The Zap Gun (3 page)

And not only an authority on weapons. He could remember with absolute clarity every fact he had ever learned—as for example on the manufacture of red-stained glass in France during the early thirteenth century. I know the exact part of the Byzantine Empire from which the mosaics of the Roman period which they melted down to form the cherished red glass came, he said to himself, and exulted. It was about time that someone with universal knowledge like himself got on the UN-W Natsec Board instead of the usual morons, the mass pursaps who read nothing but the headlines of the homeopapes and naturally the sports and animated cartoon strips and of course the dirty stuff about sex, and otherwise poisoned their empty minds with toxic, mass-produced garbage which was deliberately produced by the large corporations who really ran things, if you knew the inside story—as for instance I. G. Farben. Not to mention the much bigger electronics, guidance-systems and rocket trusts that evolved later, like A. G. Beimler of Bremen who really owned General Dynamics and I.B.M. and G.E., if you happened to have looked deeply into it. As he had.

Wait'll I sit down at the Board across from Commander-in-chief Supreme UN-West General George Nitz, he said to himself.

I'll bet, he thought, I can tell him more facts about the hardware in the, for instance, Metro-gretel homeostatic anti-entrope phase-converter sine-wave oscillator that Boeing is using in their LL-40 peak-velocity interplan rocket than all the so-called "experts" in Festung Washington.

I mean, I won't be just replacing the concomody whose time on the Board expired and so I got this form. If I can get those fatheads to listen, I can replace entire bureaus.

This certainly beat sending letters to the Boise Star-Times 'pape and to Senator Edgewell. Who didn't even respond with a form-letter any more, he was so, quote, busy. In fact this beat even the halcyon days, seven years ago, when due to the inheritance of a few UN-West gov bonds he had published his own small fact-sheet type of newsletter, which he had 'stant-mailed out at random to people in the vidphone book, plus of course to every government official in Washington. That had—or might well have had, if there weren't so many lardheads, Commies and bureaucrats in power—altered history... for example in the area of cleaning up the importation of disease-causing protein molecules which regularly rode to Earth on ships returning from the colony planets, and which accounted for the flu that he, Febbs, had contracted in '99 and really never recovered from—as he had told the health-insurance official at his place of business, the New Era of Cooperative-Financing Savings & Loan Corporation of Boise, where Febbs examined applications for loans with an eye to detecting potential deadbeats.

In detecting deadbeats he was unmatched. He could look an applicant, especially a Negro, over in less than one microsecond and discern the actual composition of their ethical psychic-structure.

Which everyone at NECFS&LC knew, including Mr. Rumford, the branch manager. Although due to his egocentric personal ambitions and greed Mr. Rumford had deliberately sabotaged Febbs' repeated formal requests, over the last twelve years, for a more than routinely stipulated pay raise.

Now that problem was over. As a concomody he would receive a huge wage. He recalled, and felt momentary embarrassment, that often he had in his letters to Senator Edgewell among many other things complained about the salaries which the six citizens drafted onto the Board as concomodies received.

So now to the vidphone, to ring up Rumford, who was still at his high-rise conapt probably eating breakfast, and tell him to stuff it.

Febbs dialed and shortly found himself facing Mr. Rumford who still wore his Hong Kong-made silk bathrobe.

Taking a deep breath, Surley G. Febbs uttered, "Mr. Rumford, I just wanted to tell you—"

He broke off, intimidated. Old habits die slowly. "I got a notice from the UN-W Natsec people in Washington," he heard his voice declare, thin and unsteady. "So, um, you can g-get someone else t-to do all your d-dirty-type jobs for you. And just in case you're interested, I let around six months ago a really bad apple take out a ten-thousand poscred loan, and he'll n-never pay it back."

He then slammed the receiver down, perspiring, but weak with the wholesome joy that now lodged everywhere inside him.

And I'm not going to tell you who that bad apple is, he said to himself. You can comb the minned mass of records on your own time, pay my replacement to do it. Up yours, Mr. Rumford.

Going into the tiny kitchen of his conapt he quick-unfroze a pack of stewed apricots, his customary breakfast. Seated at the table which extended, plank-like from the wall, he ate and meditated.

Wait until the Organization hears about this, he reflected. By this he meant the Superior Warriors of Caucasian Ancestry of Idaho and Oregon. Chapter Fifteen. Especially Roman Centurion Skeeter W. Johnstone, who just recently by means of an aa-35 disciplinary edict had demoted Febbs from the rank of Legionnaire Class One to Helot Class Fifty.

I'll be hearing from the Organization's Praetorian Headquarters at Cheyenne, he realized. From Emperor-of-the-Sun Klaus himself! They'll want to make me an R.C.—and probably kick out Johnstone on his tail.

There were a lot of others who would get what they deserved now. For instance that thin librarian at the main branch of the Boise pub-libe who had denied him access to the eight closed cases of microtapes of all the twentieth century pornographic novels. This means your job, he said to himself, arid imagined the expression on her dried, wart-like face as she received the news from General Nitz himself.

As he ate his stewed apricots, he pictured in his mind the great bank of computers at Festung Washington, D.C. as they had examined million after million of file cards and all the data on them, determining who was really typical in his buying habits and who was only faking it, like the Strattons in the conapt across from his who always tried to appear typical but who in no true ontological sense made it.

I mean, Febbs thought joyfully, I'm Aristotle's Universal Man, such as society has tried to breed genetically for five thousand years! And Univox-50R at Festung Washington finally recognized it!

When a weapon-component is at last put before me officially, he thought with grim assurance, I'll know how to plowshare it, all right. They can count on me. I'll come up with a dozen ways to plowshare it, and all of them good. Based on my knowledge and skill.

What's odd is that they'd still need the other five concomodies. Maybe they'll realize that. Maybe instead of giving me only a one-sixth slice they'll give me all the components. They might as well.

It would go about like this:

General Nitz (amazed): Good God, Febbs! You're completely right. This stage one of the Brownian movement-restriction field-induction coil, portable subtype, can be easily plowshared into an inexpensive source to chill beer on excursions lasting over seven hours. Whew! Gollee!

Febbs: However, I think you're still missing the basic point, General. If you'll look more closely at my official abstract on the—

The vidphone rang, then, interrupting his thoughts; he rose from the breakfast table, hurried to answer it.

On the screen a middle-aged female Wes-bloc bureaucrat appeared. "Mr. Surley G. Febbs of Conapt Building 300685?"

"Yes," he said, nervously.

"You received your notice by 'stant mail of your induction as concomody to the UN-W Natsec Board as of this following Tuesday."

"Yes!"

"I am calling, Mr. Febbs, to remind you that under no circumstances are you to convey, reveal, expound, announce or otherwise inform any person or organization or info-media or autonomic extension thereof capable of receiving, recording and/or transmitting, communicating and/or telecasting data in any form whatsoever, that you have been legally named by due and official process to the UN-W Natsec Board as Concomody A, as per paragraph III in your written notice, which you are required under penalty of law to read and strictly observe."

Surley Febbs, inside himself, fainted dead away. He had failed to read all the way down the notice. Of course the identity of the six concomodies on the Board was a matter of strict secrecy! And already he had told Mr. Rumford.

Or had he? Frantically, he tried to recall his exact words. Hadn't he merely said he received a notice? Oh God. If they found out—

"Thank you, Mr. Febbs," the female official said, and rang off. Febbs stood in silence, gradually hinging himself back together.

I'll have to call Mr. Rumford again, he realized. Make certain he thinks I'm quitting for health reasons. Some pretext. I've lost my conapt, have to leave the area. Anything!

He found himself shaking.

A new scene bloomed frighteningly in his mind.

General Nitz (grayly, with menace): So you told, Febbs.

Febbs: You need me, General. You really do! I can plowshare better than anyone drafted before—Univox-50R knows what it's talking about. In the name of God, sir! Give me a chance to prove my superior worth.

General Nitz (moved): Well, all right, Febbs. I can see you're not quite like anyone else. We can afford to treat you differently, because the fact is that in all my long years of dealing with all kinds of people I have never seen anyone as unique as you and it would be a distinct loss to the Free World if you decided not to stick with us and give us the benefit of your knowledge, experience and talent.

Reseating himself at his breakfast table. Febbs mechanically resumed the eating which had been interrupted.

General Nitz: Actually, Febbs, I'd even go so far as to say—

Aw, the hell with it, Febbs thought with growing, overwhelming gloom.

Toward noon the ranking engineer from Lanferman Associates of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the firm which produced the mockups and prototypes and whatnot from Lars Powderdry's sketches, showed up at the New York office of Mr. Lars, Incorporated.

Pete Freid, at home here from long years of experience, sauntered round-shouldered and stooped but still tall into Lars' office. He found Lars drinking a solution of honey and synthetic amino acids in a twenty per cent alcohol base: an antidote to the depletion of body-constituents by the trance-state which had occurred earlier in the morning.

Pete said, "They found that what you're swilling is one of the ten major causes of upper g.i. cancer. Better quit now.

"I can't quit." Lars said. His body needed the replacement-source and anyhow Peter was kidding. "What I ought to quit—" he began, and then became silent. Today he had talked too much already, and before the man from KACH. Who, if he was any good, remembered, recorded and put on permanent file everything he heard.

Pete wandered about the office, crouched for all eternity from his excessive height and also, as he tirelessly reiterated, his "bad back." There was a certain vagueness as to what the bad back consisted of. Some days it was a slipped disk. Other times, according to Pete's rambling monologs, it was a worn disk: the distinction between these two eternal, Jobish afflictions he never ceased delineating. On Wednesdays, for example today, it was due to an old war-time injury. He dilated on that now.

"Sure," he told Lars, his hands in the rear pockets of his work-trousers. He had flown three thousand miles from the West Coast aboard the public jet, wearing his grease-stained shop clothes, with, as a concession to human society, a twisted, now black but perhaps formerly brightly colored necktie. The tie hung like a lead-rope from his unbuttoned, sweaty shirt, as if, under former slave conditions, Pete had been led periodically to slaughter by means of it. Certainly he had not been led to pasture. Despite his rambling, ambulatory, psychomotor activity he was a born worker. Everything else in his life—his wife and three children, his hobbies, his friendships—these fell to ruin when work-time came. And for him this arrived at eye-opening time at six or six-thirty in the morning. He was, in contrast to what Lars regarded as neurologically normal humanity, a wide-awake early riser. It amounted to a defect. And this after a fugue the night before, until bar-closing time, of beer and pizza, with or without Molly, his wife.

"What do you mean, 'sure'?" Lars said, sipping his special drink. He felt weary: today trance-state had enervated him beyond the recall of the chemical elixir. "Okay, you mean, 'Sure, I ought to quit my job.' I know the rubric you've got to offer. Frankly I've heard it so many times I could—"

Peter interrupted, in his agitated, husky, urgent voice, "Aw, the hell, you know what I mean. Bull! You never listen. All you do is go to heaven and come back with the word of God, and we're supposed to believe as gospel every stupid thing you write down, like some—" He gestured, tic-like, his big frame shuddering under his blue cotton shirt. "Look at the service you could do humanity if you weren't so lazy."

"What service?"

"You could solve all our problems!" Pete glowered at him. "If they've got weapons designs up there—" He jerked his thumb vaguely toward the ceiling of the office, as if, during his trance-states, Lars literally rose. "Science ought to investigate you. Chrissake, you ought to be at Cal Tech being examined, not running this fairy outfit you run."

"Fairy," Lars said.

"Okay, maybe you're not a fairy. So what? My brother-in-law's a fairy and that's okay with me. A guy can be anything he wants." Pete's voice rose to a shout that boomed and echoed. "As long as it's integrity, it's what he really is and not what he's told to do. You!" His tone was withering, now. "You do what they tell you. They say, Go get us a bunch of primary design-concepts in two-D form, and you do!" He lowered his voice, grunted, rubbed his perspiring upper lip. Then, seating himself, he reached his long arms out, groping for the heap of sketches on Lars' desk.

"These aren't them," Lars said, retaining the sketches.

"These aren't? Then what are they? They look like designs to me." Pete twisted his head, extended his neck, piston-wise, to peer.