Yet, presently, he had the letter unfolded, and had read it. He folded it, puzzled. The message in the letter was brief. It was simply a mimeographed—or some such copy system—announcement of the imminent arrival of a ship named Takeover, and ordered all of the ‘true people’ to stand by for Operation C.
Carl thought, baffled; Takeover of what?
But it didn’t seem important. So what was all the fuss about? … As he considered possibilities of meaning, he awkwardly went through the innumerable movements of metal hands and fumbling fingers slipping it back into its envelope, and then laboriously putting the envelope back into the secret pocket in the lower inside lining of a coat—all without disturbing the still body more than he absolutely had to.
He was totally in the clear, actually rolling away—backing—from the body, when the phone rang once.
Her signal.
There would be a pause, he knew; and, abruptly, he felt the old thrill. Strange to have so rich a recollection of a former feeling. But he had already discovered that with his brain alone he was capable of all the emotions.
Now, of this one! … While he mentally timed the delay that she normally—in the past—had allowed him, he did again what he had in the days when he was still a living body: except instead of walking he rolled over to the phone on his rubber wheels. And waited there. But he was not inactive. One set of hand extensors swiftly removed the receiver. Another set pressed down the phone buttons thus making sure that the instrument, in effect, was still in its quiescent state and as if the receiver was in position.
The receiver itself he inserted into a little door of himself and laid it face down on the electronic receiving equipment that was there.
Thus, when the phone rang again, he was ready. To begin with, at the very first sound—the barest start of the ring—he removed his ‘hand’ from the phone buttons. The sound ceased.
… Experience had established that people did not usually awaken from a deep sleep on a single ring. So, if there was someone upstairs asleep, then the possible precautions were taken.
Of course, if the person up there was already awake—well, that had happened several times, also. In the past, the answer to that had been to act swiftly.
Carl acted; had his voice box utter the word, ‘Yes?’ in a soft, questioning tone. The voice box was already interconnected with the equipment on which the receiver lay. So the word went out over the line.
‘Carl Her voice came through another relay to his own hearing complex; and, as before, he felt the old thrill of excitement. In the past, the thrill had been partly due to the stimulation of the thought of the sex they would have later.
Now, as he remembered the true state of his being, the high excitement faded. He answered in a low voice, ‘Yes.’ Meaning—yes, it’s I.
‘What have you found? What’s in the letter?’
He summarized it for her in a low voice. Before he could finish, she said, ‘Oh, my God—does it give a date?’
‘No. But, I gather you know what this ship is. Tell me.’
‘Later. Right now—listen! Carl, someone is coming. Not just one; several. They’re furious at the murderer for failing to find the letter. So get out of there, fast.’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘No, I just got the picture as I started to dial. They’re awfully close, Carl. Hurry!’
‘Will you call the police?’
‘Yes, of course. But, now, quick!’
There was a click.
Hastily, Carl replaced his own receiver. And he was hurriedly turning actually rather noisily, for rubber wheels are not silent even in a relatively slow movement—when he heard another sharper sound.
It was the sound of a car door slamming out in the street. Here already? Carl expected to experience a tiny chill of fear. Instead … stimulation came. A kind of joy. Things were happening, and he was glad.
He did the best he could with the time that remained. There was an alcove at one end of the room, which led to an open door. Into this alcove and through that door, the compressed air power drove his six-wheeled body. In the darkness beyond the door, he flashed on a dim light—and saw with relief that it was a machine room of some kind. A refrigerator, a mobile grill.
There was an empty space alongside the wall that ran at right angles to the open door. Carl spun his vehicle around in a single maneuver that placed him where his ‘eyes’ could see a good portion of the alcove just beyond, and a small view of the study room on the other side of the alcove.
She’d said they were close; so he could only hope that they were also bold, or knew this house. Hope, in short, that they did not find his car sitting in the back alley. The machine was, of course, electrically locked, and would not be easy to break into—but still, it would be better not to have to defend it from such an unpleasant possibility.
Carl kept telling himself:—There’s no reason why such people shouldn’t use the front door.
As he had that thought, he heard sounds: A door opening, voices. Nothing quiet, here … They were voluble like visitors arriving in broad daylight, and being very energetic about it. And it was through the front door. They were being bold. Evidently, they had reason to believe that the rest of the house was unoccupied on this murder night.
Carl acted quickly. He had television and radio contact with his car. He started the motor—by remote radio control. A television camera—the same one he used when he was in the car—watched the back alley road for him. And although he had a feeling of a difference between being in the car and operating at this distance, he realized that the feeling was largely a product of his knowing where he was.
The actual driving was no more difficult than when he was inside the panel compartment. The dummy figure at the wheel went through the same motions. The little truck itself drove straight along the alleyway to the first street, made a sharp right turn, and then drove two blocks—not because he wanted it that far away, but because that was the distance of the first parking space.
While the car moved, time passed. During that time, people came into the room where the dead body lay. Carl, intent on driving his panel truck, was vaguely aware that the number of them was … over a dozen. During those first minutes after the first one came into view, they stood around and talked to those near them.
They were quite open. Voices were normal. It was almost as if he was the driver of a car who, while concentrating on the road ahead, could nevertheless overhear what his passengers were discussing. Except that at times there were several conversations proceeding simultaneously, and so it was not always possible to follow all of them.
The first thing Carl heard was so ordinary that at a party he wouldn’t have stayed after the first two words. But of course there he was, so to speak, in the car. And he had to listen all the way from the nothing beginning to the nothing end.
‘How’s Margaret?’ said a man to his neighbor.
‘Mad at me for going out tonight.’
‘Thinks you ought to stay at home more with her and the kids?’
‘Yep.’
‘So does Susan feel that way about me.’
The next bit of conversation was more cryptic:
‘What do you think the Luinds and the Sleeles will do when they find out about the ship?’
‘Paul has already phoned Metnov. He had no particular reaction.’
‘Okay, that takes care of the vicious one. What about the two sets of good guys?’
‘Metnov is going to talk to the Luind leader through an aide. And of course the remaining three groups, good, bad, and indifferent, respectively, have no power, really. So the attitude is: tell them as a courtesy at the last minute. But to hell with them.’
‘Hmm.’ Pause. ‘How’s your wife?’
‘Difficult, as always. She thinks I associate with the wrong people.’
The two men both laughed wryly.
For a while after that, only scattered sentences came through the confusion of voices:
<
br /> ‘—Dorothy will be waiting up for me, so I wish Paul would hurry …’
‘A woman is like a—’ Last words missing.
‘—I tell you she’s so beautiful and sexy …’ And the rest of that sentence was lost in somebody else’s words …
Finally, there was one more audible interchange:
‘What will we Deeans gain from this takeover?’
‘More control over the women.’
Grim laughter.
Just about that time Carl completed the action of parking his car against the distant curb. The moment he did so, it turned out, coincided with the sound of the front door opening once more. Moments after that, a large man walked into Carl’s line of vision and stopped.
He was grey-haired and grey-eyed, and looked about fifty years of age. His lips were drawn together into a tight, almost angry smile. He seemed a little over-weight, but his body was otherwise solid in appearance; and there was about him, and it, a commanding air.
His face also seemed a little on the fleshy side. But it was a strong, determined face. It was the determination—it seemed to Carl—not of a mentally sick man, but of someone who believed in a truth of some kind. He had a consciousness of his own.
That consciousness, whatever it was, marked him as a dangerous man. Oddly, the question about such a man was not so much, what was his consciousness? Obviously, that could be any of a dozen ideas, nonsensical and otherwise. He could be a product of a particular brainwashing. It might even be interesting for about a quarter of a minute to listen to what he believed. But Carl, who had had his own certainties that he had lived with and by for better or worse, had long ago come to the awareness that it didn’t really matter what a man thought. The question always was: what did it drive him to do?
This man walked forward. And he now did something which all those who had come before him had not seen fit to do. He looked around. He came to the center of the room; and, standing there, he turned slowly full circle. During that turn, his gaze darted everywhere. When his eyes came to the alcove where Carl sat in full view, they paused. For many seconds he stood there with an appraising expression. Yet, presently, his eyes turned away.
He completed his full circle scan of the room and what was in it and adjoining. And then, in a deliberate way, he walked over to the dead body. Then he said, ‘William, come over here.’
A slender, thin-faced young man, who had been standing off by himself, shuffled forward until he also stood above the murdered man. He was a sallow-complexioned individual in his middle twenties. He stood there uneasily.
The big man glanced around at the other persons in the room, all men. ‘We’re going to have a lesson here, all of us, is my belief. That lesson is the reason why you are here.’ He turned to the young man. ‘All right, William, search him.’
‘B-but I already did—before, when I killed him,’ protested William. ‘And the letter wasn’t there.’
As he spoke, he made a gesture with his body and head. It was an impatient movement. His abundant yellow-brown hair, which lay on his head in essentially uncombed masses, jerked to one side, and immediately took up a different, equally unprepossessing configuration. His whole manner telegraphed a kind of rebellion against what was happening.
The big man said coldly, ‘Here is a dead man. When he was still alive a few hours ago, I saw him place a letter in an inside pocket of his goat. He told me at that time that he was going to do two things. First, show the letter to an important government group over which we have no influence. And then, second, bring government agents here had give them a conducted tour of the machinery downstairs. If you’ll think about it, you’ll realize that the only danger to us is if we’re taken into custody before the ship can help us.’
He continued grimly, ‘After a threat like that, there was no turning back. And so, when he and I emerged from the restaurant where he had defied me, I signaled to William. Whereupon, William followed him home, and killed him. When William phoned me, he said he was unable to find the letter. All this was within the space of half an hour, and less than two hours ago.’
The man paused. Once more, his gaze swept the faces of the silent audience. Then: ‘I would guess that there is nothing in the letter itself that would be significant to the authorities. But that machinery could be another matter. And—listen—we have had a lot of slipshod work recently, and bad reactions. There’s a hesitation in people. Every person present here tonight has been overheard making some kind of lukewarm statement about what is about to happen here on earth. There’s a distinct lack of dedication. I want to show you what happens when an individual begins to be concerned about himself and loses sight of the larger goal.’
The big man glanced at William. ‘Find the letter,’ he commanded.
The young man knelt reluctantly. ‘You could’ve had somebody plant it on him,’ he mumbled. ‘How would I know?’
The leader’s gaze swept out over the audience; settled on another person. ‘Henry, where was I the last two hours?’
‘You were with me and Jim.’
‘And did I leave your presence, and make any phone calls?’
‘No.’ Henry seemed vaguely unhappy. He was a tall, slender man in his late thirties; and he now felt motivated to make an additional comment. ‘As most of you know,’ he continued, ‘I’m not hot on this takeover. And I shudder to think what my wife’s reaction will be if she ever finds out that I’m involved—She thinks this is some kind of high-level Rotary club I belong to. And that it’s good business for me to know a banker like Paul. But, of course—’ with a curt laugh I never intended like our late lamented to betray our group—’
He stopped.
Nearly everyone present had made a sound. Sort of a sigh. For William was straightening, and clutched in his fingers was the letter.
‘I coulda sworn—’ he muttered.
‘Open it,’ commanded the big man, ‘and read it.’
And, of course, as the watching Carl knew only too well, it was indeed the letter that William had been sent to obtain. As the words that were in it came hesitantly from the young man’s lips, Carl saw the leader back slowly off to one side, and put his right hand in his coat pocket. The big man stood there, his eyes narrowed, his lips curled. Suddenly, he drew his hand out of his pocket, and there was a metallic glint in it. And then a flash of brightness.
On the floor, the kneeling figure of William … stiffened.
For several seconds, the silence in that room was total. Everybody stood as if frozen. Finally—
One man drew a deep, noisy breath. And, from a far corner, a small, dark, chunky man said, ‘Was that really necessary?’
Another man, a fleshy-faced individual of about forty, said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Paul, you know damn well why
William didn’t find the letter. The hot little blonde he’s dating was probably on his mind while he was searching,’
‘The time,’ said Paul in that deliberate tone, ‘has come to stop thinking all the time about hot blondes.’
‘Look who’s talking,’ said a third man, with a sneer. ‘The guy with the hottest blonde of them all, who just about drives him out of his mind.’
‘I never let a woman interfere,’ said Paul, and his voice was even-tempered, even-toned.
‘That’s a bunch of bushwa, and you know it,’ said the same sneering voice. ‘And don’t try to pull that Zis on me. I’ll beat you to the draw.’
Henry said mildly to the challenger, a brown-haired, sturdy man in his early thirties, ‘Darrell, slow down.’
‘That was a dirty, low-down murder. He wants to show us how tough he is.’
‘You mean,’ said Henry, ‘you’re not going to go along with this takeover?’
‘I don’t want any foolishness from Mr. Big Shot here, that’s all.’
Paul stood silent while the dialogue darted past him. Now, he stirred. ‘Henry—Darrell—all of you,’ he said, ‘get in line. The ship is coming. Understand. It’s not me you’re going to
be dealing with. It’s the ship. It’s computer-controlled, remorselessly programmed. It will tolerate no weakness in anyone, not in me, not in you. It will accept no excuses. It doesn’t care how much you love your wife and children. Prepare yourself, gentlemen, for total dedication—or death. There will be no exceptions.’
With that he walked over to William. Bent down. Eased the letter from under the finger. And straightened. As he slipped the letter into his own breast pocket, once more his gaze came up—and rested on Carl.
‘What’s that?’ he said in an irritated voice. ‘I don’t recall seeing that on my previous visits.’
Having spoken, he walked toward Carl in that even-paced stride.
During the swift seconds that followed, Several possibilities for action flashed through Carl’s brain.
But he decided to do nothing. To remain where he was.
Wait—he told himself … Yet it would be ridiculous—and deadly—to be found out on this initial attempt to discover who his enemies were.
As Carl had these thoughts, the big man came all the way into the alcove, and stood, frowning, only a few feet from the six-wheeled monster. He shook his head baffled. Without glancing around, he said, ‘You engineers back there—got any idea what this is?’
Without pausing for a reply, he stepped forward and gingerly placed his palm on the smooth, hard metal that covered the plastic dome, inside which was Carl’s brain. ‘Cool,’ he said. He added, ‘Whatever it is, it’s not switched on.’
Another man had come forward into the alcove. He knelt down and peered at Carl’s underside. ‘It’s all sealed in,’ he announced. He climbed to his feet, and said in a low voice, ‘Listen, Paul. Our job should be to get rid of these dead bodies, and get out of here. Let’s not waste—’
At that instant, the phone rang; and the speaker paused.
All over the room, except for the ringing phone, there was silence.
Finally, the big man whispered, ‘It will stop ringing in a moment. Let’s wait.’
It rang twenty times. Then it rang twenty more times. Then: ‘Henry,’ said the big man, ‘answer it.’
Carl correctly remembered Henry as the tall man, and it was indeed he who stepped forward and picked up the receiver, and said, ‘Hello.’ After a moment, a strange expression came into his face, and the color drained from his cheeks. He turned slowly, placed his palm over the mouthpiece, and said in a shaken voice, ‘It’s the police. They say the house is surrounded. They want us to come out one by one.’
The Secret Galactics Page 2
