Meeting at Infinity

by John Brunner

  “I said ignore it!” Allyn’s voice was no longer cool, but savagely intense. “It’s a lie. A plant. Lyken left behind his old Remembrancer, Erlking, with his hypnolocks not fast. Do you think he’d have done that without a purpose? Of course not! He left him for the specific purpose of having him fall into Clostrides’s hands with this garbled story about a secret power and an intruding civilization. You can be sure that Clostrides doesn’t believe it. You can be sure, too, that none of the other Directors have had such a message. They’re all jealous of you, you know that.”

  Lanchery felt completely helpless. He had accepted Allyn’s advice blindly before; he felt driven to do so again, by the same irresistible illogical force that had gripped him since the first time she appeared miraculously within his franchise—against all laws of nature, so it seemed.

  But this time his better judgment was struggling to revolt.

  Before he could voice objections, Allyn had gone on.

  “Did they accede to your suggestion that the attack open with your first blow? Only after a long argument! And why did they argue against such a sensible plan? Because they were jealous, and thought you might get an advantage over them by entering the franchise first, of course.”

  “Oh, I could hate you, Allyn, because you make me feel indecisive and the sight of you drives everything else from my mind!”

  “Will you ignore that message?”

  Lanchery hesitated. “I don’t know. I haven’t finished reading it. And how do you know what’s in it, anyway?”

  Allyn hesitated. She said at length, “I’ve found out how to use a rho function field perceptor.”

  Lanchery felt behind him for his chair and lowered himself into it. He had to. In common with most of the other concessionaries he had had high hopes of the perceptor’s possibilities, but they had proved unfounded. He said nothing.

  “If you will ignore this message,” said Allyn at length, “next time I come—I will stay.”

  It was frank bribery. But Lanchery’s head whirled, and he put his hand on the table without looking. He gathered up the message from Clostrides, crumpled it, and held it mutely out towards Allyn. As she took it, the tips of her fingers brushed his hand.

  She smiled, turned, and went out of the room.

  She had barely closed the door when Lanchery was struck by the patent insanity of what he had done. He leapt to his feet and started after her. He flung wide the door and crashed full tilt into an astonished member of his technical staff.

  The man stepped back, babbling apologies. Lanchery cut him short.

  “Did you see a woman go by here a moment ago?” he snapped.

  “No, sir,” said the other. “No one at all. Uh—we’ve had a report from The Market, sir; they’ve discriminated down to Lyken’s Tacket numbers and we’re reconnoitering the terrain now. Dawn is in half an hour; we should be able to launch the attack then.”

  What the hell had been in Clostrides’s message? A counter-order to the attack? Lanchery felt resolution harden within him.

  “Good,” he said. Mechanically he went back to where he had let fall his other boot and began to draw it on.

  “Good,” he repeated. “Go ahead as planned. Say I’ll be out to supervise the attack in a few minutes.”

  The man nodded and withdrew. When he had gone, Lanchery began to curse himself in a searing stream of obscenities.

  The cord holding Sergeant Carr’s wrists had been very well tied indeed. He had worked on it until he had chafed the skin away; then the slow ooze of blood had made the cord slippery, and now it was inching up over his hands.

  At first, when they had been abandoned in the penthouse, the policemen had shouted angrily and snapped at one another—“Who the hell were they? Why didn’t you do something?”

  But for some time past there had been no sound except grunts of effort as they struggled to loosen their bonds.

  Feeling as though red-hot bracelets had been clamped on his raw-rubbed wrists, Carr slid the cord the last inch and found that he could bring his hands apart at last. He sat up, his arms and shoulders prickling with the returning circulation.

  “I’m loose,” he said gruffly. “Wait till I untie my legs and “I’ll attend to the rest of you.”

  The grunting of his companions subsided. Stiff-fingered, he fumbled loose the knots at his ankles and got unsteadily to his feet. His issue knife had been taken from him as well as the others. Rather than waste time laboriously unpicking their knots, he went in search of the knives and in the end discovered them thrown out of sight in a corner behind the racks of data tapes surrounding Knard’s electronic desk.

  He was bending down to slash at the bonds of the first of his companions when there was a high hysterical cry from the room where Allyn sat cocooned. It was a man’s voice, shrill with anger—not a woman’s. And anyway Allyn Vage had no voice of her own, only the breathy voice of the voder.

  Carr jerked upright. He said, “What in—?” His eyes swept the group of prostrate police, counting them. Everyone that had come with him was present.

  The shrill angry voice said, “You were told what would happen if you interfered again! I’m going to smash that perceptor and leave you senseless as well as crippled!”

  Carr shifted his knife to a fighting grip and charged forward, hurling the door of Allyn’s room aside. Panting, he stopped short in the entrance.

  The sound of the door sliding back had startled the intruder, whose head had jerked around to face Carr. His expression was savage with rage, and a stream of saliva had run from the corner of his mouth. He was thin and wiry; he wore little except quantities of metal ornaments at wrist, neck and waist. He grasped in one hand a metal bar, wielded like a club, which was poised for a crashing swing against the side of the box housing Allyn’s perceptor.

  Allyn was absolutely immobile. It was only with an effort that Carr reminded himself of the living human being within her featureless cocoon. The voder was silent.

  Carr was so taken aback by the sight of the wild man with the club that for a long few seconds he could no nothing more than stare. The instant he recovered himself, he threw himself forward again, knife in hand.

  And he fell through thin air, crashing on the floor.

  Not understanding, wondering if he had gone suddenly insane, he picked himself awkwardly up again. As he did so, the voder came to life.

  “Did you see him?” the breathy voice demanded.

  “What? Yes, I saw him.” Carr straightened and turned to face the mask covering Allyn’s head. “But he vanished! He vanished into thin air when I tackled him! Who in hell was he, anyway?”

  “Listen carefully to what I’m going to say,” Allyn told him. “Memorize it! Then get word of it to Manuel Clostrides at The Market. Leave me a guard. Others like the man who was here can come and go as they like. They can travel between the Tacket worlds without using a portal.”

  “So it was a strike that showed on the detectors!”

  “Possibly. Now listen. You must tell Clostrides on no account to try and stop Lanchery’s attack. On no account! And if he wants to know why, this is what you must tell him …”

  18

  DAWN BEGAN to stain the sky. The great office on top of The Market filled and emptied incessantly as people came and went. The communicator panel was never dark for more than seconds together. In the midst of chaos Clostrides sat with his face growing haggard, but his voice still crisp and authoritative.

  “From Dewitt Yorell, Bailiff,” said a messenger, handing across a signal slip. “Demanding to know what is the reason for postponing the attack.”

  “Still no acknowledgment of your message from Lanchery, Bailiff,” said another messenger, briefly, turning and going almost as he spoke.

  “From Dr. Knard, Bailiff,” said a third, proffering a small sheet of paper with a few cryptic numerals on it. “He’s got the co-ordinates of Akkilmar out of Erlking’s mind, he says.”

  Rapidly Clostrides scanned the numbers. He said
, “That’s fortunate—Yorell has a portal operating within a few miles of there. Now if we could put an invasion force through that! But what the hell can I use for troops if the Directors won’t play?”

  Sitting inconspicuously at the side of the room, Jockey Hole stirred. “What’s the problem, Bailiff?” he said softly.

  Clostrides shrugged. “The Market’s staff can’t cope with an invasion, that’s all. I’ve told the Directors to call off their attacks until we know what Akkilmar represents and how great a danger we’d be walking into; I also asked them to put troops at my disposal. They won’t. They’re scared-jealous of me and of each other, especially of each other. Let’s face it; whether the Akkilmar people manipulated them or not, what they’re after is Lyken’s prosperous franchise, and each one of them is hoping he’ll be able to establish a decisive foothold there and squeeze out the others.”

  “But you just need manpower? That’s all?” Jockey pressed.

  Clostrides nodded.

  “How would a couple of thousand yonder boys suit you, all tough as Tacketing and so bored they don’t mind what they do?”

  Clostrides stared at Jockey with astonishment. He said, “Who are you, anyway, Hole?”

  Jockey gave a faint grin. “I sort of run some things in the Eastern Quarter,” he said. “I have spoons in a lot of dishes. How else do you think I got Erlking away from both Lyken’s men and yours? It’s a good organization, though I’m saying so. I made it that way. Do you want my boys?”

  “Do I want them? You produce them, I’ll use them. Two thousand—you’re sure of that many?”

  Jockey spread his hands. “It may be two, it may be ten. Two is free falling on an hour’s notice.”

  Clostrides spun in his chair and barked at the communicator panel, catching it between calls. An aide appeared on the screen, looking up wearily from his desk.

  “Inform Yorell that we’re requisitioning the use of his Southern-K Portal,” Clostrides ordered. “And I want transport and weapons for two thousand men on—where shall I have the transport assembled?” he interrupted himself, with a glance at Jockey.

  “I’d sort of like it in East Hundredth Street,” said Jockey. “They call it Holy Alley—after me. That’s where most of my boys hang out.”

  “A hell of a lot one doesn’t know about this city,” said Clostrides, and finished giving orders to his aide.

  From a pale smear in the east, the dawn spread until more than half the sky was blue. In the bowels of the rocky pillar where Lyken had his operations room, only the clock reported the arrival of day. Around the room, the squat bulk of Tacket detectors searched for the first signals indicating the importation of mass into the franchise and found nothing but fugitive hints.

  Shane Malco said, “What can be keeping them?”

  Lyken raised his drawn face, on which the hours of waiting had etched their traces, and said, “You want them to come?”

  “They’re going to anyway, aren’t they?” said Malco. His edgy voice was louder than he had intended; technicians working around a three-dimensional map of the area, ready to plot the attackers’ breakthrough points, looked up briefly.

  “There may have been a hitch,” Lyken pointed out sourly. “If there is, that’s all to the good from our point of view.”

  “Is it?” Malco was beginning, when one of the mysterious men from Akkilmar crossed the room at the far end, swept the people present with a curious, searching glance, and went out again. Lyken followed Malco’s gaze and guessed the reason why he said nothing further.

  “What have you got against Akkilmar, Shane?” he demanded.

  Malco shrugged and half turned away from his chief. “Nothing,” he said after a pause. “Except that—Ahmed, if you located these people more than five years ago, why have you never made anything out of them until now? I didn’t know of them, and I was your baseman!”

  Lyken spread his hands, but they shook noticeably. He was struggling perhaps with growing anger. He said curtly, “They had nothing much to offer—only the perceptor, which we couldn’t use properly. They were never a proposition for trade. They never bothered us, so we never bothered them.”

  “You’re too astute to say things like that and mean them, Ahmed,” Malco replied. “There’s a reason beyond that, and I’d give a lot to know what it was. Shane, have you any idea how many of these people there are going around the base now, with carte blanche to open whatever doors and pry into whatever secrets they feel inclined?”

  “That’s not quite true,” said Lyken, making himself sound patient to the point of exaggeration. “But as for how many there are—well, I don’t know. A dozen or two, perhaps.”

  “You think so? I’ve been around the base a few times. I did a tour of the fire posts as well. There aren’t less than a hundred people here from Akkilmar. Maybe twice as many.”

  Lyken didn’t answer except to shake his head.

  “Ahmed, that’s not good enough!” Malco lost his temper at last. “I think these men from Akkilmar have duped you—blinded you! I think they’ve been stringing you along for who knows how long, and now they’ve tied the string tight around your neck.”

  “I’m not going to take that, even from you,” said Lyken in a voice like ice. “Go away, Shane. And don’t come back.”

  “If this goes on, I’ll have nothing to come back to!” Malco flared, and spun on his heel. He had taken a step forward before he saw that one of the men from Akkilmar had come silently up behind them on bare feet, and was standing facing him now with legs a little apart, fingers curled over like claws on the ends of his relaxed but poised arms.

  The newcomer said very coldly, “There has been a betrayal.”

  “What?” said Lyken. The newcomer fastened his eyes on Malco’s face, and did not look away as he continued.

  “Our leader has been killed. There has been interference from your world, and one of us who went to rectify it has been ambushed by policemen. Who has spoken of us, Lyken?” Still his eyes did not wander from Malco’s face. Uneasily, Malco met the gaze with as much steadiness as he could.

  “There is one of your staff, who is in your confidence,” said the man from Akkilmar, “who was not here before—whom we have not learned to trust!”

  “Shane, Shane!” said Lyken sorrowfully. “How could you do such a thing?”

  Thunderstruck, Malco felt his jaw drop. He stammered, “Ahmed! You’re not going to swallow a baseless accusation with no evidence like that! Are you?”

  Lyken said nothing.

  “What have these people done to you?” said Malco, stepping slowly backwards, away from the man from Akkilmar. His voice was dead, drained of emotion. But he uttered the question because he had to.

  There was no answer. From a nearby door, two more of the men from Akkilmar appeared, and one of them held in his hand a black box like those which had made their kidnapped cannon fodder into invariably obedient soldiers. Malco’s eyes fell on the box with horror, and his mind raced like a machine suddenly opened out to maximum power.

  He said, “Ahmed! Just a moment! Just a moment! Did you hear what this man said? He said that someone from Akkilmar went to deal with interference from our own world. He was ambushed by policemen. There are no policemen here. Ahmed, we have no portals open to our own world since we blew up the base. Don’t you see what that means? It means they went by some other portal! It means they must be collaborating with our enemies!”

  Lyken’s turn to be thunderstruck, Malco noted with grim relief.

  But before Lyken could speak, the man from Akkilmar had gestured to the new arrivals. The one carrying the black box shifted it deftly from left hand to right and brought it up with a bang against Shane Malco’s forehead. Almost in the same smooth movement, he rapped it against Lyken’s face also.

  The one who had accused Malco said, “Now it is necessary to control you also. We need only await the arrival and defeat of the invaders, and we shall be able to send whoever we wish under our control into your
world.”

  To Curdy Wence, city-bred, as to the other involuntary soldiers defending Ahmed Lyken’s base, this wild, rocky country was alien and incomprehensible. Even to those in command who had worked in the franchise for perhaps years, there were still strange things aplenty, which they had never taken the trouble to look into.

  Therefore when Curdy Wence saw the brown figure move among the rocks, he did not fire at it. He tensed, because he was under orders to react to the sight of a man moving towards his fire post, and he brought up and sighted his gun. But a sharp order made his brain reel, bludgeon-like.

  “That’s not an invader! That’s a wild man! He’s naked and savage.”

  Curdy lowered his weapon uncertainly. The invaders would come with guns, wearing battle armor against energy bolts, and they would not move in such a casual fashion among the rocks. These must be local inhabitants, going about their ordinary business. The man he had caught sight of carried what appeared to be a pointed spear.

  But he didn’t look like the scout of an invasion force.

  Curdy’s vague guess that he might have been a hunter was borne out a few moments later, when a mob of wild pigs came grunting and squealing over the lanes of soil deposited among the rocks, pausing to burrow for a root here and there. The group consisted of a huge boar, who looked to Curdy at least as big as a man, with sows and some young ones already almost fully grown.

  They moved around the fire post, skirting it forty or fifty yards distant. Abruptly Nevada caught sight of them, and his fevered mind must have acted before he could be slapped down by the searing mental command which had stopped Curdy. He jerked up his gun and launched a bolt at the nearest of the pigs.

  “Fool!” Curdy spat. “You’re not meant to waste your charge on animals!”

  The bolt had splashed on a rock within feet of one of the young ones, scorching its hide and singing away its coarse coat of bristles. At once the air was hideous with squeals like men being tortured.

  Like lightning, then, the brown savage reappeared from among the rocks. He threw back his head and voiced a squeal indistinguishable from that of the pigs; then he flung himself forward and raced towards the fire post as though the rocky ground had been a smooth athletics track. He gathered himself in a vast leap and soared straight over its mushroom of armored roof.