by John Brunner
Sandy nodded. “But they’re prepared to cope with the virus aspect now. Like I said, they’ve lifted the max-nat-ad stuff out of the net altogether, ready to be slotted in again afterward.”
He leaned back, reaching for his glass.
“We’re obliged to you, Sandy,” Sweetwater said after a brief silence. “I guess we better put on our thinking caps and see what we can—”
He cut her short. “No, I’ll do it. What you need is a worm with a completely different structure. The type they call a replicating phage. And the first thing you must give it to eat is your original worm.”
“A replicating phage?” Suzy repeated. “I never heard that term before.”
“Not surprising. They’re kind of dangerous. Plenty of them have been used in restricted situations. Like, come election time, you disguise one and slip it into the membership list of the opposition party, hoping they don’t have duplicate records. But there are very few in the continental net, and the only big one is inactive until called for. In case you’re interested, it was devised at a place called Electric Skillet, and its function is to shut the net down and prevent it being exploited by a conquering army. They think the job would be complete in thirty seconds.”
Ted frowned. “How come you talk about these phages with authority?” he demanded.
“Well …” Sandy hesitated, then took the plunge. “Well, I’ve had mine running behind me for over six years, and it’s stood me in good stead. I don’t see why one shouldn’t do the same for Hearing Aid.”
“So what the hell do you use one for?”
Keeping his voice level with immense effort, he told them. They listened. And then Ted did an extraordinary thing.
He whistled shrilly. From where she kept her watch Brynhilde rose and ambled over.
“Is this poker lying?” Ted inquired.
She snuffed at Sandy’s crotch—diffidently as though reluctant to take such liberties—shook her head, and went back the way she had come.
“Okay,” Suzy said. “What exactly will you need, and how long will it take?”
DOGGED
“Out of the question,” said Dr. Joel Bosch. “He must be lying.”
Acutely aware he was sitting in the same office, perhaps even in the same chair, as Nickie Haflinger the day he encountered the late Miranda, Freeman said patiently, “But our techniques eliminate all possibility of deliberate falsehood.”
“Clearly that cannot be the case.” Bosch’s tone was brisk. “I’m very well acquainted with Lilleberg’s work. It’s true he produced some spectacular anomalous results. His explanations of them, however, amounted to no more than doubletalk. We know now what processes must be applied to produce that kind of effect, and Lilleberg never even pretended to use them. They simply didn’t exist when he retired.”
“There was considerable controversy over the so-called Lilleberg Hypothesis,” Freeman persisted.
“That controversy was long ago resolved!” Bosch snapped. And added with a strained attempt at greater politeness: “For reasons which I’m afraid a … a nonspecialist like yourself might find difficult to follow. I’m sorry, but there has to be a flaw in your interrogation methods. I suggest you re-evaluate them. Good afternoon.”
Defeated, Freeman rose. Suddenly a muscle in his left cheek had started to go tic-tic-tic.
HIATUS
Outside, the noise of quiet-humming motors as the tribe assembled. Inside, agonized by indecision, she walked back and forth, back and forth, her nails bitten to the quick.
“… after that, of course, I couldn’t go on living with him. I mean could I? Flaunting around the neighborhood like that, not caring who knew what he was up to …”
The sound of the motors faded. There was a phone in the corner of the room. She made no move toward it, even now.
“… just sit there! I mean how can you? I mean here I am all alone and it’s the third night in a row and last week was the same and in the name of God come, somebody come and put some weight on these empty dusty stairs and …”
If he finds out, he’ll kill me. I know he will. But once I called them and in a way I guess it saved my sanity. Any rate it got me here without committing suicide. Tonight someone else—and yet I know Jemmy would kill me if he guessed.
“… not so much drinking it as lining it, catch? Jee-sowss if I found him cleaning his teeth with it I wouldn’t be surprised and if they marketed a bourbon-flavor toothpaste he’d be the first customer not that he brushes his teeth too often and the stink of them rotting is …”
At last, fatalistically, she did approach the phone. It took her two tries to punch the number; first time, she lost count partway through. The screen lit.
“Hey!” In a desperate whisper, as though Jemmy could hear her from kilometers away. “You got to do something, do it quick! See, my son rides with the Blackass tribe and they just started off for a match with—”
A girl’s quiet voice interrupted. “You have contacted Hearing Aid, which exists exclusively to listen. We do not act, intervene or hold conversations. If you wish assistance, apply to one of the regular emergency services.”
The stinking stupid twitches! Well, hell, what do I owe them anyway? Let ’em find out what fools they are. If they won’t take help when it’s offered. …
But the tribes must be nearly there by now. Burning and wrecking and looting and killing. And I remember my brother Archie with his eyeball hanging loose on his cheek and him only nineteen.
One last try. Then let ’em go to hell if they prefer.
“Now you listen this time! I’m calling you to warn you! My son Jemmy is riding with the Blackass tribe out of Quemadura and they got this match with the Mariachis out of San Feliciano and it’s about how many houses they can fire in Precipice and the warlord has a mortar, hear me, a real army mortar and a case of shells!”
And concluding in a tone close to sobs: “When he finds out Jemmy’s just naturally going to beat me to death. But I couldn’t let it happen without I warned you!”
SLACK SHIFT INTO HIGH GEAR
“Call the sheriff!”
At his yell everyone else on this undemanding shift in the headquarters of Hearing Aid—including Kate, who like himself was being trained under supervision before being permitted to take calls at home—looked daggers. Someone said, “Ssh, I’m listening.”
“Two tribes closing on Precipice for a match, and one of them has an army mortar!”
That worked, galvanizing people into action. But a little too late. Kate said, breaking rules and removing her headphones, “A while back I had to kill a call that said something about a tribal match. I wonder if—”
He had begun to turn and look at her when the first explosion smashed the evening quiet.
While the others were still jumping with alarm he completed the turn and said, “You killed a call that tried to warn us?”
To which her answer was drowned out by a sound such as had not been heard before in the history of Precipice, which none who heard it wished to hear again: as though instantly they were trapped inside the largest organ in the world, and its player were striking a full diapason just that teeth-gritting fraction off true pitch. Between a bay and a howl, it was the cry of a hundred and fifty giant dogs answering their leader’s call.
Arrgh-OOO … !
Only the pups were left on guard, and the bitches nursing young litters. The rest of Natty Bumppo’s forces tore into the night, following the scent of fear, for that first howl alone had been enough to throw the attackers in confusion. There were shots, and one more mortar shell was fired, but it fell wide.
Thirty minutes, and the dogs drove in the tribers, weeping, bleeding and disarmed, to have their bites bound up before being dumped in the town’s various lockable sheds and cellars for want of an actual jail. Two dogs were shot, one fatally, and another was stabbed but survived, while thirty-seven tribers—not prepared to encounter an enemy of this stamp—were placed under arrest. The oldest of them proved to b
e eighteen.
All this, however, was too late to save the house at Great Circle Course and Drunkard’s Walk.
GRIEVANCE
There were tears glistening on the cheeks of the subject, and the instruments advised returning him to present-time mode. Following their guidance, Freeman waited patiently until the man regained total consciousness.
He said at last, “It’s remarkable that you were so affected by the destruction of a house to which you barely had a chance to grow attached. Moreover, even if the first warning call had been heeded, there would still not have been enough time to forestall the attack, and it was the very first shell which struck your home.”
“You’re soulless. As well as heartless!”
Freeman remained silent.
“Oh-h-h … ! Sure, sure, I know. Kate was obeying the regulations; she’d got a grasp of them faster than I had. It is standard practice at Hearing Aid never to accept a call that orders the listener to do something, because services exist for that purpose. And even if the woman who called had managed to get the point across about a warning in the first couple of seconds, the reaction would still have been the same. They tell you to try and deevee any call that begins with a hysterical warning, because nine times out of ten it’s some religious nut threatening to visit the wrath of God on us. I mean Precipice. And I guess I was aware of that at the time. I know equally well it was pointless to scream and rant at her and I went ahead and did it anyhow, standing there by the burnt-out wreck of the house with the smoke stinging in my eyes and the stench in my nose and a dozen people trying to reason with me. Didn’t work. I lost my temper on the grand scale. I think what I did was let go all the potential for rage I’d been bottling up since babyhood. In the end ….” He had to swallow and resume.
“I did something I probably last did when I was ten. I hit somebody.”
“Predictably, it was Kate.”
“Yes, of course. And …” He started to laugh, incongruously because tears were still bright on his cheeks. “And I found myself a second later sprawling in the dirt, with Brynhilde’s paw on my chest and that great-toothed jaw looming close and she was shaking her head and—I swear—going ‘tsk-tsk, naughty boy!’ I could wish she had been a trifle quicker. Because I’ve never seen Kate since.”
The laughter failed. Misery overspread his face.
“Ah. Losing the house, then, affected you so deeply because it symbolized your relationship with Kate.”
“You don’t understand a fraction of the truth. Not a millionth of it. The whole scene, the whole framework, was composed of loss. Not just the house, even though it was the first place I’d been to where I felt I could grasp all the overtones of the word ‘home’—not just Kate, even though with her I’d also started to comprehend for the first time what one can imply by the word ‘love.’ No, there was more on top of that, something far closer to me. Loss of the control which had enabled me to change identities at will. That blew away on the wind the moment I realized I’d struck the last person in the world I could want to hurt.”
“Are you certain she would have kept that casual promise about returning from KC? Obtaining a permit to transport her pet mountain lion would have been incredibly difficult. What grounds did you have for believing that she was sincere?”
“Among other things, the fact that she had kept a promise made to that mountain lion. She’s not the sort to forget any promise. And by then I’d figured out why else she’d kept on enrolling for course after unrelated course at the same university. Basically it was to provide her with a sense of pattern. She wanted her world-picture to include a little of everything, viewed from the same spot with the same perspective. She’d have been prepared to continue for another decade if necessary.”
“But she met you, and living with you was an education in itself. I see. Well, I can accept the idea. Ten years at Tarnover, at three million per, should indeed have equipped you with data you could pass on.”
“I suspect your sense of humor is limited to irony. Do you ever laugh at a joke?”
“Seldom. I’ve heard virtually all of them before.”
“No doubt among the components of human personality you’re trying to analyze humor is on the list right next to grief.”
“Directly afterward. H follows G.”
There was a pause.
“You know, this is the first time I’ve not been sure whether you’re bleating me.”
“Work it out for yourself.” Freeman rose and stretched. “It will occupy your mind until our next session.”
STRIKE ONE
After hitting Kate …
That his world had been repainted in shades of bitterness was no defense. Some of these his new neighbors—his new friends—were old enough to have seen not one house but a whole city fall in ruin.
Anyhow, what apology could he offer in a context where even dogs could distinguish force from violence? The tribers who thought it amusing to lob mortar shells at random into a peaceful community had been rounded up. Some were tooth-marked. But the bites had been precisely controlled. That arm had wielded a gun or knife; therefore those fingers had been obliged to open and let the weapon fall. That pair of legs had tried to carry the owner away; therefore that ankle had been nipped just hard enough to make him stumble. All for good reason.
His reason for hitting Kate was not good. They told him why, in quiet patient tones. Deaf to their arguments, he hurled back false justification mixed with insult, until at last they glanced at one another, shrugged and left him.
It was not cold, that night he spent sitting on a stump and staring at the shell of the house. But in his heart there was an arctic chill of such indescribable shame as he had not felt since he became an adult.
In the end he simply walked away, not caring where.
And came many hours later to the place which had vomited over Precipice the Blackass tribe. It was sweaty dust from all-day walking which made his shoes loathsome to his feet, but it seemed to him like the detritus of human cruelty: the materialized version of bloodlust, its ectoplasm.
“I don’t know who I am,” he said to an incurious passerby as he entered Quemadura.
“I don’t know who the hell you are either,” the stranger snapped, pushing past.
He pondered that.
IGNORANTIA NIHIL EXCUSAT
Ted Horovitz made necessary adjustments to the form-letter program, tapped the print key, and read the result as it emerged from the machine. This, thank goodness, was the last of the thirty-seven.
“Dear Mrs. Young, your son Jabez was arrested here last night while in possession of four deadly weapons of which one, a pistol, had been used within the previous few minutes. The hearing has been set for 10:10 tomorrow. You may wish to employ counsel, in which case the enclosed summary of evidence should be furnished to him or her; otherwise you may rest assured that Jabez will be represented by a competent lawyer appointed by the court. He has declared himself unaware of the fact that under our judicial code conviction for this crime entails a mandatory sentence of not less than one year’s supervised rehabilitation during which period the convict is forbidden to leave the town limits. (There is no maximum length for such a sentence.) Please note that one of the oldest of all legal principles states: ‘Ignorance of the law excuses nothing.’ In other words neither a defense nor an appeal may be founded on the plea, ‘I didn’t know.’ Yours, &c.”
Turning hopefully to Brad Compton, who among his various other roles acted as their chief legal counselor, he said, “So that’s all until the court assembles, right?”
“Far as I’m concerned,” Brad grunted. “But don’t relax too soon. I was talking to Sweetwater this morning, and it seems she’s found something you have to—”
“Ted!” A shrill cry from outside.
“I could half believe that woman’s telepathic,” Ted sighed, tapping out his pipe prior to refilling it. “Yes, Sweetwater, come right in!”
She entered, carrying a folded stack of compu
ter printouts, which she dumped on a table at Ted’s side. Dropping into a chair, she slapped the pile of paper with her open palm.
“I knew it. I knew what Sandy told us the other night at Josh and Lorna’s rang a bell in my memory. A long way back—over eleven years—but it was the kind of call you get once in a lifetime. Once I started digging, I got correlation after correlation. Take a look.”
Ted, frowning, complied; Brad came around behind his chair to read over his shoulder.
There was a long silence, but for the rustle of the concertinaed sheets.
At last Ted said, not looking up, “Any news of him?”
Sweetwater shook her head. “Nor Kate either.”
“Kate left town,” Brad said. “Took the railcar about seven thirty. But nobody knows what’s become of Sandy.”
“All of us, though,” Ted muttered, “know what’s apt to become of him … don’t we?”
They both nodded.
“Better call Suzy,” Ted said, leaning back with a sigh. “I got a councilman’s motion to submit.”
“Making Sandy a freeman of Precipice?” Sweet-water suggested. “Making our defenses his defenses?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Well, naturally you have my vote. But …”
“But what?”
“Have you forgotten? We don’t know who he is. He told us what. He didn’t think to tell us who.”
