Captain Hunter left the lift at Level Nineteen. An automatic entry
probe accepted his blue-tinted executive card, and he walked the short
distance to the hotel which specialized in catering to spacemen. It
was traditionally neutral ground, where the mercenaries of
Consolidated or United Research met as friends, although a week before
they might have been firing radiation fire at each other in the outer
reaches of space. The frontier conflict was a business to the
spaceman. Hunter was too well-adjusted to become emotionally involved
in it himself.
The spacemen called their hotel the Roost, a contraction lifted from
the public micropic code. The full name was the _Roosevelt_, lettered
on the entry. The hotel was popularly supposed to have been built
close to the site of a twentieth century Los Angeles hotel of the
same name, destroyed in the last convulsive war that had shattered the
earth.
By micropic Hunter had made his customary reservation. His room was
high in an upper floor overlooking Level Twenty-three. Through the
visipanel he could see the walk-ways thronged by the various
classifications of executives who worked in the central offices of the
cartels--lawyers, engineers, administrators, directors,
astrogeographers, designers, statisticians, researchers.
Somewhere in the crowd, perhaps, were the two men who ruled the
cartels and directed the struggle for the Galactic empire. Glenn
Farren of Consolidated Solar and Werner von Rausch of United
Researchers. Max Hunter had never seen either of the men or any of
their dynastic families. He knew little about them. Their pictures
were never published.
Yet Farren and Von Rausch held in their hands more despotic power,
more real wealth and military might, than any ancient Khan or Caesar
had ever dreamed of.
Did they now want Ann Saymer's patent? The answer, Hunter realized,
was obvious. With Ann's Exorciser, they could enslave the centers of
civilization as they had enslaved the frontier. In itself that was a
minor factor, already accomplished by man's acceptance of the jungle
ethics of the cartels. Far more important, if one of the cartels
controlled the patent, it had a weapon that would ultimately destroy
the other.
With trembling fingers, Hunter took Ann's last micropic from his bag
and rolled the tiny film into a wall-scanner. He could have recited it
by heart; yet, by reading it again, he somehow expected to extract a
new meaning. The code he and Ann used, contrived for economy rather
than secrecy, was merely a telescoping of common phrases into single
word symbols.
IHTKN, at the beginning, was easily interpreted as "I have taken," and
COMJB became "commission-job." The micropic transmission monopoly
arbitrarily limited all code words to five letters or less, counting
additional letters as whole words. But because of the simplicity of
the technique, some of Ann's symbols were open to a number of
interpretations.
Hunter was sure of one thing. Ann had not specifically named the
clinic where she was working. She said she had gone to work for the
biggest--or possibly the symbol meant best--of the private clinics.
Either term could apply to the clinics run by the two cartels; or, for
that matter, to the largest of them all, operated by Eric Young's
union.
But Ann, having invented the Exorciser, would know all its possible
misuses--a factor which had not occurred to Hunter until Dawn spelled
it out for him. Would Ann, then, have been fool enough to let herself
fall into the hands of the cartels?
That line of reasoning gave Hunter new hope. If one of the cartels
tried to trap her, Ann would simply go into hiding. It would
complicate the problem of finding her, but at least he could assure
himself she was safe. Ann had brains to match her ambition. She
couldn't otherwise have earned a First in Psychiatry. No, Hunter was
certain the cartels didn't have her.
The telescreen buzzer gave a plaintive bleep. Hunter jerked down the
response toggle. Surprisingly, the screen remained dark, but Hunter
heard a man's voice say clearly, "You are anxious to find Ann Saymer,
Captain Hunter?"
Apparently the transmission from Hunter's screen was unimpaired, for
the speaker seemed to recognize him.
"Who is this?" Hunter asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
"A friend. We have your interest at heart, Captain. We suggest that
you investigate United Researchers' clinic when you start looking for
Miss Saymer."
The contact snapped off. Hunter sat down slowly, his mind reeling.
Since only his screen had been neutralized, the machine was not at
fault. Only a top-ranking cartel executive could arrange for a
deliberate interruption of service. The rest followed logically. No
one in United would have given him the information.
So Ann had fallen into their hands after all! Someone in
Consolidated--perhaps Glenn Farren himself--was setting him on Ann's
trail, on the chance that Hunter could find her when Consolidated's
operatives had failed.
Hunter was used to the risk of long odds. He had a ten-year
apprenticeship in the treachery and in-fighting of the frontier. There
was a good chance that he could play one cartel against the other, and
in the process get Ann away from both of them.
One more thing he wanted before he planned his opening attack against
United Researchers--the note Ann had sent to Mrs. Ames. It might give
him a clue as to where United had taken her. Hunter wasn't naive
enough to suppose they had kept her in center-city. But perhaps she
was not even in Sector West.
* * * * *
Each of the eleven sectors into which the Earth was divided was
controlled by one of the two cartels, as an agricultural or industrial
appendage of the western metropolis. It was a paternal relationship,
although no comparable city had been permitted to develop and company
mercenaries policed the sectors.
Children who exhibited any spark of initiative or ability were skimmed
off from the hinterland to Sector West and thrown into the competitive
struggle of the general school. If they fought to the top there, they
were integrated as adults into the hierarchy of the cartels.
The rest became the labor force of Sector West, enrolled in Eric
Young's union and crowded into the minimum housing. The teeming
millions left in the hinterland were a plodding, uninspired mass
content with trivialities. They felt neither ambition nor frustration.
While the number of the mentally ill continued to multiply in Sector
West, only a fraction of the hinterland population suffered the mental
decay.
Hunter fervently hoped United had taken Ann to one of the other
sectors. Rescue would be easy. An experienced spaceman could out-talk,
out-maneuver, and out-fight an entire hinterland battalion.
Max Hunter took an autojet from the Roost to Mrs. Ames' residential
apartment. Conservation of his capital no longer counted, but time
did. If United had Ann's patent, Ann herself was expendable. Hunter
had to make his move to save her before they knew what he was up to.
It would be a difficult deal to pull off in the capital city, where
operatives of both cartels swarmed everywhere.
He left his blaster in his hotel room, to avoid an interrogation at
any other metro-entry. Mrs. Ames' apartment residence was one place in
the city where he had no need to go armed.
Just outside center-city a single street of twentieth century houses,
sheltered by the Palos Verdes Hills, had survived the devastation of
the last war. In the beginning the street had been preserved as a
museum piece while the cartel city had grown up around it. But with
each passing generation, popular interest had waned. Eventually the
houses had been sold.
One was now operated by a religious cult. Two were enormously
profitable party houses, where clients masqueraded in the amusing
twentieth century costumes and passed a few short hours living with
the quaint inconveniences of the past. The game had become so
attractive that reservations were booked months in advance. The fourth
relic remained unsold, slowly falling into ruin. The fifth belonged to
Mrs. Ames.
To satisfy a whim--originally it was no more than that, Mrs. Ames had
assured Hunter many times--she had asked her husband to buy it for her
some fifty years ago. After a space-liner accident left her a widow at
thirty-five, she had moved into the house as a means of
psychologically withdrawing from her grief.
She never left it again. She found the old house an island in time, a
magic escape from the chaos of her world.
She took in four residents because she needed their credits to augment
the income from her husband's estate, and the house was then
officially listed as an apartment. Chance worked her a miracle--or
perhaps the house did possess a magic of its own--for the residents
were as charmed by its inconveniences as Mrs. Ames had been. Ann
wouldn't consider living anywhere else, although the house was more
than a mile from her university. Even Hunter felt the indefinable
spell, when he was in from a flight and went to see Ann.
It was a house that invited relaxation. It was a house where time
seemed to be stated in a value that could not be measured with
credits. It was a house that whispered, "I saw one world fall into
dust; yours is no more eternal"--and, for a moment, that whisper made
the cartel-jungle meaningless.
V
Hunter left his autojet on the parking flat behind the house. He fed
enough coins in the meter to hold the car for twenty-four hours. He
didn't know how fast he'd want an autojet after he talked to Mrs.
Ames, but he didn't want a chance passer-by to pick up his car if the
charter expired.
It was necessary for him to ring a bell manually, by means of a metal
button fixed to the wooden frame of the front door. No scanner
announced his arrival, nor did any soundless auto-door respond to a
beam transmitted from within the house. After a time Hunter heard
footsteps. A strange woman--probably a new resident who had taken
Ann's place--opened the door.
"I'm Captain Hunter," he said. "I came to see Mrs. Ames."
"Won't you come in, Captain?" the woman replied.
She led him into a front room which, Ann had once told him, had been
called a living room. A peculiar name, surely, for the room appeared
to have been designed solely as a place to sit while watching
Tri-D--or flat-screen television, as it had been called in its early
developmental stage when the house was new--or to hear someone play
the bulky instrument known as a piano.
The room was an example of the appalling waste of space so common to
the twentieth century. It was extremely spacious, but neither food
tubes nor bed drawers were concealed in the walls.
Hunter had always been curious about the piano. It amazed him that it
had been operated entirely by hand. There was no electric scanner to
read the mood of the player and interpret it in melody. Driven to
contrive his own harmonics, how could the twentieth century man have
derived any satisfaction at all from music? His sensibilities had been
immature, of course. But even so, an instrument which demanded so much
individual creativeness must have been an enormous frustration.
Since so many surviving twentieth century machines made the same
demand on the individual--their automobiles, for example, had been
individually directed, without any sort of electronic safety
control--it had puzzled both Hunter and Ann that the incidence of
maladjustment in the past had been so low.
The captain dropped into a comfortable, chintz-covered rocking
chair--one relic in this island of time that he really enjoyed. "Will
you tell Mrs. Ames I'm here?" he asked the stranger.
"I'm Mrs. Ames."
"I mean Mrs. _Janice_ Ames--the owner of the house."
The woman smiled woodenly. "You're speaking to her, Captain, though I
must say I don't remember ever having met you before."
"You don't remember--"
Fear clutched at his heart. He sprang up, moving toward her with
clenched fists. "An hour ago I called Mrs. Ames from the spaceport. I
saw her. Here--in this room."
"I've owned this house all my life, Captain." Her expression was more
than good acting. She spoke with utter conviction, and seemed
completely sure of herself. "You must be--" She hesitated and looked
at him sharply. "Have you checked your adjustment index recently?"
"I haven't lost my mind, if that's what you're getting at," he said.
"Where's Ann Saymer?"
"Believe me, please. The name is totally unfamiliar to me." The woman
was painfully sympathetic--and frankly scared. She backed away from
him. "You need help from the clinic, Captain. Will you let me call
them for you?"
Suddenly the light fell full on her face, and Hunter saw the tiny,
still-unhealed scalpel wounds on both sides of her skull. The light
glowed on the microscopic filament of platinum wire clumsily left
projecting through the incision.
He understood, then. This woman was wearing one of Ann's patented
grids, sealed into her cerebral cortex. It made her into a robot,
responding with unquestioning obedience to the direction of Ann's
transmitter. And Hunter had no doubt that United manipulated the
transmission.
Simultaneously he realized something else. If the cartel went to this
extreme to forestall his search for Ann, she must still be alive. For
some reason they still needed her. Possibly her patent drawings had
been submitted for government registry in such a way that only Ann
understood them.
Ann had been through the general school, and knew what the score was.
She would have protected her invention--and incidentally insured her
own survival--if she could have possibly done so, even at a fearful
risk to herself.
Hunter swung toward the door. It did not occur to him to call the
police, since they were all cartel mercenaries. Whatever he did to
help Ann, he would have to do on his own. Until he found her, he could
count on help from Consolidated. After that--nothing.
He jerked open the front door--and froze. Three men were waiting on
the porch with drawn blasters. Hunter had no time to recognize facial
features which it might have been to his advantage to remember later,
no time to find any identifying insignia on their tunics. With a
barely visible flickering fire arced from one of the weapons, and pain
exploded in his body, unconsciousness washed into his brain.
His first sensation when the paralysis began to wear off was the dull
ache of visceral nausea. He opened his eyes, and saw, bleakly
shadowed, the living room of the Ames house. It was after dark, which
could only mean that he had lain there nearly four hours. To knock him
out for that period of time, they must have given him a nearly lethal
charge from the blaster calculated just under the limit of physical
endurance.
His motor control and his sense of touch returned more slowly. For a
quarter of an hour he lay helpless in the chintz-covered rocker,
feeling nothing but a tingling, like pin-pricks of fire, in his arms
and legs.
He looked down and saw that he held a blaster in his hand--his own
blaster, which he had left in his room in the Roost. He did not yet
have the neural control to release his fingers from the firing dial.
As his sense of hearing was restored, he became aware that the Tri D
had been left on. The screen pictured the swirling confusion of a mob.
An announcer was describing the sudden outburst of labor violence
which had occurred in the industrial district that afternoon. Eric
Young's U.F.W. had gone on strike against a dozen separate plants.
Essential plants, naturally. Everything was always essential, and
government spokesmen always made pretty speeches deploring the
situation. It was a pattern familiar to Hunter for years. One of the
cartels would pay Young to strike factories belonging to the other.
Then a second bribe, paid by the struck cartel, bought off the strike.
Occasionally a sop of bonus credits had to be dished out to the
faithful.
It was not a maneuver either Consolidated or United used frequently,
because the advantage was transitory, and the only long-term winner
was Eric Young.
This time there was a slight variation in the formula. Young had
struck plants of both cartels. That puzzled Hunter, but any curiosity
he felt was subordinate to his disgust. How much longer would this
farce go on before it dawned on the rank and file of the U.F.W. that
Eric Young was playing them all for suckers? Hunter tried to get up to
snap off the telecast. He managed only to throw himself awkwardly over
the arm of the chair.
And then he saw the body on the floor--the body of the genuine Mrs.
Ames, charred by a ragged blaster wound seared through her breast.
They had murdered her--naturally with his blaster--and left him at the
scene, neatly framed for the crime.
Hunter heard--right on cue--the whine of a police siren outside.
Everything timed to trap him just as the motor paralysis wore off!
With an effort that brought beads of sweat to his forehead, he dropped
his blaster and pushed himself out of the chair. His feet were numb.
He moved a few steps and banged into the piano. Clawing for support,
his hands crashed in jangling discord on the keys.
The siren swelled loud in front of the house. Hunter heard the
drum-beat of boots on the porch. He stumbled toward the kitchen--and
fell into the arms of two police officers who had entered from the
rear of the house.
He swung his fist; the fingers felt like clods of wet clay. One of the
mercenaries caught his wrist and held it easily. In the gloom Hunter
saw the Consolidated insignia on the man's jacket, and the guard
whispered quickly, "This deal was a set-up, Hunter--packaged evidence,
dropped at headquarters ten minutes ago."
Hunter stared. "Accusing me by name? Get this straight! Four hours ago
they put me under with a blaster and--"
"It's a United frame," the guard said. "They want you out for good.
The top brass of Consolidated is giving you the green right down the
line. The fastest out Jake and I could figure--" He jerked his head
toward his companion. "--was to give the United boys on our team the
front of the house, and let you make a break for it from the back.
We'll fake enough here to protect ourselves."
They pushed a blaster into Hunter's hands. He stumbled through the
kitchen as the front door gave and two United mercenaries burst into
the house. Hunter ran awkwardly, without full control of his legs.
He saw, looming black against the night shadows, the oval silhouette
of the autojet on the Ames flat, still held under his twenty-four hour
charter. It offered a tempting means of escape, but a public car was
too easily traced and brought down by police tracers. However, it
could perform a miracle as a diversion.