The Transvection Machine (18 page)

“That’s what we’re waiting to hear.”

“I first met Vander Defoe at a transportation seminar in Krakow. He was already something of an inventor, and fairly well known to the scientific community. He was middle-aged, just married for the second time, and obviously anxious to try something new—not only with women but with his career as well. We became close friends, and I told him of my ideas for a transvection machine. They were all theory at that point, but Vander was quite excited. Before long we’d formed a corporation, and leased laboratory space at the Kansas Research Center.”

“You honestly believed in the transvection machine?” Crader asked him.

“I believed in it as a theoretical possibility. I’ll admit I was somewhat taken aback by Vander’s enthusiasm for the project. We had long discussions about it, and I certainly told him it would never work in outer space. It was around this time that we split up. I was suspicious of his intentions, I’ll admit, but when he performed the first experiments for government witnesses I was the first to praise him. It wasn’t till afterward that I had my suspicions.”

“Gretel Defoe said you were a fraud,” Jazine reminded him.

The bearded man shifted uncomfortably in his form-fit chair. “I said I was suspicious. But I never did anything wrong. Those damned magic tricks were all his doing. There’s no law against pursuing a theory, no matter how farfetched. I enjoyed talking about it with him, arguing with him.”

“It was a dreamworld for you,” Crader said simply.

“No, no! It was more than that. It might have worked.”

“But Defoe couldn’t wait. He made it work.”

Ganger nodded. “I was out of it by that time, as I’ve said. I suppose I knew it was a fraud, but I kept hoping at times that he’d actually done it. I really cursed him when he pulled off that trick with the Chinese girl. That was taking too big a risk.”

“And Gretel Defoe?”

“We turned to each other. Vander had the transvection machine. She and I had nothing.”

“But she knew it was a fraud.”

“Yes. She knew.”

“Why should she protect a man who wanted to divorce her?”

“He wanted a divorce because she was a drug addict, because she’d taken a variety of lovers.”

“Including yourself.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “Including myself. Not at first, but later.”

“Who told Gretel the transvection machine was a fraud?”

“I don’t know.”

Crader leaned forward above his desk, pressing the attack. “Isn’t it true, Ganger, that
you
told her about it? That
you
kept her from agreeing to the divorce? That you both protected Defoe because you were blackmailing him?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“We think you’d better. You’re in deep trouble, Ganger. Even if we can’t link you directly with Defoe’s death, we can make a pretty good case linking you with the murder of Nurse Simmons. At the very least we could have you exiled to Venus for the rest of your natural life.”

“I had nothing to do with the nurse getting killed!”

“Then why were you at the hospital, dressed as a doctor?”

He looked around, perhaps seeking some method of escape. Crader braced himself for sudden movement, but after a moment Ganger relaxed. “Gretel asked me to go there,” he said quietly.

“For what purpose?”

“There were some things missing from Defoe’s clothing when it was returned to her. She thought they might be keeping them in the emergency room.”

“What sort of things?”

“Some letters she’d written him.”

“Blackmail letters?”

“I suppose so.”

“You know so, don’t you?”

Ganger was approaching the crumbling point. He twisted in his chair, stood up, walked a few feet in a circle, and then sat down again. “She sent him two speedletters several months ago, just after he joined the cabinet. She demanded ten thousand dollars a month from him, or she threatened to tell the world the transvection machine was a fraud.”

“I see. Go on.”

He twisted his hands in his lap. “Well, even the suggestion of such a thing would have ruined Vander, because once scientists became suspicious they could easily examine the machines and discover the secret compartments. Vander’s whole scheme depended upon his remaining completely
above
suspicion.”

“So he paid her the money?”

Ganger nodded. “He sent a computerized bank transfer from his account to hers, each month, for ten thousand dollars.”

Jazine gave a low whistle. “But that’s more than he made as a cabinet member.”

“You forget the money Congress appropriated to develop the transvection machine. His company was getting that, and he was pocketing most of it, since very little real work was ever done on the machine. Maybe you remember that Congress specifically excluded him from the conflict-of-interest laws because he was the only person who could develop the invention.”

“But it’s fantastic,” Jazine argued. “Congress would have been investigating him within a year.”

“Probably. But other government frauds, on greater or lesser scales, have gone unnoticed for several years. And as I already told you, he was prepared to flee the country as an exile as soon as the truth came out. Meanwhile, it was worth ten thousand dollars a month to him, and many times that amount, to keep Gretel quiet as long as possible.”

“What did she do with all that money?” Jazine asked. “She hardly needed that much to keep her in men and laudanum tablets.”

Ganger shot him a glance, perhaps weighing how much he knew. “She gave me none of it, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“But she sent you for those letters. How did she know he carried them with him?”

“She knew he’d never leave them in his office, the way the government spies on its own people these days. The same went for his apartment. He might simply have destroyed them, but she couldn’t take the chance they were still around waiting to be found. So she sent me to the hospital.”

“Why did you agree to go, if you were getting no money out of it?”

Ganger shrugged his shoulders. “The transvection machine was mine originally. Frankly, I expected the government to come to me for help on it, now that Vander was dead. Once they discovered it was a fraud, there’d be no chance of that. So it was in my interests to keep the truth a secret.”

“All that money from the government contract—a nice motive for killing Vander Defoe.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Did Gretel?”

He hesitated. “She talked about it—the very afternoon of his death. But I wouldn’t go along with it.”

Crader had come alert. “Did she know about the operation in advance?”

Ganger nodded. “Tromp called her from the New White House when they rushed Vander to the hospital.”

“And what did she do?”

“Nothing. Thought about it, I suppose. I left her shortly after that.”

“You were not together at the time of Defoe’s death?”

“No.”

“So either of you might have killed him.”

“I didn’t, and I’m sure she didn’t, either.”

Crader cleared his throat. It had been a long night, but there were still questions to be asked. “Those letters wouldn’t have remained in the emergency ward. Isn’t it far more likely that you went to the hospital thinking that Nurse Simmons had them?”

“I …”

“And confronted her in the operating room and killed her?”

His hands flew up, protectively. “No! She was dead before I got there! That’s why I went to the lunchroom, to hide! There were police all over the place.”

“But you were going to see her?”

“Gretel wanted me to! She thought the nurse had the letters.”

“Why?”

“She thought the nurse must have killed him, and that was the only motive we could think of.”

“That Nurse Simmons killed him to get those letters and blackmail you two? Blackmail the blackmailers? A pretty farfetched motive for murder.”

“She wanted me to see.”

“All right,” Crader said with a sigh. “But I think we can assume Defoe destroyed the letters.”

Ganger got to his feet once more. “Can I go now?”

Carl Crader motioned to Jazine. “Not quite yet. We’re holding you until a decision is made in Washington. You could be charged with fraud, if nothing else.”

“You don’t want it to get out about the transvection machine!”

“I’m afraid it’s out already,” Crader told him. “An organization called HAND knows the whole story. In fact, they’re the ones who told me.”

Arrangements were made to house Hubert Ganger in a detention cell at the federal internment center on Ellis Island, at least overnight until word came from Washington. It was 4:00
A.M.
by the time the details had been attended to, and Crader saw no point in making the journey back home. Not wanting to awaken his wife, he left her a message on the videophone holding line and settled down in his office. Jazine helped him arrange the emergency bed that slid out from the wall of his inner office.

“I haven’t used this in two years,” Crader complained. “I’m getting too damn old for this all-night business.”

“Come on up to my place, chief. The bed’s a cycled job, a lot more comfortable than this spring thing.”

But Crader shook his head. “Take me too long to get there. I have to reach President McCurdy first thing in the morning and break the news to him.”

“Did HAND really tell you about the transvection machine?”

“In a sense. When they introduced me to the Chinese girl, Gloria Chang, they said she was the reason they didn’t need to kill Ganger. Later, they gave me a message for the president—telling him Gloria was on their side, working with them. They assumed the USAC knew the machine was a fake, you see. I’d just left them and returned to my hotel when I thought I saw Gloria coming out of my room. She was dressed differently and didn’t seem to know me, and the more I thought about it the more I suspected twins. When Mike Sabin came up with the news that Gloria was the transvected girl, it all fit together. Twins meant a trick, a fraud, and that in turn explained why HAND didn’t need to kill Ganger to stop the machine. They knew now there was no machine to stop.”

“How will they use their knowledge?”

“I wish to hell I knew, Earl. All I can tell you is they mean business. They’ve got money behind them and they plan to destroy our computerized society as we know it.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“One more mystery. Until recently they were just a disorganized band of revolutionaries. Now they’ve got a name and a purpose.”

“Russo-Chinese?”

“Somehow I doubt it. They talk as much against them as against the USAC.”

“You think HAND is responsible for killing Bonnie Simmons?”

“That depends on how much we believe Ganger’s story. Right now I don’t know. There are a few other possibilities.”

“Like what, chief?”

Crader smiled and began to undress. “Go home, Earl. You’ve probably got a girl waiting up for you.”

“Not tonight,” Earl said with a grin.

“Get home anyway. And be back here early. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”

“It’s Sunday!” Jazine protested as if just realizing it.

Crader waved him away and climbed into the narrow spring bed. Lumpy and uncomfortable as it was, he drifted into sleep almost at once.

E
ARLY SUNDAY MORNING, HE
met with Axman and the other members of the attack group at a rented gymnasium in the heart of Washington. Still posing as a twelve-man traveling Chin-Chan team, they gathered around a mat while Axman laid out the plans of the Federal Medical Center.

“This is it,” he said quietly, pointing out the features they’d need to recognize. “A direct computer linkup to every hospital and research lab in the country. This is the biggest, and this is our first target.”

“I don’t know,” Frost said again. “The Medical Center does some good, in a way.”

“
All
computers do good in a way.
All
machines increase productivity. There are men in this country who could argue convincingly for any of them. Certainly some will suffer—but wouldn’t people suffer if we blew up a computerized factory? Wouldn’t there be technicians out of work, retailers without products to sell, investors with losses? The dehumanization of this Earth began with the argument that machines and computers could make life easier, could do good! After that, once they were established, any attempt to cut them back was met with an outcry from the Establishment.”

Euler Frost nodded. The words were certainly true. And when he looked about on the streets of the cities, seeing the majority of people content in their life, he had only to remember the discontent on Venus to know the truth. People on Earth were content simply because they’d made the necessary adjustments to a computerized society. They knew no other life, and even the history books said little about the way things had been. If they had, it would have made no difference, because few people read books anymore.

“Is the plan clear to everyone?” Axman inquired. “Are there any questions?”

For the first time, Frost really noticed the other ten men in the group. They were mainly young, under thirty, and drawn from all nationalities. Two were African, one was Japanese, three were disenchanted Russo-Chinese. Axman had introduced Frost as the Venusian member of the team, an introduction which drew much interest. But in truth, he still considered himself an American, or at the very least a citizen of Earth. All of these men around him now were citizens of Earth, and like him they were trying to make it a better place.

Axman broke open a box and began distributing equipment. Laser guns and stunners, all new, still covered with their plastic shipping cocoons. These had cost someone a great deal of money, Frost knew, unless they were stolen from a government stockpile. He opened another box and quantities of hydrobombs and explosive wafers and smoke bombs were passed around.

“You all know how to use these,” Axman told them. “The lasers are only for the computers and tape libraries, in conjunction with the explosives. Any guards or personnel we encounter will be removed with stunners. Understand?”

They nodded agreement. He went on with the specific rendezvous instructions for the following morning, and then dismissed them, allowing them to leave the gymnasium in small groups of two and three. Frost lingered on, the last to go, and finally when they were alone he asked, “Are you remembering your promise?”