The Transvection Machine (10 page)

The great advantage of the sea-rail was that it could rise from the water’s surface and run easily across land, as it did in Egypt and Panama. And of course, it was fast. The Baltimore-Brest run took just over six hours, about the time jet aircraft took to cross the Atlantic back in the 1970s. If the sea-rail was slower than the rocketjets of the twenty-first century, it was also far less expensive.

Crader enjoyed traveling by sea-rail because it was easy to strike up friendships in the informal atmosphere of the game rooms or the video theater. Less than an hour out of Baltimore, while soft computerized music played in the background, a slim bearded minister approached him at the skull-pool table and offered to play him a game. Crader was pleased. “It’s more fun with two,” he said.

The minister held out a hand. “I’m George Bails, from Richmond.”

“Carl Crader, New York.” He mumbled the introduction, hoping the minister wouldn’t connect it with the lurid telenewsmagazine accounts of the Computer Cops.

“This is something of a vacation for me,” Bails told him. “First time away in five years.”

“You have a parish in Richmond?”

“More or less. I work among the poor. There are always poor to work among.”

Crader hit the skull-ball a careful, spinning shot that sent it bouncing over the traces. “I thought the government poverty programs had eliminated all that.”

The minister scoffed, then followed up with an equally skillful shot. “They’ve had poverty programs for a hundred years, and what good has it done? True, we now have a black upper class, and racial intermarriage is commonplace, but there are still slums in every major city.”

Crader shot again, just missing a grand slam. “If there are poor, the condition is of their own making. The government has assistance programs to carry a person from cradle to grave. All he has to do is sign up.”

George Bails nodded. “That’s all. But you’d be amazed at just how many of those people would rather remain outside the system. They’d rather starve than have a computer tell them how much they can eat each month.”

“Then that’s their hard luck,” Crader said, making the words harsher than he’d intended.

After the game they drifted together into the lounge, while Bails told him something of the problems of the modern urban ministry. Crader said very little about his own position, describing it only as dealing with computers. But after a time he did ask, “Are you staying in Europe?”

“No, no,” the minister told him. “I’m going on to the Middle East.”

“I’m going there myself,” Crader admitted, shifting his gaze from the blurred view of ocean whitecaps as they rocketed along at better than five hundred miles an hour.

“Oh? Where?”

Crader hesitated and then said, “A resort island. Plenish, in the Indian Ocean.”

“Plenish! I’ve heard it’s quite nice there. Climate almost as good as Easter Island, and without those damned sun mirrors.”

“That’s what I’ve heard, too.”

“Man-made, isn’t it? Or machine-made, anyway. The sea-rail takes you to it?”

“That’s right.”

Minister Bails considered for a moment. “Perhaps I could stop off there for a day myself. Always wanted to see the place.”

They changed to the Middle East sea-rail at Brest, and in a few hours were heading east across the Mediterranean. It was warm and sunny here, even for late October, and when the rails dipped toward shore they could see people on the beaches, blurred figures too soon gone. It was an odd experience, because he’d always considered sea-rail the scenic way to travel. Now, seated next to the rambling Minister Bails, he was aware only of the speed with which they traveled through space on friction-free rails.

“I suppose the old-time jets were really more scenic,” he observed at one point. “At least they were up higher, and you got more of a view of the land.”

Bails shifted in his contour seat. “The idea of scenic trips by sea-rail is another dream of modern life. They’re only scenic because the sea-rail companies say they are. Although I do imagine all this blur of color would be nice for someone high on hallucinogens.”

It was night by the time they crossed the northern tip of Egypt and dipped low over the Red Sea. Here, along the desert heights, there was little to be seen in the darkness. Though India was urbanized and the African Federation was thriving, the desert was still the desert along this stretch, lit only by the occasional flare of an automated oil well. The Empty Quarter was as empty as it had been a century earlier.

But the speed of their rockettrain made it a short night, and as dawn broke through the scattered eastern clouds, Crader could see the Indian Ocean beneath them. He nudged the dozing minister and pointed at the electronic readout that had just flashed on.

“Plenish is the next stop, if you’re joining me for a day or two.”

Bails rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Think I will, if you don’t mind.”

Crader didn’t mind at all. The company of a minister would be a perfect cover for his reconnoitering. He pulled his travel-pack from the overhead locker and prepared to exit. The rocket train, still fifty miles from its stop, had already begun to slacken speed. He was about to detrain on the island of Plenish.

A syndicate headed by two Greek billionaires had built Plenish out of the ocean during the early years of the twenty-first century. It was not quite so difficult a task as it might have seemed, since they began with an extinct volcano just beneath the surface and added landfill to it until some 375 acres of man-made island emerged. On this had been constructed an eight-hundred-room resort hotel and a scattering of fine restaurants. There was a theater for entertainment, and a gambling casino for those so inclined. Two aqua-golf courses lay just off shore, and one could follow the progress of the games while sunning on the beaches.

Because Plenish was too small for a rocketjet landing strip, the island could only be reached by rocketcopters and sea-rail, and occasional yachts of those still wealthy enough to afford them. It was truly an island paradise, not at all the sort of place where one would expect to find a revolutionary group of any sort. Stepping ashore from the sea-rail, Carl Crader’s first thought was that surely there’d been some mistake.

“Smell that salt air!” Minister Bails marveled, taking a deep breath. “Everything they said about this place is true!”

They dined together that evening, seated on the terrace of the hotel, overlooking the water. The food—broiled swordfish from the ocean—was good, and the conversation pleasant, but Crader was anxious to get on with the investigation. After dinner he excused himself and went down to the registration desk. There was no Euler Frost registered at the hotel, but the assistant manager informed him of a number of private homes and apartments that lined the island’s north shore. Perhaps the man he sought could be there.

Crader took a stroll through the warm evening air, keeping casually to the seawall while he headed toward the north end of the island. There were indeed a few houses here—big, elaborate mansions which seemed more in keeping with the twentieth century than the twenty-first. And there were apartment buildings, too. He consulted a listing of tenants at the entrance to one, but there was no Frost listed.

He strolled back to the island’s resort area, pausing to inspect the elaborate layout of the gambling casino. There were dice tables and card counters, and the electronic roulette which was so popular on the Riviera. But he saw no one who resembled the missing Frost. He even checked the vision-phone listings for the island, but of course there was no Frost.

Back at his hotel, he ordered a drink at the electric bar, then asked the barman, “Where would I find some of the HAND people?”

“What, sir?” the barman asked, looking puzzled.

“HAND,” Crader repeated. “It’s important I contact them.”

The barman shook his head and walked away. After a few moments he came back, drying the bar with a hand vacuum. “What is your room number, please, sir?” he asked quietly.

“546.”

“Go there. Someone will contact you.”

Crader nodded and finished his drink. He took his time about leaving, but finally drifted out. He crossed the plush lobby quickly and boarded the electronic elevator. In his fifth floor room he settled down to wait, studying the changing patterns of lights in the harbor below.

In ten minutes the door chime sounded, and he rose to answer it. Minister Bails was standing in the hallway, holding a blue plastic bag. “Oh, Crader! I just have to show you something I purchased today.”

“I was expecting someone else,” Crader mumbled, but he stepped aside to let the minister enter. “What have you got there?”

Bails closed the door behind him. “It was the most amazing bargain, really. …”

Crader had walked back to the center of the room, pacing nervously. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. If you could make it brief, I’m expecting another visitor.”

“That’s been taken care of,” Bails told him.

“What?”

He reached into the plastic bag and came out holding a stunner pistol. “Please, Mr. Crader—I hope you’ll forgive the slight deception. My name is not Bails, and I’m not a minister.”

“What in hell? …”

“My name is Graham Axman, and you are a prisoner of HAND.” He took a step backward and fired the stunner at Carl Crader’s chest.

J
AZINE HAD FEARED THAT
his search for Hubert Ganger might take him all the way back to the Kansas Research Center where the man had first worked with Vander Defoe, but he was in luck. Ganger had an apartment outside Washington, not far from the National Zoological Park.

After calling to arrange an appointment, Jazine went to the place at two o’clock on Thursday afternoon. He’d noted with mild interest the fact that Ganger answered his vision-phone with the vision switch off, but that was not too startling. Many people did it these days, not wanting to be spied upon by strangers. For all Jazine knew, the phone might be located next to the bed.

The inventor proved to be a slim, middle-aged man with close-cropped blond hair and beard, and a manner about him that suggested a younger person. Seeing him amidst the minor luxuries of his apartment told Jazine something about the man—and also something about Mrs. Defoe. For one thing, he had a taste for expensive pieces of massive metal sculpture, some of it mildly obscene.

“Computer Investigation Bureau,” Jazine identified himself. “I called earlier.”

“Yes, yes! Mr. Jazine, isn’t it? I’ve read about the Computer Cops, of course, but I never thought I’d actually meet one!”

“It’s no great treat,” Earl told him. “We’re looking into Secretary Defoe’s death, trying to determine the cause of it.”

“Terrible thing! My God, the man was like an older brother to me!”

“Oh? I’d understood there was some bad feeling about the transvection machine.”

“No, no. Nothing that couldn’t have been patched up! I’ll admit I bore a little resentment at his being made a cabinet member on the basis of
my
invention, but those things happen in life sometimes.”

A philosophical liar, Earl Jazine decided. “How much do you know, as an inventor and scientist, about computerized surgery, Mr. Ganger?”

“Well, very little, actually. I didn’t think this sort of thing could happen, though. I thought it was virtually foolproof. My God, when they can’t even spare a surgeon to operate on a member of the president’s cabinet, the country’s in really bad shape!”

Jazine cleared his throat. “There exists the possibility that Vander Defoe was murdered.”

“Murdered? Who would want to kill old Vander? He was a popular guy.”

“Well, you for one. He did steal your invention.”

“Not really. We were in partnership together and the partnership was dissolved. Happens every day.”

“But all the preliminary work on the invention was done by you, was it not?”

Hubert Ganger nodded. “Yes, but it was untested. It was only theory. I was the first to tell Vander it was an uncertain enterprise. All the testing, and the work with the government, was his doing.”

“Think it would work for interplanetary travel to Venus?”

Ganger shrugged and stroked his beard. “I had my doubts as to whether it would work on Earth, but it does.”

Jazine decided to bear down with his questions. “Mr. Ganger, just what is your relationship with Defoe’s widow?”

“Gretel? She’s a charming young woman, barely out of her twenties. She was his second wife, you know. I see her occasionally, for dinner and such. Nothing more.”

“I understand there was some talk of divorce.”

“Nothing serious. They were separated, of course, but Gretel seemed content with things as they were.”

Jazine shifted to a different approach. “Did you know about Vander Defoe’s impending operation?”

Ganger hesitated. “No. How could I have? I understand the appendicitis attack was quite sudden.”

Possibly another lie, Jazine thought, but he couldn’t be certain this time. “Look, I’ve got a sort of wild idea that I’d like to discuss with you. It’s about the transvection machine.”

The bearded man frowned. “Yes?”

“Well, Vander Defoe was alone in the operating room, being cut into by this computerized machine. No one else was present except a nurse named Bonnie Simmons. Then, without warning, the machine starts cutting up Defoe’s insides. The massive hemorrhage throws him into shock and he dies before help can reach him.”

“That’s what happened?”

“That’s what
seems
to have happened. But the computerized arms of this machine are extremely sensitive. They have to be, to do their job. The slightest jarring can throw them off program and cause a fatal accident.”

“You think the nurse bumped them accidentally?”

“She denies it. But someone else might have bumped them.”

“You just told me she was alone with him.”

“That’s what I want to ask you about—the possibility that the transvection machine could have been used to kill him.”

Ganger was on his feet. “What are you trying to …?”

“Sit down, sit down! I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just asking questions. Would it be possible for someone to be transvected into that operating room, to hit those arms and throw them off program, and then be transvected back to the machine? Nurse Simmons might have seen nothing but a blur of movement if the killer was fast enough.”