “You exasperate me. Willingly I could shake you, I really could.” He had no idea that she would be delighted if he did. “All I ask is for you to go with Blake …”He slipped. “Oh, dammit, I don’t care, go without him - but go!”

To her, that was both better and worse. “So you just want to get rid of me. Blake’s a smokescreen!”

“No!” He gave in. “No. Oh - if you like - yes. I want you out of here when I say, preferably with Ted, because, because -” He daren’t go on. “You can’t understand, but it is for your own good. Leave it at that.”

Sensing she had him on the run, she had no intention of letting him rest. “Look, I made a fool of myself; I told you what I have kept secret for all these years - I love you, always have, and, I think, always will. Crazy, maybe, but that’s the way it is. You’re holding back on me. You say it’s for my good, but don’t you realize that all I want is to be with you! I don’t give a single damn about anything else.” Knowingly she played her last card, not appreciating its power. “If it is the end of the world, I want to be with you!”

Chapter XIV

IN PRE-COLOSSUS TIMES Southampton Main had stood low on the list of airports, handling only local USE traffic. The installation of the Master on the nearby Isle of Wight had changed that: the airport had quickly been promoted to a respectable position in the world’s top two hundred terminals, and as the stream of “pilgrims” grew from a trickle to a torrent, it had reached the top dozen. It had plummeted in importance when Forbin, as Father of the Faithful, decreed that as Colossus had turned his face from man, all pilgrimages were suspended.

For a short space Southampton Main had slipped back, its giant honeycomb of reception and departure bays mostly empty. Now the imperative demands in the name of the Master for material for the Collector gave it overriding importance and priority.

Ram-jets resembled missiles rather than aircraft, flying trajectories, not flight tracks. The system was nearly twenty-five years old, but it was safe and reliable, and even before Colossus’s parents were built it had been recognized that until matter-transference arrived - and that was not even dimly in sight - the world would do well to stick to the system, accepting that Mach 2 as an average transit time was fast enough for anyone. The cost of raising the speed another ten percent would have been staggering - anyway impossible to achieve without total UN agreement - and that had certainly not been forthcoming.

With the advent of Colossus, the very question had ceased to exist; the Master had ruled there should be no change, except for refinements in the computer control. These he made, cutting safety tolerances, speeding launching and recovery times, but not affecting the outstanding safety record of the system. Shuttles frequently hurtled past each other a kilometer apart at a relative speed of Mach 5, but only the Colossus-controlled computers knew that.

But the sudden rise of Southampton Main to the temporary center of world aviation had caused dislocations and delays in places as far apart as Tokyo and Rio, Sydney and Chicago. Such was the temper of the times, and the fear of Colossus’s further withdrawal from man so great, that none had complained openly, and few secretly, even to themselves.

So the special ram-jets homed in, and although regulations laid down that aircraft should go subsonic at least three hundred kilometers out and at a minimum height of twenty kilometers, dull sonic bangs rumbled like distant summer thunder over the placid fields of Southern England, day and night.

Heavy-lift monsters from Pittsburgh, USNA, and Essen, USE, smaller craft by the dozen from lesser technic centers arrived every hour, round the clock. With overriding priority, preprogrammed conveyers were ready the instant a machine slid into its box in the honeycomb, moving in to grasp the contents the second the doors had opened. Huge sections were transferred in a matter of minutes to the helilifts for their final journey to the site.

The world had never seen a construction operation like it, not even the building of Colossus. Of course, in actual fact, very few humans did see it, since ninety percent plus of the work was automated.

One observer was Fultone, veteran head of Condiv. Standing alone, his shoulders hunched, hands clasped behind in a Napoleonic stance, he watched, oblivious of the thin drizzle.

Even he felt awe, amazement, a flashback to his first sight of his firstborn child, as he saw familiar drawings translated into reality with the speed of a growing plant in a time-lapse movie.

One giant horn, over two hundred twenty meters in diameter at the intake end, tapering to a bare meter at the other, was completed as he watched. The din was terrific; the vicious slap of rotors near drowned by the roar of engines, overlaid by the scream of torque-stressed screw-bolt drivers in high pitch, battered his mind, despite the ear-defenders. Auto welders melded metal, adding bright fire to the scene, and behind them crawled the ultrasonic checkers.

Night and day, rain or fine it would go on. There had been no foul-ups or delays. There would be none.

Fultone shivered, and not at the cold touch of rain. Against a darkening sky the structure reared above him, outlandish and alien. He felt superfluous, out of place, as if he had strayed into the workshop of the gods. Suddenly he wanted human company and turned away, deliberately concentrating his thoughts on spaghetti Bolognese, vino, and his fat wife.

And in the Sanctum, their very presence known only to two humans, the Martians also watched. By order of Forbin, all progress reports were flashed on screen in his apartment and in the Sanctum. What they made of flow charts and highly technical summaries, only they knew. Silent, sinister as a loaded gun, they waited.

Once Forbin had accepted his plan, and he in turn accepted that he should execute it, Blake swore to himself he would meet a personal deadline of three days for recovery and full action. He called his doctor and, with a touch of his old self, announced that with or without help he would be mobile in seventy-two hours, adding that he had no time for drag-ass quacks. Anxious to please, yet fearing a malpractice charge, the doctor did his best. Two hours after Forbin’s okay, Blake was out of bed, his head a slow-motion top. Within minutes he flopped back on the bed, but at least he’d made a start.

Lying there, waiting for enough strength to pull a sheet over, Blake thought of the immediate future. He could not conceal from himself that deep down he felt mighty glad he had a chance of survival - and felt a louse for feeling that. He remembered the man he had been before the Martian mind-blast. A spin-off from that ordeal was that he could at least see that other Blake with detachment. What a fool! He amended that: what a criminal lunatic he had been, seeking power, not just to overthrow Colossus, but for his own personal ambition. Now he saw with great clarity that power led inevitably to corruption, futility and, in the end, self-destruction. If his mission did succeed, most unwillingly, he would become Ruler. Ten days earlier he would have given anything, short of his genitals, for that position. Now the prospect brought apprehension for himself, sorrow for Forbin. Forbin was the better man, and the better man would lose, and go down to death, faithful to an ideal. Or should that be counted a defeat?