Our Friends From Frolix 8 (24 page)

Charley went to the living room window, opened it, leaned out and yelled, ‘Hey, you all gonna eat up Nu Yohk? Don’ you all do that, y’hear?’ She closed the window, her face expressionless.

‘That ought to throw them off,’ Nick said.

‘New York is my home town,’ Charley said. Abruptly, she pressed her fingers against her forehead. ‘I felt something. Like a – a sweep, a probe. Passing through me and leaving.’

Acutely, in an instant of instinctive insight, Nick said, ‘He’s looking for New Men.’

‘Oh, God,’ Elka moaned. ‘I just felt it, just for an instant. He
is
looking for New Men. What’s he going to do with them? Snuff them? Do they deserve that? They never snuffed us.’

‘Denny,’ Charley said. ‘And me, very nearly; they almost took a shot at me in the Federal Building. And they sent
assassins to snuff Nick. If you – what’s the word? – extrapolate from that—’

‘It’s a high average,’ Nick said. And Cordon, he said to himself. Shot, probably. We’ll never really know – just that he’s dead. Does Provoni know yet? he wondered. God help us, he may go berserk.

Over the TV audio circuit, Provoni said, ‘Monitoring Earth’s transmissions, we learned of Eric Cordon’s death.’ His massive face retracted, as if retreating into itself with pain. ‘Within an hour, we will know the circumstances – the actual ones, not those transmitted over the media – and we will—He paused. Nick thought, He’s conferring with the alien. ‘We will—’ Again he paused. ‘Time will tell,’ he said at last, cryptically, his great head bent downward, his eyes shut; a convulsive shudder passed across his features, as if he were trying with difficulty, great difficulty, to regain control of himself.

‘Willis Gram,’ Nick said. ‘That’s who did it. That’s where the order came from. Provoni knows that; he knows where to look. That snuffing is going to color everything that happens from now on, everything Provoni does, says; what his friend does. It dooms the ruling circles; I think Provoni is the kind of man who—’

‘You don’t know what effect the alien may have had on him,’ Ed pointed out. ‘It may moderate Provoni’s bitterness and hatred.’ To Elka, he said, ‘When it probed your mind, did it seem – cruel? Hostile? Destructive?’

She pondered, then glanced at Charley. Charley shook her head no. ‘I don’t think so,’ Elka said. ‘It was just – so strange. And it was looking for something it didn’t find in me. So it went on. It only took a fraction of a second.’

‘Can you imagine that thing,’ Nick said, ‘probing minds by the hundreds? Maybe thousands. All at once.’

Ed said quietly, ‘Maybe millions.’

‘In that short time?’ Nick asked.

Charley, irritably, said, ‘I feel lousy. I feel like my period is coming on. I’m going to lie down.’ She disappeared into the bedroom; the door shut after her.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Lincoln,’ Ed Woodman said, ‘I just don’t
have time right now to listen to the notes you’ve made for your Gettysburg address.’ His face was harsh and sardonic, and he had flushed a dark, furious red.

Nick said, ‘She’s afraid; that’s why she’s gone in there. It’s too much for her. Isn’t it too much for you, really? Aren’t you taking it in intellectually, but emotionally it really isn’t registering? I see the screen; I know what I’m seeing, but’ – he gestured – ‘only the frontal lobe of my brain comprehends what I see. And hear.’ He walked to the bedroom door, opened it slightly. She lay on the bed, at an odd angle, her face turned to one side, eyes wide open. Nick shut the door after him, came over slowly, seated himself on the edge of the bed.

‘I know what it’s going to do,’ she said.

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded expressionlessly. ‘It’s going to replace portions of their minds and then withdraw, leaving nothing. A vacuum. They’ll be living hollow shells. Like a lobotomy. Do you remember that from school, reading about the insane psychiatric practices of the 20th century? Debrained, that’s what they, the doctors, made people. That thing will remove the Nodes of Roger and more – it won’t stop with just making them like us. It hasn’t affected Provoni; he’s convinced it.’

‘How do you know that?’ Nick asked.

‘Well, it’s not a long story. Two years ago I forged a set of G-2 completed tests – showing satisfactory results. So for a time I had access to government records, and one time just for the hell of it I asked for info on Provoni, the so-called “Provoni file”, and I sneaked it home, under my coat – it was mostly microfilm. And I sat up all night reading it.’ She explained, ‘I read very slowly.’

‘And he’s like that? Vengeful?’

‘He’s obsessed. He’s what Cordon wasn’t; Cordon was a rational man, a rational political figure, who happened to be living in a society where no dissent is allowed. In another society he would have been a major statesman. But Provoni—’

‘Ten years may have changed him,’ Nick pointed out.
‘Alone most of that time… there must have been a good deal of introspection and self-analysis during those years.’

‘Couldn’t you hear it today? Just now?’

‘No,’ he said, truthfully.

‘I got fired from the job and fined p350, and that gave me a criminal record which I’ve added to.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Denny, too. He fell a few times.’ She lifted her head. ‘Go back and watch the TV. Please. If you don’t, I’ll go in there and I really can’t, so you go, okay?’

‘Okay,’ he said. He left the bedroom, turned his attention to the TV set.

Is she right? he asked himself. About Provoni, what sort of man he is? That’s not what we’ve heard… heard from the Under Man presses. If she felt that way, how could she be a Cordonite, distributing and selling his pamphlets? But they were Cordon’s pamphlets, he reflected. Maybe she liked him enough to overcome her distrust of Provoni.

In the name of God, he thought, I hope she’s wrong about what they intend to do to the New Men – lobotomize them, all of them, ten million! Including the Unusuals. Like Willis Gram.

Something swept into his mind, a wind like that of hell. He clapped his hands to his forehead, bent over in – pain? Not pain; more a sort of strange sense, that of peering down into a great, dark pit and then, very slowly, beginning to tumble slow-motion into it.

The feeling abruptly departed.

‘I just got scanned,’ he said shakily.

‘How’d it feel?’ Elka asked.

Nick said, ‘He showed me the universe empty of stars. I never want to see it again as long as I live.’

Ed Woodman said, ‘Listen. On the tenth floor of this building a low-order New Man lives… apartment BB293-KC. I’m going down there.’ He headed for the door. ‘Anyone want to come? Maybe just you, Nick.’

‘I’ll come,’ Nick said. He followed after Ed Woodman, caught up with him in the silent, carpeted hall.

‘He’s probing,’ Ed said as they reached the elevator and pressed the button. He indicated all the apartment doors,
the rows and rows of them that filled this one building. ‘
Behind every one of those doors he’s probing.
God knows what it’s like for some of them; that’s why I want to see this New Man… Marshall, I think his name is. G-5, he told me once. So you can see he’s small fry; that’s why he’s in a building filled mostly with Old Men.’

The elevator came; they entered and descended.

‘Listen, Appleton,’ Ed said. ‘I’m afraid. I got probed, too, but I didn’t say anything. He’s looking for something and he didn’t find it in the four of us, but elsewhere he may find it. And I want to know what he does when he finds it.’ The elevator stopped; they stepped into the hall. ‘This way,’ Woodman said, striding rapidly along; Nick hurried to keep up with him. ‘BB293KC. I’m going down there.’ He headed for the door, came to it, halted; Nick caught up with him.

Ed Woodman knocked.

No answer.

He turned the knob. The door opened. Carefully, Ed Woodman pushed the door aside, stood, then moved out of Nick’s way.

On the floor, crosslegged, sat a slender man with a small black board, dressed in expensive hashair robes.

‘Mr. Marshall?’ Ed Woodman said softly.

The slender, dark man lifted his inflated, balloon-like head; he regarded them, smiling. But he did not speak.

‘What are you playing with, Mr. Marshall?’ Ed Woodman asked, bending down. He turned to Nick. ‘An electric mixer. He’s making the blades turn.’ He straightened up. ‘G-5. Approximately eight times our mental abilities. Anyway, he’s not suffering.’

Going over, Nick said, ‘Can you talk, Mr. Marshall? Can you say anything to us? How do you feel?’

Marshall began to cry.

‘You see,’ Ed said, ‘he has emotions, feelings, even thoughts. But he can’t express them. I’ve seen people in hospitals after a stroke, when they can’t talk, can’t communicate in any way, and they cry like that. If we leave him alone he’ll be all right.’

Together, Nick and Ed left the apartment; the door shut
after them. ‘I need some more pills,’ Nick said. ‘Can you suggest anything helpful, really helpful, at this point?’

‘Desipramine hcl,’ Ed said. ‘I’ll give you some of mine, I noticed you don’t have any.’

They made their way to the elevator and pressed the up button.

‘We better not tell them,’ Ed said, as they ascended.

‘They’ll know soon anyhow,’ Nick said. ‘Everyone will know it. If it’s happening everywhere.’

‘We’re close to Times Square,’ Ed said. ‘He may be probing in concentric rings; Marshall got it now, but New Men in Jersey may not get it until tomorrow.’ The elevator halted. ‘Or the next week. It may take months, and by that time Amos Ild – it would have to be Ild – can think of something to do.’

‘You want him to?’ Nick asked, as they stepped from the elevator.

The light in Ed Woodman’s eyes flickered. ‘That’s—’

‘That’s hard for you to decide,’ Nick said, finishing Ed’s halting statement.

‘What about you?’

Nick said, ‘I couldn’t be more pleased.’

Together, they walked back to their apartment Neither man spoke: a wall had settled into place between them. There simply was nothing to talk about And both men knew it.

“They’ll have to be cared for,’ Elka Woodman said. She had wormed the account of Mr. Marshall’s condition out of the two of them. ‘But there are billions of us; we can do it. Centers, like playareas, could be set up for them. And dorms. And meals.’

Charley sat on the couch, silently pulling the stitches out of a skirt. She wore a petulant, disapproving look; Nick did
not know why, and at the moment he did not care.

‘If it’s got to be done,’ Ed Woodman said, ‘couldn’t he do it slowly? So we can arrange care? They may starve to death or walk into passing squibs, they’re like infants.’

‘The ultimate vengeance,’ Nick murmured.

‘Yes,’ Elka said. ‘But we can’t let them die helpless and’ — she gestured—‘retarded.’

‘“Retarded,”’ Nick said. Yes, that’s what they were, not like children but like
brain-damaged
children. Hence, Marshall’s frustration when they tried to question him.

And it was brain damage. The cerebellum of their brains had been injured, from within, from the probing thing.

The TV set, still on, now carried the voice of the regular network newscaster. ‘—was just twelve hours ago that the famous physicist Amos Ild, retained by Council Chairman Willis Gram as his special advisor in the crisis, predicted over all television networks that there was no chance — repeat: no chance — that Thors Provoni had brought back an alien life form with him.’ For the first time, Nick heard authentic anger in the announcer’s voice. ‘It would appear that the Council Chairman has relied on the — what’s the expression? Staff of bending oats or something; I don’t know. God in heaven.’ On the screen the announcer bowed his head. ‘It looked — to us, anyhow — like a good idea, the Baltimore laser system, trained on
Dinosaur
’s hatch. I guess, looking back now, it was too simple. Provoni wasn’t going to get himself snuffed like that after ten years in space. Morgo Rahn Wilc, we have that down as the name or title of the alien.’ Turning his face away from the microphone, the announcer said to someone invisible, ‘For the first time in my life I’m glad I’m not a New.’ He did not seem to realize that his words were being picked up by the world, nor did he care: he sat rubbing his eyes, shaking his head, saying nothing. Then his image disappeared and another announcer, evidently preempting him, appeared. He looked grave.

‘Neurological tissue-damage seems to be deliberately—’ he began, but at that point Charley took hold of Nick’s hand and led him from the set.

‘I want to listen,’ he said.

‘We’re going to take a drive,’ Charley said.

‘Why?’

‘Instead of sitting around here feeling unhooked. We’ll go fast. We’ll go in the Purple Sea Cow.’

‘You mean go back to where they killed Denny?’ He stared at her in absolute disbelief. ‘The black pissers probably have a stake-out, an alarm system—’

‘They don’t care now,’ Charley said quietly. ‘First of all, they were all called in for crowd control, and secondly, if I can’t go riding in the Cow for a few minutes, up real high and real fast, I’ll probably try to kill myself. I mean that, Nick.’

‘Okay,’ he said. In a way she was right: there was no real point in staying here, glued to the TV set. ‘But how’ll we get over there?’

‘Ed’s squib,’ Charley said. ‘Ed, can we borrow your squib? For a little drive?’

‘Sure.’ Ed handed her the keys. ‘You may need gas, though.’

Together, Nick and Charley ascended the stairs to the roof: only two floors were involved, so the elevator was not needed. For a time, neither of them spoke; they devoted themselves to locating Ed’s squib.

Seated inside the squib, behind the tiller, Nick said, ‘You should have told him where we’re going. About the Cow.’

‘Why worry him?’ That was her sole, complete answer; she gave no more.

He sent the squib up into the sky; it was, now, virtually free of traffic. Presently, they hovered about Charley’s former apartment building. There, on the roof field, stood the Purple Sea Cow.

‘Shall I go down there?’ Nick asked her.

‘Yes.’ She peered. ‘I don’t see anybody around. Really, they don’t care anymore. It’s the end of everything, Nick. The end of the PSS, the end of Gram, or Amos Ild — can you imagine what that thing will do when it gets to him?’