Authors: Robert Silverberg
“Ah. But she was aware all along that you were a Carmichael?”
“Evidently so.”
“And consorted with you for the sake of infiltrating the ranch and betraying us to the Entities, do you think?”
“No, sir. Absolutely not. It’s not really a secret that this is a Resistance headquarters, you know, sir. I think even the Entities must be aware of that. But in any case, there was never a word out of Lisa that indicated to me that she had any such dark intentions.”
“Ah. Then it was just an innocent little romantic thing, what went on between you and her?”
Steve reddened. “In truth, not all that innocent, sir, I would have to admit.”
The Colonel said, chuckling, “So I’ve been given to understand. When is the baby due?”
“Around six months from now.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, do you leave the ranch to live with her, then, or are we supposed to take her in here?”
Flustered, Steve said, “Why, I don’t know, sir. It’s up to the family to decide, not to me.”
“And if the family tells you that you’re to give up the woman and the baby and never see either one of them again?”
The fierce old blue eyes drilled deep.
After a moment’s silence Steve said, “I don’t think I would go along with that, sir.”
“You love her that much?”
“I love her, yes. And I have a responsibility to the child.”
“Indeed. That you do. —So you would go to live among quislings if need be, eh? But would they take you in, do you think, knowing that you were an agent of the Resistance?”
Steve moistened his lips. “What if we were to take Lisa in, instead?”
“To spy on us, you mean?”
“I don’t mean that at all. It’s just a job for her, working for them. She doesn’t see it as working for the Entities at all, just for the phone company, which is an arm of LACON, which of course is the Entity puppet administration down there. There’s nothing ideological about her. She doesn’t like having the Entities here any more than we do. She just doesn’t see what we can do about it, so she does her job and doesn’t think about such things. If she came here, she’d have no further contact with the other side.”
“Including her father? Her brothers?”
“I suppose she’d speak with them, visit them sometimes, maybe. But there’s no reason in the world why she would reveal anything about ranch activities to them or anyone else.”
“And so you ask us—infatuated as you are, blinded by love—to accept a spy into our midst simply because you’ve managed to make her pregnant,” said the Colonel. “Do I have it right?”
Steve had a sense of having being played with throughout the entire interview. It seemed to him that the Colonel, kindly though he had been during most of this, had been testing him, primarily, trying to see how he reacted under pressure. Taking this position and that one, now sympathetic, now hostile, poking at him here, poking at him there, making harsh assumptions, raising damning hypotheses, checking things out from all angles. But plainly the old man’s mind was already made up, and not in his favor. How could he possibly allow a girl from a quisling family into the ranch?
There was no point in being diplomatic any longer, Steve saw.
Taking a deep breath, he said, “No, sir, you don’t have it right. I may be infatuated, yes, but I think I know her pretty well, and I don’t see her as a danger to us in any way. I ask you to take her in because she’s going to bring the next member of this family into the world, and this is where she belongs, because I belong here, and I want my wife and child to be here with me. If they don’t belong here, I don’t either. And I’m prepared to leave the ranch forever if that’s what I have to do.”
The Colonel did not reply. His face was expressionless, unreadable. It was as though Steve had not spoken at all.
And the silence extended itself to an unendurable length. Steve wondered if he had gone too far, had offended the stern old warrior with his bluntness and dealt a fatal blow to his case. Then he started to wonder whether the old man had simply fallen asleep with his eyes open.
“Well, then,” the Colonel said, at last, his face coming to life, even something like a twinkle entering the stern chilly eyes. “If that’s how it is, do you mind if we have Ron meet with her and get some sort of reading on her before we make a final decision about her coming here?”
Steve gasped. “You’ll allow her into the ranch, then?”
“If Ron thinks that we should, yes. Yes, I will.”
“Oh, sir! Oh! Oh, sir, sir, sir—!”
“Easy, boy. Nothing’s been settled yet, you know.”
“But it’ll work out. I know that it will. Ron’s going to see right away what kind of a person she is. He’ll love her. You all will. —And I want to tell you here and now, Grandfather, that if the baby is a boy, we’re naming him for you. There’ll be one more Anson at the ranch: Anson Gannett, this one will be. Anson Carmichael Gannett. That’s a promise, Grandfather.”
The baby, though, was a girl. Sabrina Amanda Gannett, then, after Lisa’s mother and grandmother. The next one was a girl, too, two years later, and they named her Irene, for the Colonel’s long-dead wife, the grandmother whom Steve had never known. Anson Carmichael Gannett didn’t get himself born for another three years, coming into the world finally by a neat coincidence on the Colonel’s 83rd birthday, which occurred in the twenty-first year after the Conquest. “You’re going to be the greatest computer genius of all time,” Steve told the new baby, as he lay red- faced and gurgling, two hours old, in his weary mother’s arms. “And a shining hero of the Resistance, too.”
Those would turn out to be pretty accurate prophecies. But not quite in the ways that Steve was expecting.
Richie Burke said, “Look at this goddamned thing, will you, Ken? Isn’t it the goddamnedest fantastic piece of shit anyone ever imagined?”
They were in what had once been the main dining room of the old defunct restaurant. It was early afternoon. Aissha was elsewhere, Khalid had no idea where. His father was holding something that seemed like a rifle, or perhaps a highly streamlined shotgun, but it was like no rifle or shotgun he had ever seen. It was a long, slender tube of greenish- blue metal with a broad flaring muzzle and what might have been some type of gunsight mounted midway down the barrel and a curious sort of computerized trigger arrangement on the stock. A one-of-a-kind sort of thing, custom made, a home inventor’s pride and joy.
“Is it a weapon, would you say?”
“A weapon? A weapon? What the bloody hell do you
think
it is, boy? It’s a flicking Entity-killing gun! Which I confiscated this very day from a nest of conspirators over Warminster way. The whole batch of them are under lock and key this very minute, thank you very much, and I’ve brought Exhibit A home for safekeeping. Have a good look, lad. Ever seen anything so diabolical?”
Khalid realized that Richie was actually going to let him handle it. He took it with enormous care, letting it rest on both his outstretched palms. The barrel was cool and very smooth, the gun lighter than he had expected it to be.
“How does it work, then?”
“Pick it up. Sight along it. You know how it’s done. Just like an ordinary gunsight.”
Khalid put it to his shoulder, right there in the room. Aimed at the fireplace. Peered along the barrel.
A few inches of the fireplace were visible in the crosshairs, in the most minute detail. Keen magnification, wonderful optics. Touch the right stud, now, and the whole side of the house would be blown out, was that it? Khalid ran his hand along the butt.
“There’s a safety on it,” Richie said. “The little red button. There. That. Mind you don’t hit it by accident. What we have here, boy, is nothing less than a rocket-powered grenade gun. A bomb-throwing machine, virtually. You wouldn’t believe it, because it’s so skinny, but what it hurls is a very graceful little projectile that will explode with almost incredible force and cause an extraordinary amount of damage, altogether extraordinary. I know because I tried it. It was amazing, seeing what that thing could do.”
“Is it loaded now?”
“Oh, yes, yes, you bet your little brown rump it is! Loaded and ready! An absolutely diabolical Entity-killing machine, the product of months and months of loving work by a little band of desperados with marvelous mechanical skills. As stupid as they come, though, for all their skills. —Here, boy, let me have that thing before you set it off somehow.”
Khalid handed it over.
“Why stupid?” he asked. “It seems very well made.”
“I said they were skillful. This is a goddamned triumph of miniaturization, this little cannon. But what makes them think they could kill an Entity at all? Don’t they imagine anyone’s ever tried? Can’t be done, Ken, boy. Nobody ever has, nobody ever will.”
Unable to take his eyes from the gun, Khalid said obligingly, “And why is that, sir?”
“Because they’re bloody unkillable!”
“Even with something like this? Almost incredible force, you said, sir. An extraordinary amount of damage.”
“It would fucking well blow an Entity to smithereens, it would, if you could ever hit one with it Ah, but the trick is to succeed in firing your shot, boy! Which cannot be done. Even as you’re taking your aim, they’re reading your bloody mind, that’s what they do. They know exactly what you’re up to, because they look into our minds the way we would look into a book. They pick up all your nasty little unfriendly thoughts about them. And then—bam!—they give you the bloody Push, and you’re done for, piff paff poof. We know of four cases, at least. Attempted Entity assassination. Trying to take a shot as an Entity went by. Found the bodies, the weapons, just so much trash by the roadside.” Richie ran his hands up and down the gun, fondling it almost lovingly. “—This gun here, it’s got an unusually great range, terrific sight, will fire upon the target from an enormous distance. Still wouldn’t work, I wager you. They can do their telepathy on you from three hundred yards away. Maybe five hundred. Who knows, maybe a thousand. Still, a damned good thing that we broke this ring up in time. Just in case they could have pulled it off somehow.”
“It would be bad if an Entity was killed, is that it?” Khalid asked.
Richie guffawed. “Bad? Bad? It would be a bloody catastrophe. You know what they did, the one time anybody managed to damage them in any way? No, how in hell would you know? It was right around the moment you were getting born. Some buggerly American idiots launched a laser attack from space on an Entity building. Maybe killed a few, maybe didn’t, but the Entities paid us back by letting loose a plague on us that wiped out damn near half the people in the world. Right here in Salisbury they were keeling over like flies. Had it myself. Thought I’d die. Damned well hoped I
would
, I felt so bad. Then I arose from my bed of pain and threw it off. But we don’t want to risk bringing down another plague, do we, now? Or any other sort of miserable punishment that they might choose to inflict. Because they certainly will inflict one. One thing that has been clear from the beginning is that our masters will take no shit from us, no, lad, not one solitary molecule of shit.”
He crossed the room and unfastened the door of the cabinet that had held Khan’s Mogul Palace’s meager stock of wine in the long-gone era when this building had been a licensed restaurant. Thrusting the weapon inside, Richie said, “This is where it’s going to spend the night. You will make no reference to its presence when Aissha gets back. I’m expecting Arch to come here tonight, and you will make no reference to it to him, either. It is a top secret item, do you hear me? I show it to you because I love you, boy, and because I want you to know that your father has saved the world this day from a terrible disaster, but I don’t want a shred of what I have shared with you just now to reach the ears of another human being. Or another inhuman being for that matter. Is that clear, boy? Is it?”
“I will not say a word,” said Khalid.
And said none. But thought quite a few.
All during the evening, as Arch and Richie made their methodical way through Arch’s latest bottle of rare pre-Conquest whiskey, salvaged from some vast horde found by the greatest of good luck in a Southampton storehouse, Khalid clutched to his own bosom the knowledge that there was, right there in that cabinet, a device that was capable of blowing the head off an Entity, if only one could manage to get within firing range without announcing one’s lethal intentions.
Was there a way of achieving that? Khalid had no idea.
But perhaps the range of this device was greater than the range of the Entities’ mind-reading capacities. Or perhaps not. Was it worth the gamble? Perhaps it was. Or perhaps not.
Aissha went to her room soon after dinner, once she and Khalid had cleared away the dinner dishes. She said little these days, kept mainly to herself, drifted through her life like a sleepwalker. Richie had not laid a violent hand on her again, since that savage evening several years back, but Khalid understood that she still harbored the pain of his humiliation of her, that in some ways she had never really recovered from what Richie had done to her that night. Nor had Khalid.
He hovered in the hall, listening to the sounds from his father’s room until he felt certain that Arch and Richie had succeeded in drinking themselves into their customary stupor. Ear to the door: silence. A faint snore or two, maybe.