Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (3 page)

"If
your 'copters are fired on, it'll be your own responsibility," Alexander
said. "My men have orders . . ."

"They
won't be fired on," Bahr cut him off. "Nobody fires on DIA
'copters."

Overhead,
six fiery red circles made by jet-tipped 'copter blades were moving across the
field toward a patch of woods, buzzing just over the treetops, hanging
motionless for a moment as
Geigers
were dropped
through the trees and then reeled up again, then moving on.

Alexander
turned to the radioman, bristling with rage. "I want to send a
message," he said.
"Crash priority."

"Sorry, sir.
This unit is busy now." "This is
crash priority," Alexander snapped. "You heard him," Bahr said
without turning. "Use your own radio."

Alexander
scuffed back through the mud to his Volta, turned on the sending unit, and
contacted the relay back at the plant. "This is Alexander. I want a crash
priority through to Washington. Urgent, personal, to John McEwen, Director,
DIA. Reference Wildwood Power Plant: Your assistant, Bahr, orders shutdown of
entire project for investigation—stop—exceeding authority—stop—request you
direct him rescind this order pending further study and evidence—stop.
Harvey Alexander, Major, nine-two-three Security.
Reply
immediately.
Out."

He
dropped the mike back in the slot and sank back in the Volta. Suddenly he
realized that his hands were trembling. Unless he had a quick response from
Washington he was in trouble, bad trouble. He groaned inwardly. As if there
hadn't been enough trouble in the past six
weeksl
He
knew enough about how the DIA worked . . . why hadn't he just kept his mouth
shut, co-operated, and then struck back through the proper channels later? Why
couldn't he have had
that
much sense, instead of
acting like a bumbling fool?

But
still, he was stunned at the ruthless disregard Bahr had shown for military
authority. The man was out of line, unless there was far more involved here
than he could see.

Alexander
gnawed the inside of his mouth, listening to the pelting rain on the
plexiglass
roof. The ground trucks had moved out in a wide
circle now, with the 'copters preceding them overhead. Alexander scowled. What
was so imperative about some
radioactives
passing a
Geiger alarm? Bahr had no evidence whatsoever that the hot stuff had come from
the plant. And Alexander was virtually certain that it had not.

He
knew the security system at the plant because he had personally organized it
from top to bottom. After his downgrading from BURINF, when they had ordered
him to the military limbo of this antique power pile in the Illinois flatlands,
Harvey Alexander had realized that his only hope for reinstatement would be a
record of exemplary execution of his new job—the security protection of the
plant. Within a week he had studied and thrown out the old, ineffective
security system and installed the system he had so carefully and painstakingly
devised to meet any imaginable emergency situation.

It was as perfect a system as Alexander knew
how to devise, and he was singularly expert on the matter of security systems
. . . though only God and BRINT knew that, besides himself. And he was sure
that no U-metal could have left that plant without his knowing it.

But
even if it had, he could see no cause for panic. Who would try to steal
U-metal? It was as useless as gold bullion. There were no markets for it. It
was worthless outside a power pile. Besides, the Wildwood Plant was one of the
oldest piles in existence, built back in the Twentieth Century with all the
incredible engineering inefficiencies that the early 1960's had produced. The
U-metal slugs it used would only fit that particular pile.

It simply didn't make sense. The complete
irrationality of
anybody
stealing U-metal caught in
Alexander's orderly mind like a barbed hook. And this DIA investigation . . .
he winced.

What could there be about a U-metal theft . .
. the most impractical of all crimes . . . that attracted the DIA?

From somewhere to the West, two more squads
of 'copters slid into the sky, fanning out in a huge circle radiating from the
thick patch of woodland and brush surrounding the area of the strike point.

Somewhere
out there, something radioactive had tripped a road monitor and centered an
alarm. Whatever it was, it was still out there. But even as he watched,
Alexander could see the huge circle growing tighter. Men shouted and trucks
moved. 'Copter blades fanned the sky. In the gloom he could see the DIA men
moving efficiently and quickly, following the maneuver from the headquarters
of Bahr's copter.

It was like a huge, well-oiled machine, and
he had no part of it. There was nothing for him to do, no orders for him to
give, because Bahr had done it all.

The
crackle of the radio jerked Alexander to alertness. "Major Alexander.
ASPX nine-two-three calling Major Alexander."

He
picked up the speaker, held the switch down.
"Alexander
here."

"Washington
refers us to
Lowrie
Field, Denver,
sir
.
McEwen is on vacation there."

"Then
resend the message," Alexander said. "Plain-language heading:
'Personal McEwen', and put it on a Q priority."

"Yes, sir."
Over the speaker Alexander could hear the click-click of the cipher-
typer
as the new message was made up. "Hold it a
minute, sir . . . the OD wants to talk to you."

The
OD's voice rasped in the speaker. "There are six DIA 'copters just landed
in the compound, sir. The investigators want to stop production and hold a
U-metal inventory right now. What should I do?"

A
number of suggestions, all of them obscene, came immediately to Alexander's
mind, but he stifled them and thought carefully for a moment. He'd hoped for an
answer from McEwen by this time, but now everything was sitting in his lap. He
knew the DIA had no authority in the compound without special orders from
DEPOP, but that was a legal technicality, not a practical consideration.
Obviously Bahr was going to force through an inventory if he had to hold off
the compound guards with stunners. And the chance of Alexander's OD putting up
any resistance to a determined DIA squad was less than epsilon for any epsilon
chosen. Bahr was not going to be stopped.

"Do
nothing whatever," he said to the OD. "Don't co-operate, don't
interfere. They're exceeding authority."

"Very well,
Major
." The squawker went dead.

Alexander
leaned back, sweat pouring down his sides. Everything now depended on McEwen
backing him up, even if it were too late to stop the inventory. It would be
Bahr's neck, not his, as long as McEwen stuck to the letter of the law.

And
that, he thought warmly, he could count on. McEwen had been doing that for
twelve years.

For
all the ominous reputation of investigations, arrests, and interrogations
carried on by the Department of Internal Affairs, the dreaded civilian
intelligence organization that had grown up in the wake of the corrupted and
long-defunct FBI to serve as watchdog for the new
Vanner-Elling
Stability government, one single fact had always remained paramount: The DIA
would never exceed the legal limits of its authority. Even Alexander, after
his brief and bitter experience in the Bureau of Information, still believed
this record to be accurate, and not simply a matter of silencing all witnesses
to exceptional cases.

The
DIA had no need to break laws. Their investigations and interrogations were so
thorough that they could, on sound legal grounds, pick up a man for a misfiled
travel permit, or an unsatisfactory follow-up marital survey, or even for
failing to report a prostitute's serial number correctly, and in a few days of
questioning get him to confess to every crime and misdemeanor he had ever
committed or even imagined he had committed. For the tough cases their legal
lobby would squeeze a new law into the books in the middle of an investigation,
just to fit the case.

But
this time Alexander knew the law. He knew he was right, but he was a little
surprised at the rapid pounding of his heart and the sudden trickle of sweat
running down his arms. There was something ominous about this sudden appearance
of a swarm of DIA 'copters at the site of an isolated Geiger alert.

He looked through the haze of headlights and
falling rain at the tall, dark-coated figure standing there, shoulders hunched,
hands deep in his raincoat pockets. Julian Bahr . . .

The
name was oddly familiar to Alexander. So was the big, thick-set body, the
hunched shoulders, the heavy face, the bark of the man's voice. He knew Bahr
from somewhere, he was sure of that.

Alexander
ran backward in his mind through his career in BURINF, the huge, energetic
mouthpiece for the Department of Exploitation—super press room, propaganda
mill, advertising agency, motivational research center and public relations
bureau without peer in the world. Faces, names, ideas . . . private
conversations, board meetings, luncheons flooded his memory. He felt a wave of
nostalgia begin to
rise
smotheringly
,
a pervading sense of desolation at the fall he had taken from there, so abrupt,
so unexplainable.

He blocked it. Julian Bahr
was not part of BURINF.

Back
farther, then. Britain, Turkey, Buenos Aires, Australia
...
a dozen past assignments shuttled through his mind: the solar
research project he had been in charge of in Mexico; the huge Yangtze dam at
which he had been only a lieutenant, the curious Asian-Western partial truce
that had resulted in the U.S. Army building the world's greatest dam across the
Yangtze to stop the floods and starvation that were driving China into ruthless
expansion in spite of the brilliant economic blockade with which the West had
accelerated her inflation, until the vast continent was almost entirely reduced
to barter, governmental ferocity notwithstanding.

The
Army, the vast administrative tool of the Department of Exploitation, since it
no longer had any function as an effective fighting force. Fifteen million men
and officers handling the immense problems of supply, law enforcement, transportation,
engineering and education in the precise ecological reorientation that the
Vanner-EIling
system prescribed when it came to power after
the Crash in 1995, and which DEPEX operated. That was the old Army of fifteen
years ago when a man was given a job to do and the authority to do it, not like
the snarled . . . Alexander blocked the engulfing bitterness. Bahr had not
been in China . . .

Antarctica . . .

Like
a key fitting a lock, something clicked in Alexander's mind, and he realized
why he had not been able to place this man.

It was Antarctica. He remembered Julian Bahr.

He jumped as the door of the Volta slid open
and Bahr stood there, rain pouring from his hat. "I need your car,"
he said.

"Is that an
order?" Alexander asked.

"Call
it whatever you want," Bahr snapped. "A couple of our ground units
have been flown in about a mile up the road, and I—"

"Strike!"
The
squawker boomed. "Mr. Bahr . . . there's a strong signal on a Geiger from
Unit B 'copter Number Seven. They're holding position.
Over."

Bahr
picked up the speaker, rotated the broadcast selector to the DIA frequency.
"This is Bahr. Number Seven? What have you got there?"

"Can't
see it, but there's something down here in the woods," the voice crackled.
"Got a hell of a jolt on the Geiger."

"All
right, all units," Bahr said. "Circle at a quarter-mile radius from
Number Seven. Ground units alert for encirclement. Use caution. Whatever's in
that
circle,
keep it in there!
But do not attack. Repeat:
do not attack!
Out."

He
turned to Alexander as Carmine came stumbling up through the muck and rain and
slid into the car without saying a word. "You heard that," Bahr said.
"I need this car to join the ground units."

"This
is a Volta," Alexander said. "You'll break your neck in it, if you
don't know how to drive it."