Our Friends From Frolix 8 (22 page)

‘But you can’t stop it from being released,’ Gram said. ‘Because he takes over the channels; he—’

‘I know that. I mean all news additional to the direct speeches made by Provoni over TV.’ Ild pondered. ‘Please have your technicians rerun Provoni’s telecast. I want to see it myself, immediately.’

Presently, on the far screen of the room, light appeared, the roar of static… and then the static cut out, and, after a moment, Provoni’s massive, weary face appeared on the screen.

‘I am Thors Provoni,’ he declared. ‘I am living inside a sentient organism that has not absorbed me but is protecting me, as it will you, soon. In approximately thirty-two hours his protection will manifest itself throughout Earth and there will be no more physical warfare. So far, our missile screen has repelled over seventy types of missiles. But the body of my friend surrounds the ship, and he’ – a weary pause – ‘he handles them.’

‘That’s sure true,’ Gram said aloud.

‘Do not fear physical confrontation,’ Provoni said. ‘We will hurt no one, and no one can hurt us. I will talk to you’ – he panted with fatigue; his eyes stared fixedly, rigidly – ‘at a later time.’ The video image shut off.

Amos Ild scratched his rather long nose and said, ‘The prolonged space voyage has nearly killed him. Probably the alien is keeping him alive; without it he would die. Perhaps
he expects Cordon to make speeches. Do you know if he is aware that Cordon is dead?’

‘He may have monitored a newscast,’ Gram admitted.

‘The killing of Cordon was good,’ Ild said. ‘Also the opening of the camps and the general amnesty – that was good too; it made the Old Men misjudge the
quid pro quo:
they thought they gained, but Cordon’s death far outweighs the factor of the opening of the camps.’

‘Do you think,’ Gram said, ‘that the alien is one of those things that lands like a spider on the back of your neck, bores a hole to the upper ganglia of your nervous system, and then controls you like you’re a puppet? There was some very famous old book, back around 1950, where these creatures caused people to—’

‘Was it done on an individual basis?’

‘“Individual”? Oh, I see, one parasite for each host. Yes, it was one for each person.’

‘Evidently what they do will be done on a bulk basis.’ Ild pondered. ‘Like erasing tape. The whole reel at once, without passing the tape across the erase head.’ He seated himself, stabilizing his gigantic head with his hands as he did so. ‘I am,’ he said slowly, ‘going to assume it’s a bluff.’

‘By that you mean there’s no alien? He didn’t find them, he didn’t bring one back?’

‘He brought something back,’ Ild said. ‘But so far everything we’ve seen could have been done on a technological basis. Repelling the missiles, blanking out the TV – gadgets that he picked up on some world in another star system. They rebuilt his hull so that he could travel in hyperspace… maybe forever, if he wants. But I’m going to choose the choice neutrologics dictates. We have seen no alien; ergo until we see it, we must assume that probably it does not exist. Probably, I say. But I have to choose now, in order to arrange our defenses.’

Gram said, ‘But Provoni said there’d be no warfare.’

‘None by him. Only by us. Which there will be. Let’s see – the largest laser system on the East Coast is in Baltimore. Can you have it moved to New York, set up in Times Square, before the thirty-two hours elapse?’

‘I guess so,’ Gram said. ‘But we’ve used laser beams on his ship out there in space and they’ve done nothing.’

‘Mobile laser systems, such as are found on warships,’ Ild said, ‘put out an insignificant beam compared with a large stationary system such as Baltimore has. Will you please use your fone and make arrangements immediately? Thirty-two hours is not long.’

It sounded like a good idea; Willis Gram picked up his line-4 fone and got a trunk call through to Baltimore, to the technicians in charge of the laser system.

Across from him, as he made the arrangements, sat Amos Ild, massaging his great head, his attention focused on everything that Gram said.

‘Fine,’ Ild said, when Gram hung up the fone. ‘I have been calculating the probabilities of Provoni finding a scientific race superior enough to our own that they could impose their political will on us. So far, inter-stellar flights have located only
two
civilizations more advanced than our own… and they were not very greatly advanced: perhaps a hundred years or so. Now, notice that Provoni has returned in the
Gray Dinosaur
; that is important, because had he actually encountered such a superior race they most certainly would have come here
in one or more of their ships.
Look at him; look at his fatigue. He is virtually blind and dead. No, neutrologics says to decide that he is bluffing; he could so easily have proved he was not, merely by returning in an alien vessel. And’ – Amos Ild grinned – ‘there would have been a flotilla of them, to impress us. No, the same ship he left in, the way he looked on TV—’ His head wobbled with intensity; on the bald scalp veins stood out, throbbing.

‘Are you all right?’ Gram inquired.

‘Yes. I am solving problems; please be quiet for a moment.’ The lidless eyes stared, and Willis Gram felt uneasy. He momentarily dipped into Ild’s mind but, as was so often the case with New Men, he found thought-processes he could not follow. But this – it wasn’t even a language; it took the form of what appeared to be arbitrary symbols, transmuting, shifting… hell, he thought, and gave up.

All at once Amos Ild spoke. ‘I have reduced the probability
to zero, through neutrologics. He does not have any alien with him, and the only threat he poses is the technological hardware which some highly evolved race has provided him.’

‘You’re sure?’

“According to neutrologics it is an absolute, not a relative certainty.’

‘You can do that with your neutrologics?’ Gram asked, impressed. ‘I mean, instead of it being like 30–70 or 20–80 you express it in the terms a precog can’t; all he can give is probabilities because they’re a bunch of alternate futures. But you say “absolute zero”. Then all we need to get is’ – he saw the reason, now, for having the Baltimore laser system set up –
‘just Provoni.
The man himself.’

‘He’ll be armed,’ Amos Ild said. ‘With very powerful weapons, both mounted on his ship and hand weapons besides. And he’ll be within a shield of some kind, a protective area that moves with him. We will keep the Baltimore laser gun pointed on him until it penetrates his shield; he will die; the mobs of Old Men will see him die; Cordon is already dead; we are not far from the finish. In thirty-two hours it may all be over.’

‘And then my appetite will come back,’ Gram said.

Amos Ild said, smiling slightly, ‘It looks to me as if it never went away.’

You know, Gram thought to himself, I don’t trust this ‘absolute zero’ business; I don’t trust their neutrologics – maybe because I don’t understand it. But how can they maintain that an event in the future
must
happen? Every precog I’ve ever talked to has said that hundreds of possibilities lie at every point in time… but they don’t understand neutrologics either, not being New Men.

He picked up one of his fones. ‘Miss Knight,’ he said, ‘I want a convocation of as many precogs as I can get within, say, the next twenty-four hours. I want them patched into a network by telepaths and, myself being a telepath, I’ll contact all the precogs and see, if working in unison, they can come up with a good probability. Get on this right away
– it has to be done today.’ He rang off.

‘You’ve violated our arrangement,’ Amos Ild said.

‘I just wanted to integrate the precogs via the telepaths,’ Gram said. ‘And get their’ – he paused – ‘opinion.’

‘Call your secretary back and cancel your request.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘No,’ Amos Ild said. ‘But if you go ahead, I’m going back to Great Ear and continue my work there. It’s up to you.’

Gram picked up the fone again and said, ‘Miss Knight, cancel that about the precogs, what I just said.’ He hung up, feeling gloomy and morose. Extracting information from the minds of others was his chief
modus operandi
in life; it was hard to give up.

‘If you go to them,’ Ild said, ‘you’re back with probabilities; you’ll be back with 20th century logic, a tremendous step back; well over two hundred years.’

‘But if I got ten thousand precogs patched in by ‘paths—’

‘You would not know,’ Amos Ild said, ‘as much as I have already told you.’

I’ll let it go,” Gram agreed. He had elected Amos Ild as his source of information and opinion, and it was probably the right thing to do. But ten thousand precogs… aw hell, he thought. There really isn’t enough time anyhow. Twenty-four hours – that’s nothing. They’d all have to assemble in one spot, and twenty-four hours wouldn’t do it, modern subsurface transportation notwithstanding.

‘You’re really not going to sit here in my office,’ he said to Amos Ild, ‘continually, without a break, all the way through this?’

Ild said, ‘I want the bio material on Provoni; I want everything I enumerated.’ He sounded impatient.

With a sigh, Willis Gram pressed a switch on his desk; it opened the circuits to all the major computers throughout the world. He rarely – if ever – used this mechanism. ‘Provoni comma Thors,’ he said. ‘All material, and then an abstract in terms of relevance. At ultimate high-speed run, if possible.’ He remembered to add, ‘And this takes priority over everything else.’ He released the switch, turned away from the mike. ‘Five minutes,’ he said.

Four and one half minutes later, a stack of paper oozed from a slot in his desk. That was a rundown of all information. Then, coded in red, the summation: one or two pages.

He handed it all over to Ild without looking at it, Reading anything more about Provoni did not appeal to him; he had read, seen, heard endlessly about the man, it seemed, during the last few days.

Ild read the summation first, at great speed.

‘Well?’ Willis Gram asked. ‘You made your zero prognosis without the material; now does having seen the material alter your neutrologics in any way?’

“The man’s a showman,’ Ild said. ‘Like many Old Men who are intelligent, but not intelligent enough to enter the Civil Service. He’s a con man.’ He tossed the summary down and began to look over the great volume of material; as before, he read at fantastic speed. Then, all at once, he scowled. Once more the great egg-like head bobbed unsteadily; Amos Ild reached up reflectively to stop its near gyrations.

‘What is it?’ Gram asked.

‘One small datum. Small?’ Ild laughed. ‘Provoni refused public testing. There’s no record of him ever having taken a Civil Service examination.’

‘So what?’ Gram asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Ild said. ‘Perhaps he knew he’d fail. Or perhaps’ – he fiddled with the papers, moodily – ‘or perhaps he knew he would pass. Perhaps’ – he fixed his unwinkable eyes on Gram – ‘perhaps he’s a New Man. But we can’t tell.’ He held up the mass of material angrily. ‘It’s not here either way. The datum is simply missing; no records of
any
aptitude testing of Provoni are here – and never were here.’

‘But mandatory testing,’ Gram said.

‘What?’ Ild stared at him.

‘In school. They give mandatory tests, IQ and aptitude tests to see which channel of education the students should receive. He would have taken one every four years or so, from three years of age on.’

‘They’re not here,’ Ild said.

Gram said, ‘If they’re not here, Provoni or somebody working in the school-system for him,
got them out.’

‘I see,’ Amos said presently.

‘You care to withdraw your “absolute zero” prediction?’ Gram asked acidly.

After a pause, in a low, controlled voice, Amos Ild said, ‘Yes’

Charlotte Boyer said, ‘Scrup the authorities. I’m going to be at Times Square when he lands.’ She inspected her wrist-watch. ‘Two hours from now.’

Nick said, ‘You can’t. The military and the PSS—’

‘I heard the newscaster,’ Charley said. ‘Same as you. “A dense, enormous mass of Old Men, numbering perhaps in the millions, has converged on Times Square and—” Let’s see; how did he put it? “And for their own protection they’re being removed by balloon ‘copters to safer places.” Such as Idaho. Did you know you can’t get a Chinese dinner in Boise, Idaho?’ She rose, paced the room. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Ed Woodman, the owner of the apartment in which she and Nick were staying, ‘What do you say?’

Ed Woodman said, ‘Look at the TV screen. They’re hustling everyone anywhere near Times Square into those goddam huge 4-D transports and flying them out of the city.’

‘But more people are arriving,’ his wife Elka said. ‘They’re falling behind; more people are coming in than are being gotten out.’

‘I want to go,’ Charley said.

‘Watch on TV,’ Ed said. He was an older man, in his early forties, heavyset, good-natured, but keenly alert. Nick had found his advice worth listening to.

On TV, the announcer was saying, ‘Rumors that the largest laser gun in the eastern United States has been moved from Baltimore and set up near Times Square seem to have a basis in fact. At about ten this morning, New York time, a large object, which observers said looked like a complete
laser system, was landed by air on the roof of the Shafter Building, which overlooks Times Square. If – and I repeat
if
– the authorities intend to use a very powerful laser beam on Provoni or Provoni’s ship, this would be the spot where the laser gun would most likely be placed.’

‘They can’t keep me from going there’ Charley said.

Ed Woodman, swiveling his chair to turn toward her, said, ‘Yes, they certainly can. They’re using tranquilizing gas; they’re knocking everyone out and then shoveling them aboard those big 4-D transports like so many sides of beef.’

‘Clearly,’ the TV newscaster said, ‘the moment of confrontation will come when, having landed his ship, and assuming he does so, Thors Provoni exits from the ship and displays himself for what he undoubtedly expects to be an adoring public. His distress will be, shall we say, acute? To find no one there, just police and army barricades.’ The newscaster smiled amiably. ‘Over to you, Bob?’