Our Friends From Frolix 8 (13 page)

‘I’ll see this man from 3XX24J at six o’clock our time tonight,’ Gram said. ‘Bring him in. Bring them both in together – the girl, too.’ He caught more unpleasant dissenting thoughts from Barnes but ignored them. Like most telepaths, he had learned to ignore the great body of inchoate thoughts in people: hostility, boredom, outright disgust, envy. Thoughts, many of which the person himself was unaware of. A telepath had to learn to have a thick skin. In essence, he had to learn to relate to a person’s conscious, positive thoughts, not the vaguely-defined mixture of his unconscious processes. At that region, almost everything could be found… and in almost anyone. Every clerk-typist who passed through his office had fleeting thoughts of destroying his superior and taking his place… and some aimed much higher than that; there existed fantastic delusional systems of thought in some of the most meek-mannered men and women – and these were, for the most part, New Men.

Some, who harbored truly deranged thoughts, he had quietly hospitalized. For the good of everyone concerned… especially himself. For, several times, he had picked up thoughts of assassination, and from the most surprising sources, both big and little. Once, a New Man technician, installing a series of video links in his private office, had lengthily pondered shooting him – and had carried the gun by which to do it. Again and again it came up: an endless theme which had come into existence when the two new classes of men had manifested themselves fifty-eight years ago. He was used to it… or was he? Perhaps not. But he had lived with it all his life, and he did not foresee losing his ability to adapt now at this late point in the game – this point at which Provoni and his nonhuman friends were about to intersect his own life-line.

‘What’s the name of the man from apartment 3XX24J?’ he asked Barnes.

‘I’d have to research that,’ Barnes said.

‘And you’re sure the girl isn’t his wife?’

‘I briefly saw stills of his wife. Fat, nasty – a shrew, from what we got off the video tape from the deck installed in their apartment. The standard 243 deck that’s in all those quasi-modern apartments.’

‘What does he do for a living?’

Barnes peered up at the ceiling, licked his lower lip and said, ‘A tire regroover. At a used squib lot.’

‘What the hell’s that?’

‘Well, they take in a squib, let us say, and examination shows the tread almost worn off the tires. So he takes a hot iron and digs new, fake tread into what remains of the tire.’

‘Isn’t that illegal?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it is now,’ Gram said. ‘I just passed a law; make a note of that. Tire regrooving is a crime. It’s dangerous.’

‘Yes, Council Chairman.’ He scratched a note on his pad, thinking, We are about to be overwhelmed by alien beings and this is what Gram is thinking about: tire regrooving.

‘You can’t overlook the minor items in the welter of the major ones,’ Gram said, in answer to Barnes’ thought.

‘But at a time like this—’

‘Make it a posted misdemeanor without delay,’ Gram said. ‘See that every used squib lot gets printed – mark that: printed – word of it by Friday.’

‘Why don’t we induce the aliens to land,’ Barnes asked sardonically, ‘and then have this man dig into their tires so that when they try to roll along the ground-surface the tires pop and they’re killed in the resulting accident?’

‘That reminds me of a story about the English,’ Gram said. ‘During World War Two, the Italian government was terribly worried – and rightly so – about the English landing in Italy. So it was suggested that at each of the hotels where the English were staying they should be terribly overcharged. The English, see, would be too polite to complain; instead they’d leave – leave Italy entirely. Have you heard that story.’

‘No,’ Barnes said.

‘We’re really in a hell of a mess,’ Gram said. ‘Even though
we killed Cordon and knocked out that 16th Avenue printing plant.’

‘Correct, Council Chairman.’

‘We’re not going to be able even to get all the Under Men, and these aliens may be like the Martians in H. G. Wells’
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
; they’ll eat Switzerland in one big bite.’

‘Let’s reserve further speculation until we actually encounter them,’ Barnes said. From him, Gram picked up weary thoughts, thoughts of a long rest… and, at the same time, a realization that there was not going to be a rest, long or otherwise, for any of them.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gram said, in answer to Barnes’ thoughts.

‘It’s not your fault.’

Moodily, Gram said, ‘I ought to resign.’

‘In favor of whom?’

‘Let you double-domes find someone. Of
your
type.’

‘This could be considered at a council.’

‘Nope,’ Gram said. ‘I’m not going to resign. There will be no council meeting to discuss it.’

He caught from Barnes a fleeting thought, quickly suppressed.
Maybe there will be. If you can’t handle these aliens, plus the internal uprising.

Gram thought, They’ll have to kill me to get me out of office. Find some way to snuff me. And it’s hard to snuff telepaths.

But they’re probably looking for a way, he decided.

It was not a pleasant thought.

Consciousness returned, and Nick Appleton found himself sprawled on a green floor. Green: the color of the pissers, the state police. He was in a PSS detention camp, probably a temporary one.

Raising his head, he squinted around him. Thirty, forty
men, many with bandages, many cut and bleeding. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, he decided. And Charley – she would be with the women, raising her voice to bitch shrilly at her captors. She will put up a good fight, he realized; she will kick them in the testicles when they come to carry her off to the permanent relocation camps. I, of course, will never see her again, he thought. She glowed like stars; I loved her. Even for that little while. It’s as if I had a glimpse, saw past the curtain of mundane life, saw how and what I needed to be happy.

‘You don’t happen to have any pain pills on you?’ a youth next to him asked. ‘I’ve got a broken leg and it’s causing me one hell of a lot of fucking pain.’

‘Sorry, no,’ Nick said. He returned to his thoughts.

‘Don’t sound pessimistic,’ the youth said. ‘Don’t let the pissers get to you, inside.’ He tapped his head.

‘The knowledge that I may spend the rest of my life in a relocation camp on Luna or in southwestern Utah keeps me from smiling,’ Nick said caustically.

‘But,’ the youth said, with a blissful, radiant smile, ‘you heard the news Provoni’s back, and with help.’ His eyes shone, despite the pain of his leg. ‘There will be no more relocation camps. “The veil of the tent is rent, and the heavens shall roll up like a scroll.”’

‘We’ve waited over two thousand years since that was written,’ Nick said. ‘And it hasn’t happened yet.’ He thought, Not one full day as an Under Man and behold! What has become of me.

A tall, lean man, squatting nearby, a deep and untreated gash about his right eye, said, ‘Do either of you know if they got the message from Provoni to any of the other printing plants?’

‘Oh, sure.’ The golden-haired youth’s eyes flamed up with trust and belief. ‘They knew at once; all our communications operator had to do was click a switch on.’ He beamed at Nick and the tall, lean man. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he asked. ‘This; even this.’ He indicated the others in the badly-lit, badly-ventilated cell. ‘It’s magnificent. It’s beautiful!’

‘It turns you on?’ Nick asked.

‘I’m not familiar with the literature from previous centuries,’ the youth said, dismissing with scorn Nick’s anachronism. ‘I can live with it! All this – it’s mine. Until Thors Provoni lands. He will land soon and the heavens will—’

An ununiformed police official came up to them, consulted a clipboard. ‘You’re the visitor to 3XX24J?’ he asked Nick.

‘I’m Nick Appleton,’ Nick said.

‘To us you’re a man who visited an apartment number at a certain time on a certain day. Hence you are 3XX24J, are you not?’ Nick nodded. ‘Get up and come with me,’ the police minion said, and started briskly away. Nick, with difficulty, managed to rise to a disfigured standing position; gradually he followed after the cop, wondering – with fear – what was happening.

As the cop unlocked the door of the cell – using a complex electronic wheel system, a spinning at great velocity of numbers – one of the men seated on the floor, his back against the wall, said to Nick, ‘Good luck, brother.’

The man beside that man lifted a transistor tab from his ear and said, ‘The news just came over the media. They’ve killed Cordon. They did it, they actually did it. “He died of a chronic liver ailment,” they say, but it’s not that – Cordon didn’t have no liver complaint. They shot him.’

‘Come on,’ the cop said, and with surprising strength propelled him boldly through the aperture and outside the cell, which instantly relocked itself.

‘Is it true about Cordon?’ Nick asked the cop, the green pisser.

‘Dunno.’ The cop added, ‘But if they did, it was a good idea. I don’t know why they’ve kept him at Brightforth all this time; why couldn’t they make up their minds? Well, that’s what you get when you have an Unusual as Council Chairman.’ He continued on up the hall, Nick following.

‘You know Thors Provoni is back?’ Nick asked. ‘And with the help he promised?’

‘We can handle them,’ the cop said.

‘Why do you think so?’

‘Shut up and keep walking,’ the cop said, his large head,
his New Man expanded cranium, bobbing venomously. He looked angry and aggressive, looking for an opportunity to use his metal stick on someone, and Nick thought, he’d snuff me right here and now if he could. But he has orders to fulfill.

Nonetheless, the cop frightened him: the concentration of hate on the man’s face when Nick had mentioned Provoni. They may put up a hell of a fight, he realized. If this is representative of their collective feelings.

The cop stepped through a doorway; Nick followed… and saw, in a single glimpse, the nerve-center of the police apparatus. TV screens, small, hundreds and hundreds of them, with a cop monitoring each cluster of four screens. A cacophony of noise hummed and clicked and buzzed through the big chamber; people, both men and women, hurried here and there… performing little errands such as the one handed to this hate-ridden New Man cop escorting him. How damn busy it was. But the PSS was in the process of rounding up every Under Man they knew of; that alone would put a burden on their electronic-neurological equipment, and those operating it.

Just in that brief moment, he saw their fatigue. They did not look triumphant or happy. Well, he thought, doesn’t the murder of Eric Cordon cheer you up? But they were looking ahead, as were the Under Men. The internal part, the bombing and raiding of the plants, the rounding up of Under Men – it had to be done in a matter of, probably, three days.

Why three days? he asked himself. The two messages hadn’t permitted a fix on the ship – evidently – and yet it seemed to be everyone’s assumption: they had a few days and that was all. But suppose he’s a year out, Nick thought. Or five years.

‘3XX24J,’ his escort cop said, ‘I am turning you over to a representative of the Council Chairman. He will be armed, so don’t be heroic.’

‘Okay, friend,’ Nick said, feeling sheep-like at the rapid processes evolving all around him. A man in an ordinary business suit – purple sleeves, rings, turned-up-toes shoes – approached him. Nick scrutinized him. Tricky, devoted to his job – and a New Man. Above his body his great head
wobbled; he was not using the customary neck support bracket in vogue among many New Men.

‘You are 3XX24J?’ the man asked; he examined a Xerox copy of some sort of document.

‘I am Nick Appleton,’ Nick said stonily.

‘Yes, these number indent systems really don’t work,’ the rep of the Council Chairman said. ‘You work – or worked – as a—’ He frowned, then lifted his massive head. ‘A what? A “tire regroover”? Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And today you joined the Under Men via your employer, Earl Zeta, whom the police have been watching, I believe, for several months. This is you I’m talking about, isn’t it? I want to be sure I get the right man passed through. I have your fingerprints, here; we’ll shoot them on to the print archives. By the time the Council Chairman sees you, the prints will be – or will not be – verified.’ He folded up the document and carefully placed it in his purse. ‘Come along.’

Once more, Nick gazed into the huge grotto-like chamber of the ten thousand TV screens. Like fish, he thought, the people gliding about; purple fish, both male and female, bumping together from time to time, like molecules of a liquid.

He had, then, a vision of hell. He saw them as ectoplasmic spirits, without real bodies. These police coming and going on their errands; they had given up life a long time ago, and now, instead of living, they absorbed vitality from the screens which they monitored – or, more precisely, from the people on the screens. The primitive natives in South America may be right, he thought, to believe that when someone takes a photograph of a person he steals the person’s soul. What is this, if not a million, billion, endless, procession of such pictures? Eerie, he thought. I’m demoralized; I’m thinking in superstitious terms, out of fear.

‘That room,’ the rep of the Council Chairman said, ‘is the data-source for the PSS all over the planet. Fascinating, isn’t it? All those monitoring screens… and you’re seeing just a fraction of it; strictly speaking, you’re seeing the Annex, established two years ago. The central nerve-complex is not
visible from here, but take my word for it, it’s appallingly large.’

‘“Appallingly”?’ Nick asked, wondering at the choice of words. He sensed, weakly, a sort of sympathy for him on the part of the Council Chairman rep.

‘Almost one million police employees are maintained at the peep-peep screens. A huge bureaucracy.’

‘But did it help them?’ Nick asked. ‘Today? When they made their initial roundup?’

‘Oh yes; the system works. But it’s ironically funny that it ties up so many men and man-hours, when you consider that the whole original idea was that—’