“In particular?”
“About the future. He claims to know what’s going to happen in the next year.”
“Prediction?”
“Prophecy,” Cussick corrected. “If I understand the distinction. And I claim prophecy is self-contradictory. Nobody can have absolute knowledge about the future. By definition, the future hasn’t happened. And if knowledge existed, it would change the future—which would make the knowledge invalid.”
“What was this, a fortuneteller at some carnival?”
Cussick colored. “Yes.”
The older man’s mustache quivered angrily. “And you’re going to report it? You’re going to recommend action against some entertainer trying to make a few dollars reading palms in a traveling circus? Over-zealous kids like you . . . don’t you understand how serious this is? Don’t you know what a conviction means? Loss of civil rights, confinement in a forced labor camp—” He shook his head. “So you can make a good impression on your superiors, some harmless fortuneteller is going to get the ax.”
With controlled dignity, Cussick said: “But I think it’s a violation of the law.”
“Everybody violates the law. When I tell you olives taste terrible, I’m technically violating the law. When somebody says that dogs are man’s best friend, it’s illegal. It goes on all the time—we’re not interested in that!”
Pearson had come into the office. “What’s going on?” he demanded irritably, tall and stern in his brown police uniform.
“Our young friend here has brought back the quarry,” Kaminski said sourly. “At this carnival he covered . . . he unearthed a fortuneteller.”
Turning to Pearson, Cussick tried to explain. “Not a regular fortuneteller; there was one of those, too.” Hearing his voice mutter out huskily, awkwardly, he rushed on: “I think this man’s a mutant, a precog of some kind. He claims to know future history; he told me that somebody named Saunders is going to be the next Council chairman.”
“Never heard of him,” Pearson said, unimpressed.
“This man told me,” Cussick went on, “that the drifters are going to turn out to be actual living creatures, not ships. And that it’s known, now, at high levels.”
A strange expression crossed Pearson’s uncompromising features. At his desk, Kaminski abruptly stopped writing.
“Oh?” Pearson said faintly.
“He told me,” Cussick continued, “that the drifters are going to be the biggest issue in the next year. The most important thing tangled with.”
Neither Pearson nor Kaminski said anything. They didn’t have to; Cussick could see it on their faces. He had made his point. He had covered all that was necessary.
Jones was about to become known.
4
AS AN IMMEDIATE measure, Floyd Jones was taken into surveillance. That interim system continued for a period of seven months. In November of 1995, the bland, uncomplicated candidate of the extremist Nationalist Party came through and won the general Council election. Within twenty-four hours of the time Ernest T. Saunders was sworn into office, Jones had been quietly arrested.
In the half year, Cussick had lost most of his youthful plumpness. His face was firmer and older. He thought more, now, and talked less. And he had gained experience as a secret-service man.
In June of 1995, Cussick had been transferred to the Danish region. There he had met a pretty, buxom, and very independent Danish girl who worked in the art department of a Fedgov information center. Nina Longstren was the daughter of an influential architect; her people were wealthy, talented, and socially prominent. Even after they were officially married, Cussick still stood in awe of her.
His orders from police offices in Baltimore came while he and Nina were redoing their apartment. It took him a little while to find a way to bring the matter up; they were right in the middle of painting.
“Darling,” he told her finally, “we’re going to have to get the hell out of here.”
For a moment Nina didn’t answer. She was intently studying color charts, her elbows resting on the living room table, hands clasped under her chin. “What?” she murmured vaguely. The living room was a shambles of creativity; buckets of paint, rollers, sprayers lay everywhere. The furniture was covered with paint-splattered plastic sheeting. In the kitchen and bedrooms stood heaps of still-crated appliances, clothing, furniture, wrapped wedding presents. “I’m sorry . . . I wasn’t listening.”
Cussick walked over beside her and gently slid the color cards from under her elbows. “Orders from the big wheel. I have to fly back to Baltimore . . . they’re assembling a case against this fellow Jones. I’m supposed to appear.”
“Oh,” Nina said faintly. “I see.”
“It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. You can stay here, if you want.” He didn’t particularly want her to stay behind; they had only been married a week: technically, he was on his honeymoon. “They’ll pay travel expenses for both of us—Pearson mentioned it.”
“We really don’t have much choice, do we?” Nina said forlornly. She got up from the table and began gathering together the various color cards. “I guess we should cover all the cans of paint.”
Woebegone, she began pouring turpentine over a tin can of paint brushes. A smudge of sea-foam green was dabbed across her left cheek, probably as of when she had reached to push back her long blonde hair. Cussick took a rag, moistened it in the turpentine, and scrupulously removed the smudge.
“Thank you,” Nina said sadly, when he had finished. “When do we have to leave? Right now?”
He examined his watch. “We better get into Baltimore by evening; they’re holding him now. That means we ought to get the eight-thirty ship out of Copenhagen.”
“I’ll go bathe,” Nina said obediently. “And change. You should, too.” Critically, she rubbed his chin. “And shave.”
He agreed. “Anything you want.”
“Will you wear your light gray suit?”
“I have to wear brown. Remember, this is business. For the next twelve hours I’m back on the job.”
“Does that mean we have to be solemn and serious?”
He laughed. “No, of course not. But this thing worries me.”
Nina wrinkled her nose at him. “Worry, then. But don’t expect me to. I’ve got other things to think about . . . you realize we won’t get this place finished until next week?”
“We could get a couple of workmen in here to complete things.”
“Oh, no,” Nina said emphatically. She disappeared into the bathroom, turned on the hot water in the tub, and returned. Kicking off her shoes, she began undressing. “We’re doing this ourselves. No broken-down tramps are getting in this apartment—this isn’t a job; this is—” She searched for the words as she tugged her sweater up over her head. “This is our life together.”
“Well,” Cussick said dryly, “I was one of those broken-down tramps until I joined Security. But it’s up to you. I enjoy painting; I don’t care either way.”
“You should care,” Nina said critically. “Darn it, I’m going to spark some sort of artistic sensitivity in your bourgeois soul.”
“Don’t say I should care. That’s a crime against Relativism. You can care all you want, but don’t tell me I have to care, too.”
Laughing, Nina skipped over and hugged him. “You great pompous thing. Taking it all so seriously—what am I going to do with you?”
“I don’t know,” Cussick admitted, frowning. “What are we going to do with all of us?”
“This thing really bothers you,” Nina observed, gazing up into his face, her own blue eyes troubled and serious.
Cussick moved away from her and began assembling the heaps of newspapers scattered around the apartment. Nina watched, subdued and chastened, in her paint-streaked slacks and new nylon bra, feet bare, blonde hair tumbled loosely around her smooth shoulders. “Can you tell me anything about it?” she asked presently.
“Sure,” Cussick said. Riffling the newspa
pers, he pulled one out, folded it, and handed it to her. “You can read about it while you’re bathing.”
The article was long and prominent.
MINISTER DRAWS CROWDS
FURTHER PROOF OF WORLD-WIDE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
Citizens flock to hear minister tell of calamities to come. Infiltration by alien life-forms predicted in detail.
Below that was a picture of Jones, but no longer sitting on a platform in a side show. An ordained minister, now, wearing a shabby black frock coat, black shoes, more or less shaved, a Peripatetic preacher roaming about the countryside haranguing crowds of rustics. Nina glanced briefly at it, read a few words, glanced again at the picture, and then, without a word, turned and raced into the bathroom to shut off the water. She didn’t return the newspaper; when next she appeared, ten minutes later, the newspaper had vanished.
“What’d you do with it?” Cussick asked curiously. He had fairly well straightened up the room and begun packing his suitcase.
“The newspaper?” Luminous and steaming from her bath, Nina began searching in the dresser for a fresh slip. “I’ll read it later; right now we have to get packed.”
“You don’t really give a damn,” Cussick said, with irritation.
“What about?”
“The work I’m doing. This whole system.”
“Darling, it’s none of my business.” Tartly, she observed: “After all, it’s supposed to be secret . . . I don’t want to pry.”
“Now listen,” he said quietly. Going over to her he up-tilted her chin until she had to face him. “Sweetheart,” he told her, “you knew what I was doing before you married me. This is no time to disapprove.”
For a moment they faced each other defiantly. Then, with a swift dart of her hand, Nina swept up a perfume atomizer from the dresser and squirted him in the face. “Go shave and wash,” she ordered him. “And for heaven’s sake, put on a clean shirt—there’s a whole drawer full of them. I want you to look nice, on the trip. I don’t want to be ashamed of you.”
Below the ship the blue, insipid expanse of the Atlantic lay spread out. Cussick restlessly scowled down at it, and then tried to interest himself in the TV screen glowing from the back of the seat before him. To his right, on the window side of him, dressed in an expensive hand-tailored worsted suit, Nina sat reading a copy of the London Times and daintily nibbling at a wafer-thin Swiss mint.
Moodily getting out his orders, Cussick began restudying the enclosed material. Jones had been arrested at four-thirty A.M. in the downstate section of Illinois, near a town called Pinckneyville. He had put up no resistance, as the police dragged him out of his wooden shack, described, technically, as his “church.” Now he was being held in the main processing center at Baltimore. Presumably, a brief had already been drawn up by the Fedgov Attorney General’s office; conviction was a matter of routine. There was the necessity of an appearance at the Public Court, and the actual sentencing . . .
“I wonder if he’ll remember me,” Cussick said aloud.
Nina lowered her Times. “What? I’m sorry, darling. I was reading the report of that scout ship that was grounded on Neptune for a month and three days. Lord, it must be awful out there. Those ice-cold planets, no air and no light, just dead rock.”
“They’re all useless,” Cussick agreed testily. “It’s a waste of the taxpayers’ money to explore them.” He folded up his orders and stuffed them away in his coat pocket.
“What’s he like?” Nina asked. “Is he the one you told me about, the one who used to be a fortuneteller?”
“That’s him.”
“And they finally got around to arresting him?”
“It’s not an easy thing.”
“I thought it was all rigged; I thought you could get anybody.”
“We can—but we don’t want to. We only want people who seem to be dangerous. You think I’d arrest your brother’s cousin because she goes around saying Beethoven quartets are the only music worth listening to?”
“You know,” Nina said idly, “I don’t remember a single thing I read in Hoff’s book. We had it in school, of course. Required text in sociology.” Blithely, she finished: “I just can’t seem to get interested in Relativism . . . and now here I am married to a—” She glanced around. “I guess I shouldn’t say. I still can’t get used to this clandestine sneaking around.”
“It’s in a good cause,” Cussick said.
Nina sighed. “I just wish you were in something else. In the shoelace business. Or even dirty postcards. Anything you could be proud of.”
“I’m proud of this.”
“Oh? Are you really?”
“I’m the town dog catcher,” Cussick said soberly. “Nobody likes the dog catcher. Little kids pray a thunderbolt will strike the dog catcher. I’m the dentist. I’m the tax collector. I’m all the stern men who show up with folders of white paper, summoning people to face judgment. I didn’t know that, seven months ago. I know it now.”
“But you’re still in the secret-service.”
“Yes,” Cussick said. “I still am. And I probably will be the rest of my life.”
Nina hesitated. “Why?”
“Because Security is the lesser of two evils. I say evils. Of course, you and I know there’s no such thing as evil. A glass of beer is evil at six in the morning. A dish of mush looks like hell around eight o’clock at night. To me, the spectacle of demagogues sending millions of people to their deaths, wrecking the world with holy wars and bloodshed, tearing down whole nations to put over some religious or political ‘truth’ is—” He shrugged. “Obscene. Filthy. Communism, Fascism, Zionism—they’re the opinions of absolutist individuals forced on whole continents. And it has nothing to do with the sincerity of the leader. Or the followers. The fact that they believe it makes it even more obscene. The fact that they could kill each other and die voluntarily over meaningless verbalisms . . .” He broke off. “You see the reconstruction crews; you know we’ll be lucky if we ever rebuild.”
“But secret police . . . it seems so sort of ruthless and—well, and cynical.”
He nodded. “I suppose Relativism is cynical. It surely isn’t idealistic. It’s the result of being killed and injured and made poor and working hard for empty words. It’s the outgrowth of generations of shouting slogans, marching with spades and guns, singing patriotic hymns, chanting, and saluting flags.”
“But you put them into prison. These people who don’t agree with you—you won’t let them disagree with you . . . like this Minister Jones.”
“Jones can disagree with us. Jones can believe anything he wants; he can believe the Earth is flat, that God is an onion, that babies are born in cellophane bags. He can have any opinion he wants; but once he starts peddling it as Absolute Truth—”
“Then you put him in prison,” Nina said tightly.
“No,” Cussick corrected. “Then we put out our hand; we say simply: Put up or shut up. Prove what you’re saying. If you want to say the Jews are the root of all evil—prove it. You can say it—if you can back it up. Otherwise, into the work camp.”
“It’s—” She smiled a little. “It’s a tough business.”
“You bet it is.”
“If you see me sipping cyanide through a straw,” Nina said, “you can’t tell me not to. I’m free to poison myself.”
“I can tell you it’s cyanide in the bottle, not orange juice.”
“But if I know?”
“Good God,” Cussick said, “then it’s your business. You can bathe in it; you can freeze it and wear it. You’re an adult.”
“You—” Her lips quivered. “You don’t care what happens to me. You don’t care if I take poison, or anything.”
Cussick glanced at his wristwatch; the transport was already over the North American land mass. The trip was virtually over. “I care. That’s why I’m involved in this; I care about you and the rest of suffering humanity.” Broodingly, he added: “Not that it matters. We flubbed Jones. This may be
the one time our bluff gets called.”
“Why?”
“Right now we’re saying to Jones: Put up; let’s see the proof. And I’m afraid the bastard’s giving it to us.”
In many ways Jones had changed. Standing silently in the doorway, Cussick ignored the group of uniformed police and studied the man sitting in the chair in the center of the room.
Outside the building a unit of police tanks rumbled along, followed by a regiment of weapons-troops. It was as if the presence of Jones had set off an uneasy chain of muscleflexings. But the man himself paid no attention; he sat smoking, glaring down, his body taut. He sat very much as Cussick had seen him on the platform.
But he was older. The seven months had changed him, too. The ragged fringe of beard had grown; the man’s face was ominous with coarse black hair, giving him an ascetic, almost spiritual quality. His eyes shone feverishly. Again and again he clasped his hands together, licked his dry lips, darted nervous, wary glances around the room. It occurred to Cussick that if he were really a precog, if he could really see a year ahead, he had anticipated this at the time Cussick had talked to him.
Abruptly Jones noticed him and glanced up. Their eyes met. Cussick began to perspire; he realized, chillingly, that as Jones had talked to him that day, as he had accepted his twenty dollars, he had seen this. Known that Cussick would turn in a report on him.
That meant, obviously, that Jones was here voluntarily.
From a side door Director Pearson appeared, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hand. He stalked over to Cussick, boots and helmet shining, impressive in his full uniform. “We’re all bobbled up,” he said, without preamble. “We sat on our behinds waiting to find out if the rest of his gabble worked out. It did. It did. So now we’re stuck.”
“I could have told you that.” Cussick reflected. “In seven months of surveillance, didn’t you get a whole boatful of pro- phecies?”
“We did. But the brief was drawn up on this; the Saunders one is the basis of our case. You heard the official release of data on the drifters, of course.”
The World Jones Made Page 3
