Authors: Robert Silverberg
"Hello," she said. Her voice was gentle, at least. "I'm Vanna Marshak. Where'd your friend go?"
"I'm wondering that myself. He vanished a little while ago."
"Are you supposed to be in charge of him?"
"I'm supposed to be watching him, anyhow. He's a Martian, you know."
"I didn't. He's certainly hostile to the Brotherhood, isn't he? That was sad, the way he erupted during the service. He must be terribly ill."
"Terribly drunk," Kirby said. "It happens to all the Martians who come here. The iron bars are lifted for them, and they think anything goes. Can I buy you a drink?" he added mechanically.
"I don't drink, thanks. But I'll accompany you if you want one."
"I don't
want
one. I
need
one."
"You haven't told me your name."
"Ron Kirby. I'm with the U.N. I'm a minor bureaucrat. No, I'll correct that: a major bureaucrat who gets paid like a minor one. We can go in here."
He nudged the doorstud of a bar on the corner. The sphincter whickered open and admitted them. She smiled warmly. She was about thirty, Kirby guessed. Not easy to tell, with all that hardware where her face used to be.
"Filtered rum," he said.
Vanna Marshak leaned close to him. She wore some subtle and unfamiliar perfume. "Why did you bring him to the Brotherhood house?" she asked.
He downed his drink as though it were fruit juice. "He wanted to see what the Vorsters were like. So I took him."
"I take it you're unsympathetic personally?"
"I don't have any real opinion. I've been too busy to pay much attention."
"That's not true," she said easily. "You think it's a nut-cult, don't you?"
Kirby ordered a second drink. "All right," he admitted. "I do. It's a shallow opinion based on no real information at all."
"You haven't read Vorst's book?"
"No."
"If I give you a copy, will you read it?"
"Imagine," he said. "A proselyte with a heart of gold." He laughed. He was feeling drunk again.
"That isn't really very funny," she said. "You're hostile to surgical alterations, too, aren't you?"
"My wife had a complete face job done. While she was still my wife. I got so angry about it that she left me. Three years ago. She's dead now. She and her lover went down in a rocket crash off New Zealand."
"I'm terribly sorry," Vanna Marshak said. "But I wouldn't have had this done to myself if I had known about Vorst then. I was uncertain. Insecure. Today I know where I'm heading—but it's too late to have my real face back. It's rather attractive, I think, anyway."
"Lovely," Kirby said. "Tell me about Vorst."
"It's very simple. He wants to restore spiritual values in the world. He wants us all to become aware of our common nature and our higher goals."
"Which we can express by watching Cerenkov radiation in rundown lofts," Kirby said.
"The Blue Fire's just trimming. It's the inner message that counts. Vorst wants to see mankind go to the stars. He wants us to get out of our muddle and confusion and begin to mine our real talents. He wants to save the espers who are going insane every day, harness them, put them together to work for the next great step in human progress."
"I see," said Kirby gravely. "Which is?"
"I told you. Going to the stars. You think we can stop with Mars and Venus? There are millions of planets out there. Waiting for man to find a way to reach them. Vorst thinks he knows that way. But it calls for a union of mental energies, a blending, a—oh, I know this sounds mystical. But he's got something. And it heals the troubled soul, too. That's the short-range purpose: the communion, the binding-up of wounds. And the long-range goal is getting to the stars. Of course, we've got to overcome the frictions between the planets—get the Martians to be more tolerant, and then somehow reestablish contact with the people on Venus, if there's anything human still left in them—do you see that there are possibilities here, that it isn't mumbo jumbo and fraud?"
Kirby didn't see anything of the kind. It sounded hazy and incoherent to him. Vanna Marshak had a soft, persuasive voice, and there was an earnestness about her that made her appealing. He could even forgive her for what she had let the knife-wielders do to her face. But when it came to Vorst—
The communicator in his pocket bleeped. It was a signal from Ridblom, and it meant call the office right away. Kirby got to his feet.
"Excuse me a minute," he said. "Something important to tend to—"
He lurched across the barroom, caught himself, took a deep breath and got into the booth. Into the slot went the plaque; trembling fingers punched out the number.
Ridblom appeared on the screen again.
"We've found your boy," the pudgy Security man announced blandly.
"Dead or alive?"
"Alive, unfortunately. He's in Chicago. He stopped off at the Martian Consulate, borrowed a thousand dollars from the consul's wife, and tried to rape her in the bargain. She got rid of him and called the police, and they called me. We have a five-man tracer on him now. He's heading for a Vorster cell on Michigan Boulevard, and he's drank as a lord. Should we intercept him?"
Kirby bit his lip in anguish. "No. No. He's got immunity, anyway. Let me handle this. Is there a chopper in the U.N. port I can borrow?"
"Sure. But it'll take you at least forty minutes to get to Chi, and—"
"That's plenty of time. Here's what I want you to do: get hold of the prettiest esper you can find in Chicago, maybe an empath, some sexy kid, Oriental if possible, something like that one who had the burnout in Kyoto last week. Plunk her down between Weiner and that Vorster place and turn her loose on him. Have her charm him into submission. Have her stall him in any way possible until I can get there, and if she has to part with her honor in the process, tell her we'll give her a good price for it. If you can't find an esper, get hold of a persuasive policewoman, or something."
"I don't see why this is really necessary," Ridblom said. "The Vorsters can look out for themselves. I understand they've got some mysterious way of knocking a troublemaker out so that he doesn't—"
"I know, Lloyd. But Weiner's already been knocked out once this evening. For all I know, a second jolt of the same stuff tonight might kill him. That would be very awkward all around. Just head him off."
Ridblom shrugged. "Thy will be done."
Kirby left the booth. He was cold sober again. Vanna Marshak was sitting at the bar where he had left her. At this distance and in this light there was something almost pretty about her artificial disfigurements.
She smiled. "Well?"
"They found him. He got to Chicago somehow, and he's about to raise some hell in the Vorster chapel there. I've got to go and lasso him."
"Be gentle with him, Ron. He's a troubled man. He needs help."
"Don't we all?" Kirby blinked suddenly. The thought of making the trip to Chicago alone struck him abruptly as being nasty. "Vanna?" he asked.
"Yes?"
"Are you going to be busy for the next couple of hours?"
Five
The copter hovered over Chicago's sparkling gaiety. Below, Kirby saw the bright sheen of Lake Michigan, and the splendid mile-high towers that lined the lake. Above him blazed the local timeglow in chartreuse banded with deep blue:
2331 HOURS CENTRAL STANDARD TIME
WEDNESDAY MAY 8 2077
OGLEBAY REALTY—THE FINEST!
"Put her down," Kirby ordered.
The robopilot steered the copter toward a landing. It was impossible, of course, to risk the fierce wind currents in those deep canyons; they would have to land at a rooftop heliport. The landing was smooth. Kirby and Vanna rushed out. She had given him the Vorster message all the way from Manhattan, and at this point Kirby wasn't sure whether the cult was complete nonsense or some sinister conspiracy against the general welfare or a truly profound, spiritually uplifting creed or perhaps a bit of all three.
He thought he had the general idea. Vorst had cobbled together an eclectic religion, borrowing the confessional from Catholicism, absorbing some of the atheism of ur-Buddhism, adding a dose of Hindu reincarnation, and larding everything over with ultramodernistic trappings, nuclear reactors at every altar, and plenty of gabble about the holy electron. But there was also talk of harnessing the minds of espers to power a stardrive, of a communion even of non-esper minds, and—most startling of all, the big selling-point—personal immortality, not reincarnation, not the hope of Nirvana, but eternal life in the here-and- now present flesh. In view of Earth's population problems, immortality was low on any sane man's priority list. Immortality for other people, anyway; one was always willing to consider the extension of one's own life, wasn't one? Vorst preached the eternal life of the body, and the people were buying. In eight years the cult had gone from one cell to a thousand, from fifty followers to millions. The old religions were bankrupt. Vorst was handing out shining gold pieces, and if they were only fool's gold, it would take a while for the faithful to find that out.
"Come on," Kirby said. "There isn't much time."
He scrambled down the exit ramp, turning to take Vanna Marshak's hand and help her the last few steps. They hurried across the rooftop landing area to the gravshaft, stepped in, dropped to ground level in a dizzying five-second plunge. Local police were waiting in the street. They had three teardrops.
"He's a block from the Vorster place, Freeman Kirby," one of the policeman said. "The esper's been dragging Mm around for half an hour, but he's dead set on going there."
"What does he want there?" Kirby asked.
"He wants the reactor. He says he's going to take it back to Mars and put it to some worthwhile use."
Vanna gasped at the blasphemy. Kirby shrugged, sat back, watched the streets flashing by. The teardrop halted. Kirby saw the Martian across the street.
The girl who was with him was sultry, full-bodied, lush-looking. She had one arm thrust through his, and she was close to Weiner's side, cooing in his ear. Weiner laughed harshly and turned to her, pulled her close, then pushed her away. She clutched at him again. It was quite a scene, Kirby thought. The street had been cleared. Local police and a couple of Ridblom's men were watching grimly from the sidelines.
Kirby went forward and gestured to the girl. She sensed instantly who he was, withdrew her arm from Weiner, and stepped away. The Martian swung around.
"Found me, did you?"
"I didn't want you to do anything you'd regret later on."
"Very loyal of you, Kirby. Well, as long as you're here, you can be my accomplice. I'm on my way to the Vorster place. They're wasting good fissionables in those reactors. You distract the priest, and I'm going to grab the blue blinker, and we'll all live happily ever after. Just don't let him shock you. That isn't fun."
"Nat—"
"Are you with me or aren't you, pal?" Weiner pointed toward the chapel, diagonally across the street a block away, in a building almost as shabby as the one in Manhattan. He started toward it.
Kirby glanced uncertainly at Vanna. Then he crossed the street behind Weiner. He realized that the altered girl was following, too.
Just as Weiner reached the entrance to the Vorster place, Vanna dashed forward and cut in front of him.
"Wait," she said. "Don't go in there to make trouble."
"Get out of my way, you phony-faced bitch!"
"Please," she said softly. "You're a troubled man. You aren't in harmony with yourself, let alone with the world around you. Come inside with me, and let me show you how to pray. There's much for you to gain in there. If you'd only open your mind, open your heart—instead of standing there so smug in your hatred, in your drunken unwillingness to see—"
Weiner hit her.
It was a backhand slap across the face. Surgical alteration jobs are fragile, and they aren't meant to be slapped. Vanna fell to her knees, whimpering, and pressed her hands over her face. She still blocked the Martian's way. Weiner drew his foot back as though he were going to kick her, and that was when Reynolds Kirby forgot he was paid to be a diplomat.
Kirby strode forward, caught Weiner by the elbow, swung him around. The Martian was off balance. He clawed at Kirby for support. Kirby struck his hand down, brought a fist up, landed it solidly in Weiner's muscular belly. Weiner made a small oofing sound and began to rock backward. Kirby had not struck a human being in anger in thirty years, and he did not realize until that moment what a savage pleasure there could be in something so primordial. Adrenalin flooded his body. He hit Weiner again, just below the heart. The Martian, looking very surprised, sagged and went over backward, sprawling in the street.
"Get up," Kirby said, almost dizzy with rage.
Vanna plucked at his sleeve. "Don't hit him again," she murmured. Her metallic lips looked crumpled. Her cheeks glistened with tears. "Please don't hit him any more."