The Zap Gun (16 page)

"Okay, okay," Febbs said, writhing with irritation; he rose to his feet and started off.

"I got hit by a shatter-cone that tore loose from the sword-valve system," the old war vet was saying as Febbs departed.

Big War my foot, Febbs said to himself. Some minor rebellion of some colony. Some fracas over in a day. And "T.W.G.!" God knows what obsolete thrown-away heap of junk that was, probably back in the primordial 100 series. They ought to make mandatory the scrapping of the operators along with the weapons; it's a disgrace, an old wreck like that wasting really valuable people's time.

Since he had been driven from the park, he decided to make one more stab at entering the kremlin.

Presently he was saying to the guard on duty, "It's a violation of the Wes-bloc constitution! It's nothing but a kangaroo court that's in session down there without me. Nothing it decides on is legal without my vote. You call your superior, your O.D. You tell him that!"

The sentry stared stonily ahead.

All at once a huge black government hopper hovered overhead, to descend toward the concrete field beyond the guard's station. Instantly the guard whipped out a vid receiver-transmitter, began giving orders.

"Whozat?" Febbs asked, devoured by an ant-army of curiosity.

The hopper landed. And from it stepped—General George Nitz.

"General!" Febbs shrieked; his voice carried past the reinforced barrier controlled by the guard, to the man in uniform who had disemhoppered. "I'm your com-peer! I've got papers that prove I'm a legal rep to the Board, a concomody, and I demand that you use your authority to let me in, or I'm going to file a civil action for tort violation or some goddam such thing! I haven't talked to a lawyer yet, but I mean it, General!" His voice died away as General Nitz continued on and disappeared into the surface structure which was the meager portion of the Festung that stood above ground.

A cold Washington, D.C. wind blew about Febbs' legs. The only sound was the guard's voice as he gave instructions into his vidphone.

"Sheoot," Febbs said, in despair.

A small, dilapidated civilian for-hire type hopper now coasted up to the barrier and halted. From it a middle-aged woman in an old-fashioned grime-colored cloth coat stepped. Approaching the guard she said timidly, but with a certain air of firmness, "Young man, how do I find the UN-W Natsec Board? My name is Martha Raines and I'm a newly elected concomody." She fumbled in her purse for proof of her assertion.

The guard lowered his vidphone and said briefly, "No one with an AA-class or higher pass is to be admitted, madam. Emergency-sit priority of security rating-ruling in effect as of six a.m. time-zone one-fifty this morning. I'm sorry, madam." He turned his attention back to his vidset thereupon.

Febbs thoughtfully approached the middle-aged woman.

"Miss, I'm in exactly the same disgraceful position as you are," he informed her. "We are being denied our legal prerogatives and I have seriously considered the possibility of major litigation against the parties responsible."

"Is it those satellites?" Martha Raines asked, mouse-like. But her suspicion was almost equal to his own. "It must be them. Everyone's busy about them and they don't care about us. I came all the way from Portland, Oregon, and this just is too much for me; I voluntarily relinquished my greeting-card shop—turned it over to my sister-in-law—in order to perform my patriotic task. And now look! They're just not going to admit us—I can see that." She seemed more stunned than angry. "This is the fifth entrance I've tried at," she explained to Febbs, glad of a sympathetic audience at last. "I tried gates C, D, and then even E and F, and now here. And every time they say the same. They must be instructed to." She nodded solemnly. It was all abundantly, un-Wes-blocly clear.

"We'll get in," Febbs said. "But if every one of these—"

"We'll find the other four new concomodies," Febbs decided. "We shall act as a group. They won't dare refuse all of us—it's only by splitting us off from each other that they've been able to lord it over us. I seriously doubt if they'd turn all six of us down, because that would be to admit that they're conducting their policy-level sessions in deliberate illegality. And I bet if all six of us marched over to one of those autonomic TV interviewers, like one of Lucky Bagman's, and told it, they'd find time to take off from babbling about those satellites long enough to demand that justice be done!"

In fact Febbs had seen several TV interviewers since he had appeared here at the main gate. All the info-media agencies were on constant alert, these days, for news pertaining to the satellites.

All that remained was to round up the other four concomodies. And even as he and Martha Raines stood here, another civilian for-hire hopper began to descend; within it sat a nervous, frustrated-looking youth and Febbs had the acute intuition that this was an additional newly drafted concomody.

And when we do get in, Febbs declared to himself grimly, well make them squirm! We'll tell that fatbutt General George Nitz where to head in to.

He hated General Nitz already... for having paid no attention to him. Nitz did not know that things were about to change. He would soon have to listen, like that time in the old days when Senator Joe McCarthy, that great American of the last century, had made the fatbutts listen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s had told them off, and now Surley Febbs and five other typical type citizens, armed with absolute, foolproof ident-papers, certifying to their vast status as representing two billion humans, were about to do the same!

As the nervous youth emerged from his hopper, Febbs strode purposefully toward him.

"I'm Surely Febbs," he said grimly. "And this lady here is Martha Raines, We're newly drafted concomodies. Are you, sir?"

"Y-yes," the youth said, swallowing visibly. "And I tried at Gate E and then at—"

"Never mind," Febbs said, and felt an upsurge of confidence. He had spotted an autonomic TV interviewer. It was coming this way.

Wrathfully, Febbs walked to meet it, the other new concomodies trailing obediently after him. They seemed glad to fall behind him and let him speak.

They had found their leader.

And Febbs felt himself transformed. He was no longer a man. He was a Spiritual Force.

It felt just fine.

Lars could discern very little, as he sat across from Lilo, watching her intently while Dr. Todt prowled about keeping an eye on the spill of tapes secreted by the EEG and EKG machines attached to his patient. But he thought, The promise which this girl made is going to be kept. Harm will arise somehow from this situation. I feel it already, and I am nothing in this. Already Wes-bloc has those three to replace me. And undoubtedly more mediums exist in the East.

But his enemy, his antagonist, was not Peep-East and its KVB; the Soviet authorities had already proved their keen desire to act in his behalf. They had saved his life. His nemesis sat opposite him, an eighteen-year-old girl who wore a black jersey sweater and sandals and tight slacks, whose hair was pulled back with a ribbon. A girl who in her hatred and fear had, as an introduction, already made her first destructive move in his direction.

But, he thought, you are so goddam physically and sexually, so very amazingly sexually, attractive.

I wonder, he wondered, what you are like under that sweater, without those slacks and barefoot, without even that ribbon. Is there any way we can meet in that dimension? Or would the vid aud monitoring-system preclude that? Personally, he thought, I wouldn't care if the whole Red Army cadet academy pored over the tapes. But you'd mind. It would make you hate worse, and not hate just them but me as well.

The medication was beginning to affect him. Soon he would go under, and the next he would know, Dr. Todt would be reviving him and there would be—or would not be—a sketch. The production was automatic, neurologically speaking; it either came or it didn't.

He said to Lilo, "Do you have a lover?"

Her eyebrows knitted ominously. "Who cares?"

"It's important."

Dr. Todt said, "Lars, your EEG shows that you're—"

"I know," he said, and had difficulty articulating; his jaw had become numbed. "Lilo," he said, "I have a mistress. She heads my Paris branch. You know what?"

"What?" She continued to glower at him suspiciously.

Lars said, "I'd give Maren up for you."

He saw her face smooth. Her delighted laugh filled the room. "Wonderful! You mean it?"

He could only nod; it was past the time when speech remained possible. But Lilo saw the nod and the radiance of her face grew to a golden nimbus. Glory incarnate.

From a wall-speaker a business-like voice said, "Miss Topchev, you must synchronize your Alpha-wave pattern for the trance-phase to Mr. Lars. Should I send in a doctor?"

"No," she said quickly. The nimbus faded. "No one from the Pavlov Institute! I can manage it." She glided from her chair to kneel beside Lars. She rested her head against his, and some of her radiance seeped back from the physical contact; he felt it as pure warmth.

Dr. Todt said nervously to her, "Twenty-five seconds and Mr. Lars will be under. Can you manage? Your brain-metabolism stimulant?"

"I took it." She sounded irritable. "Can't you leave so that it's just the two of us? I guess not." She sighed. "Lars," she said, "Mr. Powderdry. You weren't afraid even when you realized you were dying; I saw you and you knew. Poor Lars." She ruffled his hair, clumsily. "And do you know what? I'll tell you something. You keep your mistress in Paris, because she probably loves you, and I don't. Let's see what sort of weapon we can make between us. Our baby."

Dr. Todt said, "He can't answer you but he can hear you."

"What a child for two strangers to pawn," Lilo said. "Does my killing you make us friends? Good friends? Bosom. Is that the idiom? Or breast-friends; I like that." She pressed his head down against the scratchy black wool of her sweater.

All this he felt. This black, soft scratchiness; the rise and fall as she breathed. Separated, he thought, from her by organic fiber and also no doubt by an inner layer of synthetic undergarment and then perhaps one additional layer after that, so there are three layers separating me from what is within, and yet it's only the thickness of a sheet of bookbond paper from my lips.

Will it always be like this?

"Maybe," Lilo said softly, "you can die in this posture. Lars. Like my child. You instead of the sketch. Not our baby but mine." To Dr. Todt she said, "I'm slipping under, too. Don't worry; he and I will go together. What'll we do in the non-space-time realm where you can't follow? Can you guess?" She laughed. And again, this time less crudely, rumpled his hair.

"God knows," Todt's voice came distantly to Lars.

And then he was gone. At once the soft black scratchiness departed. That foremost of all, and first.

But he grabbed to retain it, scrabbling like a beclawed beast; yet, even so, instead of the slim shape of Miss Topchev he found his fingers gripping—grotesquely, and hideously disappointingly—a ballpoint pen.

On the floor lay a scribbled sketch. He was back. It seemed impossible, not to be accepted or believed. Except for the fact of his fright; that made it real.

Dr. Todt, busily glancing at the sketch said, "Interesting, Lars. It is, by the way, one hour later. You have emerged with a simple design for—" he chuckled, Dr. Dead chuckling—"a donkey-type steam engine."

Sitting up groggily, Lars picked the sketch from the floor. He saw to his dulled incredulity that Dr. Todt was not joking. A simple, ancient steam donkey-engine. It was too funny even to try to laugh over.

But that was not all.

Lilo Topchev was crumpled into a heap—like a completed but for reasons unknown discarded android—and one which had been dropped, too, from some immense height. She clutched a wadded sheet of paper. On it was another sketch and this, he saw instantly, even in his semiconscious state, was not any archaic contraption. He had failed but Lilo had not.

He took the sketch from her stiff fingers. She was still quite flown.

"God," Lilo said distinctly. "Do I have a headache!" She did not move or even open her eyes. "What's the result? Yes? No? Just something to plowshare?" She waited, eyes squeezed shut. "Please, somebody answer me."

Lars saw that the sketch was not hers. It was his, too, or at least partly his. Some of the lines were unnatural to him—he recognized them from the material which KACH had shown him over the years. Lilo had done part of this and he had done the rest: they had manipulated the writing-stylus in unison. Had they actually gripped simultaneously? Dr. Todt would know. So would the Soviet big-shots who scanned the vid and aud tape-tracks, and later so would the FBI when these were transmitted to them... or perhaps even an arrangement had been made to provide both intelligence agencies with the result at one exact synchronized instant.

"Lilo," he said, "get up."

She opened her eyes, raised her head. Her face was haggard, wild, hewn hawk-like.

"You look awful," he said.

"I am awful. I'm a criminal: didn't I tell you?" She staggered to her feet, stumbled and half-fell; expressionless. Dr. Todt caught her. "Thank you, Dr. Dead," she said. "Did KACH tell you that I'm as a rule sick at my stomach after a trance-phase? Dr. Dead, take me into the bathroom. Quick. And phenothiazine: do you have some?" She tottered away, Todt assisting her.

Lars remained seated on the floor with the two sketches. One of a steam-driven donkey-engine. The other—

It looked, he thought, like an antonomic, homeostatic, thermotropic wise rat catching-device. Only for rats with an IQ of 230 or better or who had lived a thousand years—mutant rats such as never existed and if all went well in the scheme of things never would.

He knew, intuitively and totally, the device was hopeless.