The Zap Gun (22 page)

But the paper was not blank.

On it was a scrawled, labored sentence, as if the awkward, unskilled fingers of a child had gripped the pen not his. The sentence read:

The (unreadable, a short word) in the maze.

The something in the maze, he thought. Rat? Possibly. He seemed to make out an r. And the word consisted of three letters, the second of which—he was positive, now, as he scrutinized it—was a.

Unsteadily, he rose, made his way from the room; he opened door after door, at last found someone, a hospital orderly.

"I want a vidphone," Lars said.

He sat, finally, at a table on which rested an extension phone. With shaking fingers he dialed Henry Morris at his New York office.

Presently he had Henry on the screen.

"Get hold of that toy-maker Vincent Klug," Lars said. "He has a kids' product, a maze of some kind. It's gone through Lanferman Associates and come out. A working model exists. Pete Freid made it."

"Okay," Henry said, nodding.

"In that toy," Lars said, "there's a weapon. One we can use against the aliens—and win. Don't tell Klug why you want it. When you have it, mail it to me at Festung Washington, D.C. by 'stant mail—so there's no time-lapse."

"Okay," Henry Morris said.

After he had rung off, Lars sat back, once more picked up the sheet of paper, reexamined his scrawled sentence. What in God's name was that blurred word? Almost he had it...

"How do you feel?" Lilo Topchev appeared, bleary-eyed, rubbing her forehead, smoothing back her rumpled hair. "God, I'm sick. And again I got nothing." She plopped herself opposite him, rested her head in her hands. Then, sighing, she roused herself, peered to see the paper he held. "You derived this? During the trance-state,"

She frowned, her lips moving. "The—something—in the maze. That second word." For a time she was silent, and then she said, "Oh. I see what it says."

"You do?" He lowered the sheet of paper, and for some reason felt cold.

"The second word is man," Lilo said. "The man in the maze; that's what you wrote during the trance. I wonder what it means."

Later, subsurface, Lars sat in one of the great, silent meeting-chambers of the inner citadel, the kremlin of Fortress Washington, D.C., the capital city of all Wes-bloc with its two billion. (Less than that now, a substantial portion. But as to this Lars averted his thoughts; he kept his attention elsewhere.)

He sat with the unwrapped 'stant mail parcel from Henry Morris before him. A note from Henry informed him that this object was the sole maze-toy produced by Klug Enterprises and made up by Lanferman Associates in the last six years.

This small, square item was it.

The printed brochure from Vincent Klug's factory was included. Lars had read it several times.

The maze was simply enough in itself, but it represented for its trapped inhabitant an impenetrable barrier. Because the maze was inevitably one jump ahead of its victim. The inhabitant could not win, no matter how fast or how cleverly or how inexhaustibly he scampered, twisted, retreated, tried again, sought the one right (Didn't there have to be a one right?) combination. He could never escape. He could never find freedom. Because the maze, ten-year battery powered, constantly shifted.

Some toy, Lars thought. Some idea of what constitutes "fun."

But this was nothing; this did not explain what he had here on the table before him. For this was a psychologically sophisticated toy, as the brochure put it. The novelty angle, the inspired ingredient by which the toy-maker Vincent Klug expected to pilot this item into a sales success, was the empathic factor.

Pete Freid, seated beside Lars, said, "Hell, I put it together. And I don't see anything about it that would make it a weapon of war. And neither did Vince Klug, because I discussed it with him, before I made this prototype and after. I know darn well he never intended that."

"You're absolutely correct," Lars said. Because why at this period in his life-track should the toy-maker Vincent Klug have any interest in weapons of war? But the later Vincent Klug—

He knew better.

"What kind of a person is Klug?" Lars asked Pete.

Pete gestured. "Hell, you've seen him. Looks like if you stuck a pin in him he'd pop and all the air would come out."

"I don't mean his physical looks," Lars said. "I mean what's he like inside? Down deep, the machinery that makes him run."

"Strange, you putting it like that."

"Why?" Lars felt sudden uneasiness.

"Well, it reminds me of one of the projects he brought to me long time ago. Years ago. Something he was eternally puttering around with but finally gave up. Which I was glad of."

"Androids," Lars said.

"How'd you know?"

"What was he going to do with the androids?"

Pete scratched his head, scowling. "I could never quite figure it out. But I didn't like it. I told him no, every time."

"You mean," Lars said, "he wanted you to build them? He wanted Lanferman Associates to utilize its expertise in that line, on his android project, but for some strange reason he never—"

"He was vague. Anyhow he wanted them really human-like. And I always had that uneasy feeling about it." Pete was still scowling. "Okay, I admit there's layers and layers to Klug. I've worked with him but I don't pretend to understand him, any more than I ever figured out what he had in mind with his android project. Anyhow, he did abandon it and turned to—" he gestured toward the maze—"this."

Well, Lars thought, so that explains Lilo's android sketches.

General Nitz, who had been sitting silently across from them, said, "The person who operates this maze—if I understand this right, he assumes an emotional identity with that thing." He pointed at the tiny inhabitant, now inert because the switch was off. "That creature, there. What is that creature?" He peered intently, revealing for the first time to Lars that he was slightly nearsighted. "Looks like a bear. Or a Venusian wub; you know, those roly-poly animals that the kids love... there's a phenotypal enclave of them here at the Washington zoo. God, the kids never get tired of watching that colony of wubs."

Lars said, "That's because the Venusian wub possesses a limited telepathic faculty."

"That's so," General Nitz agreed. "As does the Terran porpoise, as they finally found out; it's not unique. Incidentally, that was why people keep feeling the porpoise was intelligent. Without knowing why. It was—"

Lars moved the switch to on, and in the maze the roly-poly wub-like, bear-like furry, loveable creature began to move. "Look at it go," Lars said, half to himself.

Pete chuckled as the roly-poly creature bounced rubber-ballwise from a barrier which unexpectedly interceded itself in its path.

"Funny," Lars said.

"What's the matter?" Pete asked him, puzzled at his tone, realizing that something was wrong.

Lars said, "Hell, it's amusing. Look at it struggle to get out. Now look at this." Studying the brochure, he ran his hands along both sides of the frame of the maze until, he located the studs. "The control on the left increases the difficulty of the maze. And the perplexity, therefore, of its victim. The control on the right decreases—"

"I made it," Pete pointed out, "I know that."

"Lars," General Nitz said, "you're a sensitive man. That's why we call you 'difficult.' And that's what made you a weapons fashion medium."

"A prima donna," Lars said. He did not take his eyes from the wub-like, bear-like, roly-poly victim within the altering barriers that constituted the utterly defeating configuration of the maze.

Lars said, "Pete. Isn't there a telepathic element built into this toy? With the effect of hooking the operator?"

"Yeah, to a certain extent. It's a low-output circuit. All it creates is a mild sense of identification between the child who's operating the maze with the creature trapped." To General Nitz he explained, "See, the psychiatric theory is that this toy teaches the child to care about other living organisms. It fosters the empathic tendencies inherent in him; he wants to help the creature, and that stud on the right permits him to do so."

"However," Lars said, "there is the other stud. On the left."

"Well," Pete said condescendingly, "that's technically necessary because if you just had a decrease-factor the creature would get right out. The game would be over."

"So toward the end," Lars said, "to keep the game going, you stop pressing the decrease stud and activate the increase, and the maze-circuitry responds by stepping up the difficulty which the trapped creature faces. So, instead of fostering sympathetic tendencies in the child, it could foster sadistic tendencies."

"No!" Pete said instantly.

"Why not?" Lars said.

"Because of the telepathic empathy-circuit. Don't you get it, you nut? The kid running the maze identifies with the victim. He's it. It's him in the maze; that's what empathy means—you know that. Hell, the kid would no more make it tough for that little critter than he'd—stab himself."

"I wonder," Lars said, "what would happen if the telepathic empathy-circuit's output were stepped up."

Pete said, "The kid would be hooked deeper. The distinction, on an emotional level, between himself and the victim there in that maze—" He paused, licked his lip.

"And suppose," Lars continued, "the controls were also altered, so that both studs tended, but in a diffuse manner, only to augment the difficulty which the maze-victim is experiencing. Could that be done, technically-speaking?"

After a while Pete said, "Sure."

"And run off autofac-wise? In high-production quantity?"

"Why not?"

Lars said, "This roly-poly Venusian wub creature. It's non-Terran, an organism to us. And yet because of the telepathic faculty it possesses it creates an empathic relationship with us. Would such a circuit, as represented here in this toy, tend to affect any highly-evolved sentient life form the same way?"

"It's possible." Pete nodded. "Why not? Any life form that was intelligent enough to receive the emanations would be affected."

"Even a chitinous semi-reflex machine life form?" Lars said. "Evolved from exoskeleton pregenitors? Not mammals? Not warm-blooded?"

Pete stared at General Nitz. "He wants to step up the output," he said excitedly, stammering in anger, "and rewire the manual controls so that the operator is hooked deep enough not to break away when he wants to, and can't ease the severity of the barriers inhibiting the goddam maze-victim—and the result—"

"It could induce," Lars said, "a rapid, thorough mental disintegration."

"And you want Lanferman Associates to reconstruct this thing and run it off in quantity on our auto-fac system. And distribute it to them." Pete jerked his thumb upward. "Okay. But we can't distribute it to the aliens from Sirius or whatever they are; that's beyond our control."

General Nitz said, "But we can. There is one way. Quantities of these can be available in population centers that the aliens acquire. So when they get us they get these, too."

"Yeah," Pete agreed.

General Nitz said to him, "Get on it! Get building."

Glumly, Pete stared at the floor, his jaw working. "It's reaching them where they have a decent streak. This—" he gestured furiously at the maze-toy on the table—"wouldn't work on them otherwise. Whoever dreamed this up is getting at living creatures through their good side. And that's what I don't like."

Reading the brochure which had accompanied the maze-toy, General Nitz said, " 'This toy is psychologically sophisticated, in that it teaches the child to love and respect, to cherish, other living creatures, not for what they can do for him, but for themselves.' " He folded up the brochure, tossed it back to Lars, asked Pete, "by when?"

"Twelve, thirteen days."

"Make it eight."

"Okay. Eight." Pete reflected, licked his parched lower lip, swallowed and said, "It's like booby-trapping a crucifix."

"Cheers," Lars said. And, manipulating the two studs, one on either side of the maze he confronted the appealing, roly-poly wub-like victim with a declining difficulty. He made it easier and easier until it seemed the victim was about to reach the exit.

And then, at that moment, Lars touched the stud on the left. The circuitry of the maze inaudibly shifted—and a last and totally unexpected barrier dropped in the victim's path, halting him just as he perceived freedom.

Lars, the operator, linked by the weak telepathic signal emanating from the toy, felt the suffering—not acutely, but enough to make him wish he had not touched the left-handed stud. Too late now, though; the victim of the maze was once again openly entangled.

No doubt about it, Lars realized. This does, as the brochure says, teach sympathy and kindness.

But now, he thought, it is our turn to work on it. We cogs, we who are the rulers of this society; we who hold literally in our hands the responsibility of protecting our race. Four billion human beings who are looking to us. And—we do not manufacture toys.

After the alien slavers from Sirius had withdrawn their satellites—at the end there had been eight satellites orbiting the sky of earth—the life of Lars Powderdry began to sink back into normalcy.

He felt glad.

But very tired, he realized one morning as he woke slowly up in his bed in his New York apartment, and saw beside him the tumble of dark hair which was Lilo Topchev's. Although he was pleased—he liked her, loved her, was happy in a life commingled with hers—he remembered Maren.

And then he was not so pleased.

Sliding from bed he walked from the bedroom and into the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of the perpetually hot and fresh coffee maintained by one small plowshared gadget wired onto the otherwise ordinary stove.