Craven replied, "President Giovannini himself came in for a voluntary
checkup just last week." As if that were an answer.
Lindsay suppressed a desire to ask if the North American president had
all his marbles. He had an idea any levity he displayed would register
against him. Dr. Craven asked him a number of apparently routine
questions which Lindsay answered via a recorder. How old he was, whether
he liked flowers, how often he had fought with his schoolmates as a boy,
what sort of food he preferred.
"Good," the doctor said, pushing aside the microphone on his desk and
motioning Lindsay to do likewise. He rose, wheeled a device like an
old-fashioned beautician's hair-drier close to the couch, adjusted the
helmet to Lindsay's head. "Now," he added, "I want you to think as
clearly as you can of your mother. Keep your eyes on the screen and give
me as clear a picture as you can."
He pressed a button and the whir of a camera, also focussed on the
screen, sounded from the wall behind Lindsay. When Dr. Craven nodded, he
concentrated and, to his amazement, watched a fuzzy likeness of his
maternal parent take form on the screen.
This was something new, he decided, and said so. Dr. Craven replied,
"Yes--the psychopic is brand new. But concentrate on the picture,
please. You're losing it."
It had faded to almost nothing. Lindsay concentrated again, this time
brought his maternal parent into clear focus. He felt a little like a
man who has never wielded a brush in his life and has suddenly
discovered he could paint a perfect portrait.
Dr. Craven said nothing for a moment. Then, "Will you try to visualize
your mother without the blemish at her temple?"
Lindsay tried, and all but lost the picture entirely. He brought it back
again, blemish and all, felt a sudden tug of nostalgia for the firm
kindly features of the woman who had brought him into the world. A
minute or so later Dr. Craven pressed another button and the screen went
blank. "That will do very nicely," he said. "You may wait for the
psycho-computer verdict outside if you wish."
He found Nina sprawled in an anteroom chair with her long legs stuck out
before her, contemplating a flashing diamond-and-emerald necklace. He
said, before she looked up and saw him, "Business good, Miss Beckwith?"
To his amazement Nina began to snivel. And when he asked her what he had
done to cause it she snapped angrily, "You big pig, you haven't the
sensitivity to understand. Don't ever speak of it as business again. Now
I'll have to bathe my eyes when I get home or they will be all swollen
and horrible."
She removed her glasses and they _were_ swollen. Lindsay had seen too
much of allergic reactions since reaching Earth not to know he was
looking at another. He was relieved when she put her glasses back on.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to disturb you."
"I know it," she replied, "but you did."
"Perhaps, if you told me--" he began. Dr. Craven chose that moment to
emerge from his office.
"If you'll come back inside," he said. "There are just a few more
questions I'd like to ask, Ambassador."
"Ask them here," said Lindsay. He had no desire to go back under the
drier.
Dr. Craven hesitated and rubbed his chin, which was bright red again. He
said finally, "Mr. Lindsay, you didn't kill your mother before you were
seventeen, did you?"
"My mother died last year," said Lindsay, unbelieving.
"Incredible!" muttered the psychiatrist, shaking his head. "According to
the computer you must have...." He paused again, then said, "I hope this
won't embarrass you but you evidently are a man who prefers men to
women. The stigmata is definite and shows--"
"Night soil!" Nina exploded her favorite expression before Lindsay could
collect his wits for an answer. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Dr.
Craven, but this man's a veritable satyr. I caught him looking at my
legs yesterday. Ask Maria Bergozza if you want any further proof."
"But this is impossible!" the psychiatrist exploded. "According to the
computer--"
"Your computer's out of whack," Nina said calmly, and led a stunned
Lindsay out of the place. She added, "You didn't deserve that, boss. Not
after puffing my eyes up."
"Why not just keep your glasses on then?" he countered. They returned to
their office in unfriendly silence. Lindsay sent Nina home early and
took a copter across the Lake to his own place, there to nap until time
for the match at the Colosseum.
* * * * *
He felt more at home in the UW box at the vast arena than at any time
since reaching Earth. Since it was a sporting event, the eye-glasses
were serried, at least in the lower, higher-priced tiers, by good
looking faces, male and female, unadorned.
Someone slid into the comfortable contour chair beside him and said,
"Evening, Zalen. Enjoying yourself?"
Lindsay looked into Senator Fernando Anderson's diamond-shaped raspberry
glasses. He said, "So far--how about you?"
Anderson made a face. "I had a date with a gorgeous item but she put me
off until later. So I thought I'd look in. Maria arranged a seat in the
UW box. Otherwise I'd be watching it on vidar."
Lindsay looked up and around and discovered that the vast stadium was
packed to the rafters, judging by the glowing cigarette tips that
resembled an uncountable horde of frozen fireflies.
The court itself was pitch-dark, save for the lines and the net. He had
trouble recognizing O'Ryan as his would-be assassin and opponent walked
out. Neither player was clearly visible of feature, though shoes, shorts
and racquets were luminous, as were the balls they began to hit back and
forth across the net.
The only other luminous objects, save for the dim exit lights, were the
betting boards. Lindsay, who had never seen one save on a vidar-screen
before, asked Anderson how they worked. The senator from New Mexico was
glad to explain.
"Naturally," he said, "since the results of all athletic contests are
predicted on the computers, there is no betting on who will win."
"No upsets?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson laughed, said, "The last time there was an upset--in the
British Australian test cricket matches three years ago--a computer
investigation proved bribery and there was a hell of a stink."
"Then how do you manage to bet?" Lindsay asked.
"Simple," said the Senator. "Naturally, in case of accidental injury,
all bets are void. But otherwise the betting is on the percentage of
variation between the computer prediction and the actual play of the
contest. There--you can see the computer line on the big board over
there. The line of actual play will be red when it comes on. That way
there is plenty of chance for betting on points, games, sets or match."
The man from Mars studied the predictor line for the match. It revealed
that Pat O'Ryan, after a fast start, was due to slump in the second set,
recover in the third and polish off his opponent, Yamato-Rau from
Indonesia, in the fourth set with the loss of but one game.
"Looks like a shoo-in for O'Ryan," he said. "Right?"
"It ought to be," the Senator replied. "He's taken Yamato-Rau in six of
their seven previous matches. The second time they played he had a
sprained wrist that affected his volleying."
"Care to make a bet?" Lindsay asked his companion.
"Sure--why not?" Anderson countered. "Percentage of variation for game,
set or match?"
"I'd like to bet on the Indonesian to win," said Lindsay quietly.
* * * * *
Senator Anderson looked at Lindsay sharply. He said, "You know
something."
"Against the computer-prophecy?" Lindsay countered.
Anderson backed down and gave him a hundred to one on a fifty-credit
bet. "You can't win, of course," he murmured, "but if you do it will be
worth it."
The match began and the hum of the great crowd's conversation slowly
quieted. At first it went according to the computer prophecy. Serving
brilliantly, hitting crisply from either hand and smashing and volleying
with deadly accuracy from all parts of the court, Pat O'Ryan held
complete command of the match.
There was something hypnotic about the play--the clean _ping_ of racquet
strings on luminous ball, the swift flight of the ball, a streak of
light in the darkness, the flash of another racquet, the long and
intricate tactics of each exchange, broken only occasionally by the
flash of a light that betokened an error or an ace and the resulting
alteration of the scoreboard.
The red line crept in zigzag fashion along the computer board as the
match progressed, veering above or below the white line of the prophecy
but always returning to cross or even to cover it briefly. Big O'Ryan
took the first set six games to three on a single service break against
the Indonesian champion.
"Money in the bank," said Anderson in Lindsay's ear as the players
changed courts following the first game of the second set, which
Yamato-Rau had taken at fifteen. "Candy from a baby."
"It's barely begun," said Lindsay with a confidence he was far from
feeling. He glanced at the clock above the scoreboard, saw that it was
scarcely ten o'clock. Sickly he recalled that O'Ryan had told him it
took twenty-four hours for his grain allergy to take effect. Lindsay had
given him the drink barely seventeen hours before. He began to wish he
had not bet so thoughtlessly.
The second set went to deuce twice before Yamato-Rau broke O'Ryan's
service to run it out at eight-six. This was two games more than the
computer had calculated and caused considerable uproar in the crowd.
"I hear you had some trouble last night," Anderson told him.
"Nothing serious," said Lindsay, wondering how much the senator knew.
Dammit, he thought, he wished he didn't like the power-hungry
politician.
He wondered if Anderson were behind the attempt of the morning--and if
he were behind it, why? There could, he decided, be all sorts of
Machiavellian motives hidden beneath that smiling face. Then the match
got under way once more, and Lindsay concentrated on the play.
Once again O'Ryan seemed to be in command--just as the computer had
foretold. Games went to five-two in his favor. Then, as the players
changed courts once more, the tall Irishman paused to towel off--and
paid special attention to rubbing his eyes.
At that his string ran out. Four straight times his swiftest drives hit
the top of the net and bounced back into his own court. He blew his
service thanks to a pair of double-faults and three minutes later
Yamato-Rau had taken the set while the crowd sat in stunned silence.
The fourth set was pitiful. O'Ryan played like a blind man and the
Indonesian ran it out with the loss of exactly one point per game. The
red line on the computer-board yawed wildly toward the bottom instead of
following the white line as it should have.
"Keep your credits," Lindsay told Senator Anderson. "You were right. As
it turned out I did know something after all."
"It's impossible!" cried the senator. "But it's cheap at the
price--here!" He withdrew his wallet and began pulling out crisp
hundred-credit notes.
"Look out!" cried Lindsay. Around them the stands had erupted into
violence. While the players were shaking hands at the net, angry--and,
Lindsay suspected, frightened--bettors and spectators leaped the low
barriers and swarmed out onto the dark court. They hemmed the players
in, driving them toward the wall directly under the UW box in which
Lindsay and Anderson were sitting.
Someone threw something and Yamato-Rau stumbled and fell to his hands
and knees. Swinging his racquet like one of his ancestors' shillalehs,
O'Ryan charged to his rescue, pulled him to his feet, covered his
retreat to the wall. There Lindsay was able to pull first the
Indonesian, then the Irishman, up into the box.
"Damned fool!" said Anderson. "Getting us into a riot." But a moment
later Lindsay saw the senator swinging hard at an angry customer with a
fist in which his wallet was still clenched. The man made a grab for it
as someone else hit Anderson over the head with a plastic bottle. He
dropped across a contour-chair, letting his wallet fall from unconscious
fingers.
UW police formed a protective wall around them and Pat O'Ryan,
recognizing Lindsay, said, "Thanks, Ambassador. I guess I owe you a
couple. If my eyes hadn't gone bad on me...."
Lindsay was tempted to admit his guilt in that matter but decided
against it. He had no desire to be caught in another riot. He picked up
Anderson's wallet, put it back in the still unconscious senator's breast
pocket. A white-clad interne was brought through the police cordon,
knelt beside Anderson and began to make repairs.
"You'd better leave now, Ambassador," said one of the boss policeman
respectfully to Lindsay when the senator had been carted away on a
stretcher. Lindsay nodded. Then he noticed a slip of paper lying beneath
the chair across which Anderson had fallen. It read: _rec. 10,000 cdt. 1
em. & di. neck_. It was from Zoffany, the jeweler.
"What the hell!" Lindsay discovered he was speaking aloud. He stuffed
the paper in his pocket and followed the officer through a maze of
underground passages out of the Colosseum. He still thought, _What the
hell!_ What could Nina have reported about him that was worth that sort
of money to the senator?
* * * * *
Spy, slattern or not, Nina was efficient, as he realised when a bowing
motley-clad waiter captain smilingly ushered him to a secluded table for
two in a banquet niche of the Pelican. It was Lindsay's first visit to
an Earthly after-dark cafe and he instinctively compared it with certain
of its imitations in the comparatively small cities of his native
planet.
It was sleeker, better run, far more beautiful. Its general color scheme
was darkly opalescent, subtly glowing, flattering to its clients. And,
of course, most of them needed flattering, at least to Lindsay's alien
eyes. He noted here a pair of scimitar-shaped spectacles whose
turquoise-studded rims caught the light like a pair of small lemon pies,
there a harmopan-covered female face that glowed pale green in the
darkness.
But even more numerous and decorative than at the stadium, the
gladiators and courtesans were present, reinforced by a larding of vidar
stars visiting or entertaining in the capital. And these, Lindsay
admitted to himself with awed reluctance, outshone in sheer beauty and
handsomeness any group of Martian humans.
They ought to, he thought. Direct descendants, figuratively if not
actually, of the advertising-Hollywood beauty fetish of the previous
century, they were selected almost from birth for their callings and
trained rigorously from childhood on, the males to become athletes or
actors, the females courtesans or actresses.
There was no race among them, for their only standards were beauty and
physical fitness, no creed but achievement in their lines of individual
entertainment. He caught sight of a lissome Euro-African, the classic
exoticism of her flower-petal face illumined by joyous laughter beneath
a glossy neo-Watusi hairdo, as she glided gracefully over the
dance-floor in the arms of a hunch-harnessed and bespectacled partner.
The gladiators and courtesans alone seemed to find joy in living.
Lindsay, who had seldom been unhappy in his active existence, felt his
sympathies and heart go out to them. He followed the progress of a tiny
Oriental model whose face was alive with good-humor as she swept past
his table, her exquisite figure stressed by a glittering jeweled
sheathe.
"You really should wear glasses--or else learn not to stare," said
Maria, appearing from nowhere and sitting down at the table. She made
amends by extending a warm soft hand to grip one of his. Though she wore
her glasses and her hair was severely pulled back, he had no difficulty
in recalling the fact that, unclothed, she was lovely.
"Why don't you get in on the act?" he suggested, nodding toward a pair
of models emerging from the harmopan room. "All you'd have to do would
be to remove your specs and harness and let your hair down."
"You're sweet, Zale," she said, pleased. Then, with a sigh, "But there's
a lot more to it than that."
"You do all right that way too," he told her boldly.
She slapped the back of his hand and then, growing quickly serious,
said, "Zale, I didn't ask you to meet me for that. I've got so much to
ask you--so much to tell. Did you really find an assassin waiting for
you when you got home last night? And did you kill him?"
"Yes and no," said Lindsay. "I did find one and I didn't kill him. In
fact we parted good friends."
"You Martians...." She sighed, then said, "And I understand you have
already broken two computers--this afternoon at the psychiatrist's and
this evening at the Colosseum. It's the most marvelous news, darling.
I've got to know how you did it."
"I'm damned if I know how I fouled up Dr. Craven's computer," he told
her, "I'm still trying to figure it out."
Her face fell. She said, "I was hoping you had something.... But never
mind." Then, brightening, "But you're driving them crazy. They ran Dr.
Craven's results through Elsac late this afternoon and got the same
answer. The records checked that you didn't kill your mother and _I_
know you're not an invert." She laughed softly.
Spurred by the erotic atmosphere, plus the dizzying speed of recent
events and Maria's nearness, he said, "Let's get out of here and go to
my place."
Her hand covered his again atop the table. "I wish we could," she said
wistfully. "I like you _very_ much, Zale darling. But this is too
important. We haven't time. But what about the tennis tonight? There's
going to be an investigation, of course. Won't you tell me how you did
it?"
"Not until I've figured out both," he said. "I may be on the track of
something or it may be sheer chance. Until I understand what happened at
Dr. Craven's I'm simply not sure of my facts."
"But there simply isn't time, darling," Maria told him. "This is really
what I must talk to you about. We got word today that President
Giovannini is going to unveil Giac any day now."
"Decided against your sabotage plan?" he asked her.
She wrinkled her pert little nose. "What's the use? They'd simply repair
it. Besides, it's much too well guarded. Zale, you're our only hope
now."
He said "If I'm right, and I'm beginning to hope I am, it won't matter
whether Giac is unveiled or not. In fact, it might be more effective if
it were."
Maria drummed on the table with nervous knuckles. "But you _don't_
understand, Zale. You don't think for a minute that the Ministry of
Computation is taking this lying down. I got word less than half an hour
ago that they are preparing to force your recall as an unsuitable
plenipotentiary."
"They can try." Lindsay spoke grimly. This was a move he had failed to
foresee, though he supposed he should have. Inadvertently he was
becoming a major threat to the crockery in the china shop that was
Earth.
[Illustration]
"They can do it," Maria said simply. "Zale, these people have become
absolutely dependent upon their computers. They aren't going to let
their entire creed be wrecked by one Martian."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked simply.
"Come with me--now," she said, once more gripping his hand. "A group of
us want to talk to you, to find out _how_ you have done it."
He looked at her, found her adorable in her earnestness. He said, "And
if I play guinea pig with your friends, then you and I...?"
"Of course--as soon as there's time," she told him.
"You _are_ a little bundle of fanaticism, as well as of sex," he told
her. "I should think at least, since you seem to have such an inside
track, you could manage to get my recall deferred."
"That's just _it_!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I see everything, I hear
everything--yet I can _do_ nothing. Papa thinks I'm merely a foolish
female creature and his attitude blocks me at every turn." Lindsay
realized again how fundamentally frustrated she was, wondered if she
would ever find a completely satisfactory release.