Authors: Philip K. Dick
Tags: #Fiction, #Political Fiction, #Presidents' Spouses, #First Ladies, #Androids
“Move along,” the NP man said to the two of them.
Still—pointlessly—holding their jugs, Al Miller and Ian Duncan moved step by step down the corridor, in the direction of the outer door and the waiting black medical van which they knew lay beyond.
It was night, and Ian Duncan found himself at a deserted street corner, cold and shivering, blinking in the glaring white light of an urban pubtrans loading platform. What am I doing here? he asked himself, bewildered. He looked at his wristwatch; it was eight o’clock. I’m supposed to be at the All Souls Meeting, aren’t I? he thought dazedly.
I can’t miss another one, he realized. Two in a row—it’s a terrible fine; it’s economically ruinous. He began to walk.
The familiar building, the Abraham Lincoln with all its network of towers and windows, lay extended ahead; it was not far and he hurried, breathing deeply, trying to keep a good steady pace. It must be over, he thought. The lights in the great central auditorium were not lit. Damn it, he breathed in despair.
“All Souls over?” he said to the doorman as he entered the lobby, his identification held out to the official reader.
“You’re a little confused, Mr. Duncan,” Vince Strikerock said. “All Souls was last night; this is Friday.”
Something’s gone wrong, Ian realized. But he said nothing; he merely nodded and hurried on toward the elevator.
As he emerged from the elevator on his own floor, a door opened and a furtive figure beckoned to him. “Hey, Duncan!”
It was a building resident named Corley, who he barely knew. Because an encounter like this could be disastrous, Ian approached him with wariness. “What is it?”
“A rumor,” Corley said in a rapid, fear-filled voice. “About your last relpol test—some irregularity. They’re going to rouse you at five or six A.M. tomorrow and spring a surprise relpol quiz on you.” He glanced up and down the hall. “Study the late 1980s and the religio-collectivist movements in particular. Got it?”
“Sure,” Ian said, with gratitude. “And thanks a lot. Maybe I can do the same—” He broke off, because Corley had scuttled back into his own apartment again and shut the door. Ian was alone.
Certainly very nice of him, he thought as he walked on. Probably saved my hide, kept me from being forcibly evicted right out of here, forever.
When he reached his apartment he made himself comfortable, with all his reference books on the political history of the United States spread out around him. I’ll study all night, he decided. Because I have to pass that quiz; I have no choice.
To keep himself awake, he turned on the TV. Presently the warm, familiar being, the presence of the First Lady, flowed into existence and began to permeate the room.
“. . . and at our musical tonight,” she was saying, “we will have a saxophone quartet which will play themes from Wagner’s operas, in particular my favorite,
Die Meistersinger
. I believe we will all find that a deeply rewarding and certainly an enriching experience to cherish. And, after that, I have arranged to bring you once again an old favorite of yours, the world-renown cellist, Henri LeClerc, in a program of Jerome Kern and Cole Porter.” She smiled, and at his pile of reference books, Ian Duncan smiled back.
I wonder how it would be to play at the White House, he said to himself. To perform before the First Lady. Too bad I never learned to play any kind of musical instrument. I can’t act, write poems, dance or sing—nothing. So what hope is there for me? Now, if I had come from a musical family, if I had had a father or a mother to teach me . . .
Glumly, he scratched a few notes on the rise of the French Christian-Fascist Party of 1975. And then; drawn as always to the TV set, he put his pen down and turned his chair so that he faced the set. Nicole was now exhibiting a piece of Delft tile which she had picked up, she explained, in a little shop in Schweinfort, Germany. What lovely clear colors it had . . . he watched, fascinated, as her strong, slim fingers caressed the shiny surface of the baked enamel tile.
“See the tile,” Nicole was murmuring in her husky voice. “Don’t you wish you had a tile like that? Isn’t it lovely?”
“Yes,” Ian Duncan said.
“How many of you would like someday to see such a tile?” Nicole asked. “Raise your hands.”
Ian raised his hand hopefully.
“Oh, a whole lot of you,” Nicole said, smiling her intimate, radiant smile. “Well, perhaps later we will have another tour of the White House. Would you like that?”
Hopping up and down in his chair, Ian said, “Yes, I’d like that!”
On the TV screen she was smiling directly at him, it seemed. And so he smiled back. And then, reluctantly, feeling a great weight descend over him, he at last turned back to his reference books. Back to the harsh realities of his daily, endless life.
Against the window of his apartment something bumped and a voice called to him thinly, “Ian Duncan, I don’t have much time!”
Whirling, he saw outside in the night darkness a shape drifting, an egg-like construction that hovered. Within it a man waved at him energetically, still calling. The egg gave off a dull
putt-putt
noise, its jets idling as the man kicked open the hatch of the vehicle and lifted himself out.
Are they after me already on this quiz? Ian Duncan asked himself. He stood up, feeling helpless. So soon . . . I’m not ready, yet.
Angrily, the man in the vehicle spun the jets until their steady white exhaust-firing met the surface of the building; the room shuddered and bits of plaster broke away. The window itself collapsed as the heat of the jets crossed it. Through the gap exposed the man yelled once more, trying to attract Ian Duncan’s dulled faculties.
“Hey, Duncan! Hurry up! I have your buddy already; he’s on his way in another ship!” The man, elderly, wearing an expensive natural fiber blue pinstripe suit which was slightly old-fashioned, lowered himself with dexterity from the hovering egg-shaped vehicle and dropped feet-first into the room. “We have to get going if we’re to make it. You don’t remember me? Neither did Al.”
Ian Duncan stared at him, wondering who he was and who Al was.
“Mama’s psychologists did a good job of working you over,” the elderly man panted. “That Bethesda—it must be quite a place.” He came toward Ian, caught hold of him by the shoulder. “The NP’s are shutting down all the jalopy jungles; I have to beat it to Mars and I’m taking you along with me. Try to pull yourself together; I’m Loony Luke—you don’t remember me now but you will after we’re all on Mars and you see your buddy Al again.
Come on
.” Luke propelled him toward the gap in the wall of the room, the opening which had once been a window, and toward the vehicle—it was called a jalopy, Ian realized—drifting beyond.
“Okay,” Ian said, wondering what he should take with him. What would he need on Mars? Toothbrush, pajamas, a heavy coat? He looked frantically around his apartment, one last inspection of it.
Far off, police sirens sounded.
Luke scrambled back into the jalopy, and Ian followed, taking hold of the elderly man’s extended hand. The floor of the jalopy, he discovered to his surprise, crawled with bright orange bug-like creatures whose antennae waved at him as he sprawled among them. Papoolas, he remembered. Or something like that.
You’ll be all right now,
the papoolas were thinking in unison.
Don’t worry; Loony Luke got you away in time, just barely in
time. Relax.
“Yes,” Ian agreed. He lay back against the side of the jalopy and relaxed, as the ship shot upward into the night emptiness and the new planet which lay ahead.
THIRTEEN
“I certainly would like to leave the White House,” Richard Kongrosian said peevishly to the NP men guarding him. He felt irritable and also apprehensive; he stood as far from Commissioner Pembroke as possible. It was Pembroke, he knew, who was in charge.
Wilder Pembroke said, “Mr. Judd, the A.G. Chemie psych-chemist, will be here any minute. So please be patient, Mr. Kongrosian.” His voice was calm but not soothing; it had a hard edge which made Kongrosian even more unstrung.
“This is intolerable,” Kongrosian said. “You guarding me like this, watching everything I do. I simply can’t tolerate being watched; I have
paranoia sensitiva
; don’t you realize that?”
There was a knock at the door of the room. “Mr. Judd to see Mr. Kongrosian,” a White House attendant called in.
Pembroke opened the door of the room, admitting Merrill Judd, who entered briskly, official briefcase in hand. “Mr. Kongrosian. Glad to meet you face to face, at last.”
“Hello, Judd,” Kongrosian murmured, feeling sullen about everything which was going on around him.
“I have here with me some new, experimental medication for you,” Judd informed him, opening the briefcase and reaching within. “The imipramine hcl—twice a day, 50 mg each. That’s the orange tablet. The brown tablet is our new methabyretinate oxide, 100 mg per—”
“Poison,” Kongrosian broke in.
“Pardon?” Alertly, Judd cupped his ear.
“I won’t take it; this is part of a carefully-laid plot to kill me.” There was no doubt of it in Kongrosian’s mind. He had realized it as soon as Judd had arrived with the official A.G. Chemie briefcase.
“Not at all,” Judd said, glancing sharply at Pembroke. “I assure you. We’re trying to help you. It’s our job to help you, sir.”
“Is that why you kidnapped me?” Kongrosian said.
“I did not kidnap you,” Judd said cautiously. “Now, as to—”
“You’re all working together,” Kongrosian said. And he had an answer for it; he had been preparing for the exact moment when the time was right. Summoning his psychokinetic talent he lifted both his arms and directed the power of his attention toward the psych-chemist Merrill Judd.
The psych-chemist rose from the floor, dangled in the air; still clutching his official A.G. Chemie briefcase, he gaped at Kongrosian and Pembroke. Eyes protruding, he tried to speak, and then Kongrosian whisked him at the closed door of the room. The door, wooden and hollow-core, splintered as Judd swept against it and
through
it; he disappeared from Kongrosian’s sight then. Only Pembroke and his NP men remained in the room with him.
Clearing his throat, Wilder Pembroke said huskily, “Perhaps—we should see how badly he’s hurt.” As he started toward the ruined door he added, over his shoulder, “I would think that A.G. Chemie will be somewhat upset by this. To put it mildly.”
“The hell with A.G. Chemie,” Kongrosian said. “I want my own doctor; I don’t trust anybody you bring in here. How do I know he was actually even from A.G. Chemie? He was probably an impostor.”
“In any case,” Pembroke said, “you hardly have to worry about him, now.” Gingerly, he opened the remains of the wooden door.
“Was he truly from A.G. Chemie?” Kongrosian asked, following him out into the corridor.
“You talked to him on the phone yourself; it was you who called him into this initially.” Pembroke seemed angry and agitated, now, as he searched the corridor for a sign of Judd. “Where is he?” he demanded.
“What in the name of god did you
do with him,
Kongrosian?”
Kongrosian said, with reluctance, “I moved him downstairs to the subsurface laundry room. He’s all right.”
“Do you know what the von Lessinger principle is?” Pembroke asked him, eyeing him tensely.
“Of course.”
Pembroke said, “As a member of the higher NP, I have access to von Lessinger equipment. Would you like to know whom you’ll next mistreat by means of your psychokinetic ability?”
“No,” Kongrosian said.
“Knowing would be to your advantage. Because you might want to stop yourself; it will be a maneuver you’ll regret.”
“Who’s the person?” Kongrosian asked, then.
“Nicole,” Pembroke said. “You can tell me something, if you want. Under what operating theory have you refrained, up until now, from using your talent politically?”
“‘Politically’?” Kongrosian echoed. He did not see how he had used it politically.
“Politics,” Pembroke said, “if I may remind you, is the art of getting other people to do what you want them to, by force if necessary. Your application of psychokinesis just now was rather unusual in its directness . . . but nevertheless it was a political act.”
Kongrosian said, “I always felt it was wrong to use it on people.”
“But now—”
“Now,” Kongrosian said, “the situation is different. I’m a captive; everyone’s against me. You’re against me, for instance. I may have to use it against you.”
“Please don’t,” Pembroke said. He smiled tightly. “I’m merely a salaried employee of a government agency, doing my job.”
“You’re a lot more than that,” Kongrosian said. “I’d be interested in knowing how I’m going to use my talent against Nicole.” He could not imagine himself doing that; he was too awed by her. Too reverent.
Pembroke said, “Why don’t we wait and see.”
“It strikes me as strange,” Kongrosian said, “that you’d go to the trouble of using von Lessinger’s equipment merely to find out about me. After all, I’m utterly worthless, an outcast from humanity. A freak that should never have been born.”
“That’s your illness talking,” Pembroke said. “When you say that. And down inside your mind somewhere you know that.”
“But you must admit,” Kongrosian persisted, “that it’s unusual for someone to use the von Lessinger machinery as you evidently have. What’s your reason?” Your
real
reason, he thought to himself.
“My task is to protect Nicole. Obviously, since you will soon be making an overt move in her direction—”
“I think you’re lying about that,” Kongrosian interrupted. “I could never do anything like that. Not to Nicole.”
Wilder Pembroke raised an eyebrow. And then he turned and rang the elevator button to begin his trip downstairs to search for the psych-chemist from A.G. Chemie.
“What are you up to?” Kongrosian asked. He was highly suspicious of the NP men anyhow, always had been and always would be, and particularly so ever since the NP had shown up at the jalopy jungle and seized him. And this man impelled an even greater suspiciousness and hostility in him, although he did not understand quite why.
“I’m just doing my job,” Pembroke repeated.
And still, for reasons he did not consciously know, Kongrosian did not believe him.
“How do you now expect to get well?” Pembroke asked him as the elevator doors opened. “Since you’ve destroyed the A.G. Chemie man—” He entered the elevator, beckoning Kongrosian to join him.
“My own doctor. Egon Superb; he can still cure me.”
“Do you want to see him? It can be arranged.”
“Yes!” Kongrosian said eagerly. “As soon as possible. He’s the only one in the universe who isn’t against me.”
“I could take you there myself,” Pembroke said, a thoughtful expression on his flat, hard face. “
If
I thought it was a good idea . . . and I’m not very certain of that, at this point.”
“If you don’t take me,” Kongrosian said, “I’ll pick you up with my talent and set you down in the Potomac.”
Pembroke shrugged. “Doubtless you could. But according to the von Lessinger equipment, you probably won’t. I’ll take the chance.”
“I don’t think the von Lessinger principle can deal properly with us Psis,” Kongrosian said irritably as he also entered the elevator. “At least, I’ve heard that said. We act as acausal factors.” This was a difficult man to deal with, a strong man whom he actively did not like. Like—or trust.
Maybe it’s just the police mentality, he conjectured as the two of them descended.
Or maybe it’s more.
Nicole, he thought. You know darn well I could never do anything to you; it’s utterly out of the question—my entire world would collapse. It would be like injuring my own mother or sister, someone sacred.
I’ve got to keep my talent in check,
he realized. Please, dear Lord, help me keep my psychokinetic ability in check whenever I’m around Nicole. Okay?
As the elevator descended he waited, fervently, for an answer.
“By the way,” Pembroke broke into his thoughts suddenly. “About your smell. It seems to be gone.”
“Gone!” And then the implication of the NP man’s remark struck him. “You mean you could detect my phobic body odor? But that’s impossible! It can’t actually be—” He ceased talking, confused. “And you say now it’s gone.” He did not understand.
Pembroke eyed him. “I would certainly have noticed it here, cooped up with you in this elevator. Of course, it may come back. I’ll be glad to let you know if it does.”
“Thank you,” Kongrosian said. And thought, Somehow this man is getting the upper hand over me. Constantly. He’s a master psychologist . . . or is it that, by his definition, he’s a master political strategist?
“Cigarette?” Pembroke extended his pack.
Horrified, Kongrosian leaped back. “No. They’re illegal— too dangerous. I wouldn’t dare smoke one.”
“Always danger,” Pembroke said, as he lit up. “Right? A constantly dangerous world. You must be ceaselessly careful. What you need, Kongrosian, is a bodyguard. A squad of handpicked, rigorously-trained NP men, with you at all times.” He added, “Otherwise—”
“Otherwise you don’t think I have much of a chance.”
Pembroke nodded. “Very little, Kongrosian. And I say this on the basis of my use of the von Lessinger apparatus.”
From then on the two of them descended in silence.
The elevator stopped. The doors slid back. They were in the subsurface level of the White House. Kongrosian and Pembroke stepped out into the hall—
A man, whom both of them recognized, stood waiting for them. “I want you to listen, Kongrosian,” Bertold Goltz said to the pianist.
Swiftly, in a fraction of a second, the NP Commissioner had his pistol out. He aimed at Goltz and fired.
But Goltz had already vanished.
A piece of folded paper lay on the floor where he had stood. Goltz had dropped it. Stooping, Kongrosian reached for it.
“Don’t touch that!” Pembroke said sharply.
It was too late. Kongrosian had it, was unfolding it. It read:
Pembroke leads you to your death.
“Interesting,” Kongrosian said. He passed the slip of paper to the NP man; Pembroke put his pistol away and accepted it, scrutinizing it, his face distorted with outrage.
From behind them, Goltz said, “Pembroke has waited months for you to be taken into custody, here at the White House. Now there isn’t any time left.”
Spinning, Pembroke snatched at his pistol, brought it out and fired. Again Goltz, grinning with scornful bitterness, disappeared. You’ll never get him, Kongrosian realized. Not as long as he has the von Lessinger equipment at his disposal.
Time left for what? he wondered. What’s going to happen? Goltz seemed to know and probably Pembroke knows, too; they have identical equipment available to them.
And, he thought, how does it involve me?
Me—and my talent, which I’ve sworn to keep in check. Does this mean I’m going to use it?
He had no intuition that this was precisely what it meant. And there was probably little he could do about it.
From outside the house Nat Flieger heard children playing. They chanted some sort of dirge-like rhythm, unfamiliar to him. And he had been in the music business all his life. No matter how hard he tried he could not make out the words; they were strangely blurred, run-together.
“Mind if I look?” he asked Beth Kongrosian, rising to his feet from the creaky wicker chair.
Turning pale, Beth Kongrosian said, “I—would rather you didn’t. Please don’t look at the children.
Please!
”
Nat said gently, “We’re a recording company, Mrs. Kongrosian. Anything and everything in the way of music is our business.” He absolutely could not refrain from going to the window to look; the instinct, right or wrong, was in his blood—it came before civility or kindness, before all else. Peering out, he saw them, seated in a circle. And they were all chuppers. He wondered which was Plautus Kongrosian. They all looked so much alike to him. Perhaps the little boy in yellow shorts and T-shirt off to the side. Nat motioned to Molly and Jim; they joined him at the window.
Five Neanderthal children, Nat thought. Plucked out of time; a sequence from the past snipped out and pasted here in this day and age, in the present, for us of EME to overhear, to record. I wonder what sort of an album cover our art department will want to put on this. He shut his eyes, no longer wishing to face the scene outside the window.
But we will go ahead, he knew. Because we came here to get something; we can’t—or at least we don’t want to—go back with nothing at all. And—
this is important
. This has to be dealt with, professionally. Perhaps it’s more important even than Richard Kongrosian, good as he is. And we can’t afford the luxury of paying attention to our delicate sensibilities.
“Jim,” he said presently. “Get out the Ampek F-a2. Right away. Before they stop.”
Beth Kongrosian said, “I won’t let you record them.”
“We will,” Nat said to her. “We’re used to this, in folk music sessions done on the spot. It’s been tested in USEA courts many times and the recording firm has always won.” He followed after Jim Planck, in order to help assemble their recording ear.
“Mr. Flieger, do you understand what they are?” Mrs. Kongrosian called after him.
“Yes,” he said. And continued on.
Presently they had the Ampek F-a2 set up; the organism pulsed sleepily, undulating its pseudopodia as if hungry. The moist weather seemed to have affected it little; it was, if anything, torpid.
Appearing beside them, composed, her face rigid with determination, Beth Kongrosian said in a low voice, “Listen to me, please. At night, in fact tonight in particular, there’s going to be a gathering of them. The adults. At their hall, back in the woods very near here, on the red-rock side road they all use; it belongs to them, their organization. There will be a great deal of dancing and singing. What you want exactly. Much more than what you’ll find here with these little children. So please; wait and record that instead.”
Nat said, “We’ll get both.” And signaled Jim to carry the Ampek F-a2 toward the circle of children.
“I’ll put you up for the night, here in the house,” Beth Kongrosian said, hurrying after him. “Very late, around two in the morning, they sing wonderfully—it’s hard to understand the words but—” She caught hold of his arm. “Richard and I have been trying to train our child away from this. The children, as young as they are, don’t really participate; you won’t get the real thing from them. When you see the adults—” She broke off and then finished drably, “Then you’ll see what I mean.”
Molly said to Nat, “Let’s wait.”
Hesitating, Nat turned to Jim Planck. Jim nodded.
“Okay,” Nat said to Mrs. Kongrosian. “If you’ll take us to their hall, where they meet. And see that we get in.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will. Thank you, Mr. Flieger.”
I feel guilty, Nat said to himself. But he said aloud, “Okay. And you—” His guilt overcame him, then. “Heck, you don’t have to put us up. We’ll stay in Jenner.”
“I’d like to,” Beth Kongrosian said. “I’m terribly lonely; I need the company, when Richard’s away. You don’t know what it means to have people from—the outside come in here for a little while.”
The children, noticing the adults, broke off suddenly, shyly; they peeped at Nat and Molly and Jim wide-eyed. It would probably not have been possible to get them down anyhow, Nat realized. So he had lost nothing by his deal.
“Does this frighten you?” Beth Kongrosian asked him.
He shrugged. “No. Not really.”
“The government knows about it,” she said. “There have been many ethnologists and god knows what else sent out here to investigate. They all say it proves one thing; in prehistoric times, during the epoch before Cro-Magnon Man appeared—” She ceased, helplessly.
“They interbred,” Nat finished for her. “Like the skeletons found in the caves in Israel indicated.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Possibly all the so-called sub-races. The races that didn’t survive. They were absorbed by
Homo Sapiens
.”
“I’d made a different guess,” Nat said. “It would seem more to me that the so-called sub-races were mutations which existed for a short while and then dwindled away because they couldn’t adapt as well. Perhaps there were radiation problems in those days.”
“I don’t agree,” Beth Kongrosian said. “And work they’ve done with the von Lessinger equipment tends to back me up. By your theory they would just be—sports. But I believe they’re true races . . . I think they evolved separately from the original primate, from Proconsul. And at last came together, when
Homo
Sapiens
migrated into their hunting lands.”
Molly said, “Could I get another cup of coffee? I’m cold.” She shivered. “This damp air gets me down.”
“We’ll go back into the house,” Beth Kongrosian agreed. “Yes, you’re not accustomed to the weather up here; I understand. I remember how it was when we first moved here.”
“Plautus was not born here,” Nat said.
“No.” She nodded. “We came here because of him.”
“Wouldn’t the government have taken him?” Nat asked. “They maintain special schools for radiation survivors.” He avoided using the exact term; it would have been radiation
sports
.
“We thought he would be happier here,” Beth Kongrosian said. “Most of them—the chuppers, as they speak of themselves—are here. They’ve come from every part of the world, during the last two decades.”
The four of them re-entered the warm, dry house.
“He’s actually a lovely-looking little boy,” Molly said. “Very sweet and sensitive-looking, despite—” She faltered.
“The jaw and the shambling gait,” Mrs. Kongrosian said matter of factly, “haven’t fully formed. That begins in about the thirteenth year.” In the kitchen she began to heat water for their coffee.
Strange, what we’re going to bring back from this trip, Nat Flieger thought to himself. So different from what we and Leo expected.
He thought,
I wonder how it’ll sell
.
Amanda Conners’ sweet, pure voice came from the intercom, startling Dr. Egon Superb as he sat examining his schedule of tomorrow’s appointments. “Someone to see you, doctor. A Mr. Wilder Pembroke.”
Wilder Pembroke! Dr. Superb sat up rigidly, and laid aside his appointment book reflexively. What did the NP official want this time? He felt immediate, instinctive wariness and he said into the intercom, “Just a minute, please.”
Has he finally come to
shut me down?
he wondered. Then I must have seen that one, particular patient without realizing it. The one I exist to serve; or rather, not to serve. The man I’m here to fail with.
Sweat stood out on his forehead as he thought, So now my career, like that of every other psychoanalyst in the USEA, ends. What’ll I do now? Some of his colleagues had fled to Communist countries, but surely they were no better off there. Several had emigrated to Luna and Mars. And a few—a surprisingly large “few”—had applied for work with A.G. Chemie, the organization responsible in the first place for the stricture against them.
He was too young to retire and too old to learn another profession. Bitterly, he thought, So actually I can do nothing. I can’t go on and I can’t quit; it’s a true double-bind, the sort of thing my patients are always getting themselves into. Now he could feel more compassion for them and the messes which they had made of
their
lives.
To Amanda he said, “Send Commissioner Pembroke in.”
The hard-eyed but quiet-spoken NP man, in ordinary street clothes as before, slowly entered the office and seated himself facing Dr. Superb.
“That’s quite a girl you have out there,” Pembroke said, and licked his lips. “I wonder what will become of her. Possibly we—”
“What do you want?” Superb said.
“An answer. To a question.” Pembroke leaned back, got out a gold cigarette case, an antique from the previous century, lit up with his lighter, also an antique. Blowing smoke he made himself comfortable, crossing his legs. And said, “Your patient, Richard Kongrosian, has discovered that he can fight back.”
“Against whom?”
“His oppressors. Us, of course. Anyone else who comes along, for that matter. Here’s what I would like to know. I want to work with Richard Kongrosian but I have to protect myself from him. Frankly, I’m afraid of him, at this point, more afraid of him, doctor, than of anyone else in the world. And I know why—I’ve used von Lessinger’s equipment and I know exactly what I’m talking about.
What’s the key to his mind?
How can I arrange for Kongrosian to be—” Pembroke groped for the word; gesturing, he said, “Reliable. You understand. Obviously, I don’t want to be picked up and set down six feet underground some morning when we have a minor tiff.” His face was pale and he was sitting with brittle stiffness.
After a pause Dr. Superb said, “Now I know who the patient is that I’m waiting for. You lied about the failing, I’m not supposed to fail. In fact I’m needed vitally. And the patient is quite sane.”
Pembroke regarded him intently but said nothing.
“
You’re the patient.
And you were totally aware of it, all along. Through you I’ve been misled. From the beginning.”
After a time Pembroke nodded.
“And this is not government business,” Superb said. “This is an arrangement of your own. It has nothing to do with Nicole.” At least not directly, he thought.
“Be careful,” Pembroke said. He got out his service pistol and held it loosely in his lap, but with his hand close to it.
“I can’t tell you how to control Kongrosian. I can’t control him myself; you’ve seen that.”
“But
you
would know,” Pembroke said, “assuming anyone would,
if
I can work with him; you know that much about him.” He stared at Superb, his eyes clear and unwinking. Waiting.
“You’d have to tell me what you intend to propose to him.”
Pembroke, picking up his gun and holding it pointed directly at Dr. Superb, said, “Tell me how he feels about Nicole.”
“She’s a Magna Mater figure to him. As she is to all of us.”
“‘Magna Mater.’” Pembroke leaned forward intently. “What’s that?”
“The great primordial mother.”
“So in other words he idolizes her. She’s like a goddess to him, not mortal. How would he react—” Pembroke hesitated. “Suppose Kongrosian suddenly began a
Ge
, a real one, possessing one of the most carefully-guarded government secrets. That Nicole died years ago, that this so-called ‘Nicole’ is an actress. A girl named Kate Rupert.”
Superb’s ears buzzed. He studied Pembroke, and knew one thing, knew it for the absolute reality it was. When this interchange was over, Pembroke would kill him.
“Because,” Pembroke said, “that’s the truth.” He shoved his gun back into its holster, then,
“Would he lose his awe of her,
then?
Would he be able to—cooperate?”
After a time Superb said, “Yes. He would. Definitely so.”
Visibly, Pembroke relaxed. He ceased to tremble and some color returned to his thin, flat face. “Good. And I hope you’re disbursing the truth, doctor, because if you aren’t I’ll make my way back here, no matter what happens, and destroy you.” All at once he rose to his feet. “Goodbye.”
Superb said, “Am—I now out of business?”
“Of course. Why not?” Pembroke smiled composedly. “What good are you to anybody? You know that, doctor. Your hour has passed. An amusing pun, in that you—”
“Suppose I tell what you just now told me.”
“Oh, please do. It’ll make my job much easier. You see, doctor, I intend to make public that particular Geheimnis to the
Bes
. And, simultaneously, Karp und Sohnen Werke will reveal the other.”
“What other?”
“You’ll have to wait,” Pembroke said. “Until Anton and Felix Karp feel themselves ready.” He opened the office door. “I’ll see you again soon, doctor. Thanks for the assistance.” The door closed after him.
I have learned, Dr. Superb realized, the ultimate secret of the state. I am now at the top rung of
Ge
society.