Authors: John Brunner
Then, all of a sudden, she reacted. Came running to throw her arms around him. Christ, what's happened to Peg Mankiewicz, the Ice Princess?
She's crying!
Eventually she regained control of herself and drew back with a gasp.
"Oh, lord, I didn't mean to do that! I am sorry!"
"Do what?"
"Spoil your clothes. Look!" She raised her plastic-swathed arm and pointed here, here, here, to the big dirty wet marks she'd left all over his new suit.
"Oh, forget it," Austin said, in a tone that brooked no contradiction.
Standing back, he looked her over, and added after a moment, "Peg, baby, I think something's changed."
"Yes." She smiled. It was a nice smile; it went deep into her dark eyes. "The world broke me into little bits. And when I was being put back together, I had a chance to decide which bit would go where this time around. I like myself better than I used to."
Hastily she peeled off her street gear, shaking it regardless of what might become of the carpet-it was shabby anyhow-then folded it over one arm and took Austin's with the other. A gesture that hadn't been in the repertoire of the old Peg.
"Christ, it's marvelous to see you! Let's go have a-"
And broke off in mid-sentence, her face clouding. "Shit, I forgot.
This time of the afternoon the bar's probably shut. Half the staff has gone sick again. Mono, I think. Well, let's go look anyway; we might be lucky. We can't go up to my room-it's full of bugs."
"Which kind?"
"Both." She gave a wry grin. "Also I'm followed on the street pretty often. But they don't generally bother me in the hotel. They have the desk clerks in their pocket, paid to report my movements."
"Is this the same hotel where-?"
"Where they killed Arriegas and Lucy Ramage? Sure it is."
"But why did you come back to the same place?"
"Because I'm sick and tired of being cowed all the time, looking for a comer to hide in. I've decided to stand my ground, and the hell with them all."
"Is that going to get you very far? Think of the people who've tried before. Lucas Quarrey-Gerry Thorne-Dedmus!"
"And what are they going to do to you?" Peg said, looking levelly into his eyes.
There was an absolute, dead,
terrifying
pause, during which his face was as impassive as a stone mask, all life drained except from his eyes. And they blazed. She felt her mouth open a little and a chill down her spine made her tremble. In his gaze she could read judgment.
When he spoke, it was like lightning striking.
"Crucify me."
Then they were installed at a dark table in a comer and a resentful man in a white jacket was bringing them drinks. The air was perfumed with something disgustingly artificial, but one had to endure that everywhere.
She was frightened. It was not until their order had been delivered that she was able to frame words again, and instead of asking about him-she sensed that she had learned too much too quickly a moment ago-she said, "How did you trace me?"
He explained, in a normal enough tone, seeming relaxed.
"I see. How did Zena take the loss of the lads?"
"Very hard-how else? But Felice is being very kind to her, and so's her husband."
"Have you spoken to anyone else from the wat? Are they going to make a fresh start somewhere else?"
"No, they're just scattering to the other wats," Austin sighed. "I phoned Ralph, and apparently everyone was already so tired, so frustrated…The attack was the last straw. Chances were they couldn't have got through the winter. The
jigras
ruined so many of their crops and what they did have in store was soaked with fire-fighting chemicals.
And do you know what the worst blow of all was?"
She shook her head wordlessly.
"They'd just had a conference about their findings on Puritan. Drew Henker was there, Tony Whitefeather, Rose Shattock. And the only complete copy of the report was burned. Of course, they'll try and do it over, but…"
"Oh, Christ!" Peg clenched her fists. "So it was another Syndicate job, was it? Like Thorne and Quarrey? I'd been wondering."
Austin hesitated. "The grapevine says," he murmured at length, "that the plane was hired by a guy who works for Roland Bamberley."
Peg's mouth rounded into an O. "But it can't be true! He's not that crazy,
is
he? I mean, I know he's convinced his son was kidnapped by Trainites, but surely if he really believed his son was at the wat-"
"Oh, the grapevine carries a lot of garbage," Austin cut in. "It may very well not be true. If it is, he must have meant it as a warning, I guess."
"On the other hand…" Peg stirred her drink absently; the swizzle stick had a fleur-de-lis on the top. "Have you ever met that stinking mother? I did once. Interviewed him. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd rather lose his son than give in to the ransom demand. Afterwards he'd excuse it to himself by saying the boy died for the sake of his country."
"Meaning he'd rather have the profit on the water-purifiers than his son."
"That's right. He's proud of being a businessman, isn't he?" Peg gave a thin sour smite. "Still, there's nothing much we can do about that. Say, do you know who does have the kid?"
Austin spread his hands. "All kinds of crazy rumors in Oakland. I don't believe a one of them."
There was another pause. During it, she plucked up the courage to put a direct question about his own plans. By now, seeing him so much changed yet in some indefinable way so much more like himself than he had been for the past three years-perhaps because his confidence was back-she had almost convinced herself that that fearful instant by the door of the bar had been imaginary.
Still, her voice was unfirm as she said, "Why have you come here, Austin?"
"I guess I've come to the same decision as you. Or not so much come to it. Been driven to it. I have a mission, Peg. I don't want it. But who the hell else is there?"
"Nobody," Peg said instantly and positively. "And there are millions of people all over the country who'd agree."
He gave a brief bitter chuckle. "But that's the irony of it, Peg.
Remember you once asked me whether it bothered me to have my name taken in vain? Well, it does. My God, it does! It was the thing I finally found I couldn't stand any longer.
I'm
not a Trainite!"
Peg waited for him to continue. She was trembling again, but this time from excitement. She'd hoped and prayed for this for so long. He was looking past her, into infinity.
"But then," he said, "Jesus wasn't a Christian, was he?"
She started.
"Think I'm crazy, Peg? I can read it on your face." He leaned forward earnestly. "So do I, much of the time. And yet…I can't be sure. I think perhaps I may really be very sane. If you want me to spell out what's happened to me, I'll have to disappoint you. It can't be described, and if it doesn't show it isn't true. It's just that-well, somewhere under this bald ugly dome of mine there's a sense of certainty. Knowledge. As though this sweaty summer shoveling garbage has taught me something no one else understands." He drew a deep breath.
"Peg, I think I may be able to save the world. Do you believe me?"
She stared at him for a long while. "
I
-" she tried to say, and found the next word wouldn't follow. She went on staring. Calm face. Level mouth. Those odd, unfamiliar halves of eyebrows. The glasses which-where had they been when she saw that lightning in his eyes?
They had seemed to melt away, not be there at all, so she was looking direct into his soul.
Voicelessly, at last: "If anyone can, it must be you."
"Fine." He gave a grave smile and leaned back. "So where do I begin? I came to New York because it seemed logical. I thought maybe the Petronella Page show. If they'll have me."
"If they'll have you?" Peg almost upset her glass. "Lord, they'd throw out Prexy himself to make a slot for Austin Train! Give you the whole hour without commercials!"
"Do you think so?" He blinked at her with surprising shyness. "I've been away so long, and-"
She banged the table with her fist. "Austin, for heaven's sake! Don't you realize you're the most powerful man in the country right now?
Whatever you think about the people who call themselves Trainites, they picked the name because
you exist.
Everyone's on your side who can't afford contract medical care for his kids-black, white, young, old!
You've just crossed the States west to east. What do you see everywhere from Watts to Tomkins Square? The skull and crossbones, right? And the slogan, too-'Stop, you're killing me!' They're waiting for you, Austin! Waiting with their tongues hanging out!"
"I know!" His tone was almost a cry. "But I don't want that!"
"You've got it," she said ruthlessly. "What you do with it is up to you. I tell you this, though, and I mean it. I don't know about saving the world, but I'm damned certain if you don't speak up this country won't get through the winter without civil war."
There was a long cold silence. He punctuated it by uttering a single word: "Yes."
And then let it resume.
Eventually, however, he seemed to reassemble himself from many far-distant places, and said in a casual voice, "You know something odd? I can't remember the name of the guy who hit on that symbol."
"What, the skull and crossbones? I thought you did."
"No, it was the designer they assigned to my books at International Information. He had a little logo, made of it and put it next to the number on every page. And I've forgotten his name. It isn't fair. He ought to have the credit for it."
"Maybe he'd rather not," Peg said.
"In that case I sympathize," Austin grunted, staring at the backs of his hands on the table. "I have this terrible feeling sometimes that I've stopped being myself. Do you understand that? I mean, I've been taken over-
made
over-into the patron saint of bombing, sabotage, arson, murder, God knows what. Maybe rape! If the skull and crossbones has a meaning, it's a warning. Like the international radiation sign.
Instead of that, it's what everyone scrawls when they break a store-window in a fit of drunken rage, break into a bank vault, steal a car. It's an excuse for anything."
"So what's new about that? It happened to the Suffragettes in England. Any petty criminal would write 'Votes for Women' as he left the scene. And people did it deliberately, too, to discredit the movement. Women's Lib had a dose of the same medicine."
"I guess you're right." Absently he was sketching the stylized form of the symbol on the table, using the liquid from the wet rings their glasses had left. There were no coasters. Trainites had branded them a waste of paper, like disposable towels, and this was one case where they'd made their opinion felt.
"Yes," he went on, "but if something could be said to have driven me crazy, it's knowing I've been converted into a person who doesn't exist."
"But you do exist."
"I think so."
"Then get up and prove it." Peg checked her watch. "When do you want to be put on the Page show?"
"You really think you can fix it?"
"I keep telling you, honey! You're past the point at which you have to
fix
that kind of thing! You just ask."
"So let's ask." He drained his glass. "Where's a phone?"
Target:
Grand Forks Missile Base, North Dakota.
Means:
a psychotomimetic drug introduced into supposedly secure groceries delivered to the home of Major Eustace V. Barleyman, one of the officers responsible for the group of eleven Minutemen code-named "Five West Two." He ingested it in a portion of stewed prunes while breakfasting alone after his tour of duty.
Effect:
he nearly killed his son Henry, aged six, and his daughter Patricia, aged four.
Suspect:
any Tupa sympathizer with access to the food.
The implications were serious. Martial law took off like a forest fire.
"Christ, it's going to pull the biggest audience in television history!
The Wednesday after Labor Day, when everyone's broke because of the holiday and staying home! We've got to lean on them!"
"Leaning on ABS is out of the question. Damn Prexy's loud mouth!
First time we ever had a president with
all
the news media gunning for him!"
"Then we'll have to lean on Train. Ah-it is Train, is it? Not one of these stinking ringers?"
"Hell, yes, it all fits. We had a report from LA months ago that he was working on a garbage gang under the name of Smith, but he skipped and after that we got screwed up by the phonies. We had a check run on the prints he left on his beer-glass, though. He's Train."
"Any idea why he's chosen now to come out of hiding?"
"Must be big, that's all we know."
"What would he regard as big enough?"
"Maybe something that would lead to Prexy being impeached?"
"Well, in that case-Ah, shit. You're putting me on."
"I don't know if I am or not, I swear I don't. But it's definite that when ABS start their spot announcements, twenty or thirty million people will head for their TV sets at a run, wanting to be told what to do. Now I know what Germans must have felt like waiting to see how Hitler did in the elections."
"I guess so. Well, he'll just have to vanish, won't he? Get on to Special Operations and-"
"He thought of that."
"What?"
"He's given ABS a tape to be broadcast if he doesn't make the show. We can't get at it; it's in ABS's safety-deposit at Manufacturers Hanover. And if he isn't on the show, you can rely on Page to make maximum capital out of that."
"He's got us over a barrel, then."
"Yes."
Justice:
The inquiry established that there was no psychotomimetic drug in any sample of Nutripon held at the warehouse. It cannot have been this substance which caused the riot at the plant. That has been proven absolutely, even to the satisfaction of the UN.
Defense:
On the other hand, analysis of the groceries at Major Barleyman's home shows that such a drug had been introduced into several items. The characteristics correspond