The Devil's Mirror

by Russell, Ray

  Dismayed but not discouraged by the breakdown of communications, he came up with the solution—

  ESP!

  Himself an adept at the telepathic arts, Rodney founded a school to teach ESP to others.

  The school’s original name, Sloat Human Intercommunicational Teachings, was soon changed, because of its unfortunate acronym, to R S E S P, the meaning of which was obvious, if unpronounceable.

  In less time than it takes to tell, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Rodney’s pupils became absolute whizzes at ESP.

  They received their diplomas, and immediately started to transmit telepathic messages to friends, loved ones, and business associates across the country.

  Only trouble was, the messages weren’t received.

  That is, they weren’t received by the intended friends, loved ones and business associates.

  They were received Somewhere, by unknown Someones, who, in turn, responded with vivid telepathic messages of their own.

  These messages, couched in a language roughly resembling a hybrid of Sanskrit and differential calculus, with random dodecaphonic harmonica cadenzas thrown in for seasoning, were incomprehensible to Rodney’s pupils.

  Certain cynics among them accused Rodney of being a charlatan.

  The disappointed graduates of the school banded together and descended upon their former teacher. Some carried concealed weapons.

  Rodney placated them, and swore he would find out where the strange messages were coming from.

  Six days and six nights Rodney laboured, bending the full laser-sharp powers of his mind to the task.

  On the seventh day (it coincided with the birthday of Grover Cleveland, to which no significance should be attached), Rodney called together his ex-pupils and announced his findings.

  Their telepathic messages had been received somewhere in the neighbourhood of Alpha Centauri. The puzzling replies had emanated from the same place.

  The Centaurs (so Rodney named the distant telepaths, for purposes of convenience) had been having one hell of a time with their postal service, too.

  Could they, wondered the Centaurs, work a deal with their Earthly counterparts?

  Why not? thundered the graduates of the Sloat school.

  A training programme—conducted telepathically across the deeps of space—was put into immediate operation. Sloat’s people learned the language and geography of the Centaurs; the Centaurs learned ours.

  In no time at all, The Great Earth-Centauri Galactic Postal System was established.

  From that moment on, all letters (or sloats, as the telepathic signals came to be called) went through in three days without a hitch—New York, via Alpha Centauri, to Los Angeles.

  Local mail even faster.

  Once again, the indomitable spirit of Man had prevailed.

  With a little help from his interstellar friends.

  The Fortunes of Popowcer

  Memorable Moments in the Life of an Uncommon Man

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Mom Bomb

  Security Clearance took just thirty-eight seconds to computer-check my fingerprints, voiceprint, and brainprint. Actually, it’s the last one, the E E G, that counts. Those others are nothing more than double-checks, archaic, easily faked these days. But the brainprint is tamperproof. So far, at least. And it guaranteed me to be 100% Gordon W. Popowcer, the genuine article, not a Xerox.

  So the magnetic door zanged open and I trotted through. Quick. Before it could zang shut again and chop me in two. I don’t trust magnetic doors. Does anyone?

  ‘Mr Popowcer?’ asked a terrific redhead in colonel’s gear. ‘Silly question. Of course you’re Mr Popowcer.’

  ‘If I’m not,’ I replied, ‘the taxpayers have been snookered out of a million bucks worth of useless security gadgets.’

  ‘Two million five,’ she said, ‘and some odd change. Welcome. It’s an honour to meet you.’

  ‘I gather I’m the one who’s supposed to feel honoured. The first civilian ever permitted within these hallowed halls.’

  ‘That’s right. Except the President, of course.’

  ‘I don’t consider the Commander-in Chief a civilian. He’s brass in a pin-stripe suit.’

  She laughed. ‘That remark may pull down your Security rating a notch or two.’

  ‘We’re being bugged?’

  ‘But of course. Won’t you sit down? I’m Colonel Stockton, but you don’t have to call me sir.’

  I sat. ‘Does the Colonel have a first name?’

  ‘Elinor.’

  ‘Gordon.’

  ‘Good. Let’s begin.’ She hit a button on her desk and the wall lit up with a full colour picture of the gas works, or an atomic energy plant, or some other gigantic hunk of machinery. ‘This is Mom,’ she said.

  ‘I’d rather meet her in person.’

  ‘No way,’ she said with a brisk headshake. ‘Not even your Security clearance is that good. And it’s not necessary that you see the actual thing.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, Colonel. Remember, I’m a civilian. You have no authority over me. I’m here because the Government met my fee. A five figure fee. Which I am willing to blow, dear, by getting up and leaving right now.’

  ‘Negative, Gordon!’ she snapped, and as I started to lift my butt from the chair, a jolt of electricity knocked me right back down again.

  ‘What the hell—’

  ‘Nobody,’ she said, ‘but nobody walks out on a project as top secret as this one. You already know far too much about Mom.’

  ‘I don’t know a damn thing!’

  ‘You know it exists. That in itself is rigidly classified information.’

  ‘What do I know exists? All I know is that we’re sitting here in an air-conditioned tomb half a mile under Death Valley, looking at a picture of a pile of hardware called Mom. I don’t know what it is, what it does, or even if it really exists.’

  She relaxed a little. ‘If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll explain.’

  ‘Do I have a choice? I pretty much have to sit here and listen to you as long as you’ve got your pinkie near that hot seat button.’

  ‘Promise to behave?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll behave.’ She moved her hand away from the button and I shot out of the chair and fed her two mean slaps across the face. ‘I’ll behave like this. And this!’

  Then I turned around and kicked my chair loose of its wiring so I could sit down without fear of being zapped again. I smiled. ‘You were saying, Elinor?’

  She rubbed her face. ‘You’re a bastard, Popowcer.’

  ‘Gordon, please. And you’re right. I’m a bastard. Now do you want to tell me about Mom?’

  She turned to the picture wall. ‘Sometimes it’s called The Mom Bomb, but it’s not really a bomb. It doesn’t explode. In fact, its purpose is to prevent a specific type of explosion.’

  ‘What type?’

  ‘The Population Explosion,’ she said. ‘Mom stands for Maternity Obstruction Mechanism.’

  ‘Awfully big for a contraceptive,’ I said. ‘The Pill is much more compact. Even the old-fashioned devices—’

  ‘The Pill doesn’t work. You know that. Not enough people use it. Same is true of the old-fashioned devices.’

  ‘How does Mom work?’

  ‘I’m not a scientist,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me in little words.’

  ‘Mom transmits an impulse of some kind—don’t ask me what kind because I don’t know—using a secret wavelength. This impulse affects both male sperm and female ova in the human animal...’

  ‘Mom makes them sterile?’

  ‘As long as the impulse is transmitted, yes. When it’s turned off, the spermatozoa and ova begin functioning normally again.’

  I sat back in my de-activated chair. ‘The range,’ I said. ‘Tell me about that. How far is it effective? How big an area can it cover?’

  ‘That information is dispensed strictly on a need-to-know basis,’ she said, ‘and only ten people inclu
ding the President need to know it.’

  ‘Eleven,’ I said. ‘Gordon W. Popowcer needs to know it, or he doesn’t play ball.’

  She sighed. She looked away from me. And then she looked back. Straight into my eyes. ‘The world, Gordon,’ she said. ‘The whole wide world.’

  Beautiful, if it really worked. ‘But why am I here, Elinor?’

  I asked. ‘What’s the problem, and how can I help solve it?— assuming I want to help solve it, after I hear what it is.’

  ‘You’ll hear what it is, but not from me.’

  She poked a few more buttons, and the wall shredded itself into a split-screen effect showing close-ups of three tough customers—an ice-eyed Anglo, a broad-faced Slav, and a Fu Manchu type. Elinor tersely introduced them as John Corrigan of our State Department, Nikolai Borisov of the Soviet, and Lao Zi-Lei of Peking. Smile, I told myself, you’re on Candid Camera.

  Corrigan spoke first: ‘Mr Popowcer, the birth control project known as Mom can save the world. But it can also be a terrible weapon. If only one nation possessed it, it could be used to thin the populations of all other countries to nearextinction, while the population of its source nation remained stable or even grew. It can be used selectively, you see.’

  I nodded.

  Borisov picked up the thread: ‘That, sir, is why your United States of America is not the only nation to possess such a device. My own country has an almost identical one, and so has the country of my Chinese colleague.’

  Lao merely nodded in curt confirmation.

  ‘All three of these devices are currently in operation,’ Corrigan told me, ‘each one covering an effective area of one-third of the earth’s surface, therefore blanketing the world. They have been in operation for eight months.’

  ‘Which means,’ I said, ‘that in one month, the first results will be seen—no births anywhere in the world.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Corrigan.

  ‘And this condition will continue,’ I asked, ‘until the Moms are turned off?’

  Corrigan nodded.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t see the problem.’

  Lao Zi-Lei spoke for the first time. His voice was a sinister Asian sibilance. ‘The problem, Mr Popowcer, is that we cannot turn them off.’

  THE RETURN OF POPOWCER

  Chapter One

  Dial Nine Three Seven

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and died.

  That single word, or sound, that hiss of breath, and he was suddenly the deadest thing I’ve ever seen. Stunned, I let go of the withered corpse. It collapsed backward on to the leather couch.

  I stood for a moment, looking at him, swallowing lumps, my heart beating, my eyes glancing quickly but meaninglessly around my office.

  I looked at my watch. Dick was late, he should have been here twenty minutes before. Maybe he would know this dead old man. I certainly didn’t. I had never set eyes on him before. For a moment, I debated with myself about waiting for Dick before doing anything.

  But I decided against it. I walked over to my desk and dialled the police. My hand was shaking, my voice was not steady. ’My name is Gordon W. Popowcer. Someone’s just died here, I think you should come right over. Suite 804, the Stanton Building.’ I gave our address.

  Then I just sat. I thought of trying to call Dick, but he’d be en route by now. Maybe not. Worth a try. I dialled his number, no answer.

  That cadaver was the oldest, most ruined piece of humanity I’d even seen—even in the brief moments I had seen him alive. Now, in the handful of minutes after his death, he seemed to have grown even older, more desiccated, caved in. This, I told myself, was an illusion, bat, God, he had lived a long time—at least ninety years.

  Why, though, had he chosen my office to die in? Why had he stumbled in, suddenly, unannounced, with such urgency, after closing hours, at nine in the evening?

  Come to think of it, how had he gotten into the building?

  On second thought, there was nothing in that. All tenants had keys, and I certainly didn’t know every tenant in the building. He had a heart attack, stumbled into the wrong office—they all looked alike—and died in my arms.

  But why ‘Yes?’

  Why not ‘Help,’ or ‘Please,’ or ‘Doctor,’ or ‘God,’ or nothing at all?

  A sharp knock on the door jolted me from my thoughts. ‘Come in.’ Two cops in plain clothes entered.

  ‘Mr Popowcer?’

  ‘Yes. I phoned.’

  ‘I’m Lieutenant Moss, this is Sergeant Duffy. May we see the body?’

  ‘There he is.’

  They examined him briefly, searched his pockets, looked through his wallet, then pulled up chairs and sat down. ‘Would you just tell us how he died, Mr Popowcer?’

  I told them. It didn’t take very long.

  ‘And all he said was “Yes”?’

  ‘That’s all. I’m not even sure it was “Yes”—but it sounded like it.’

  ‘Why should he say that, Mr Popowcer?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Does that word have some special meaning for you, is it a signal of some kind, a code?’

  ‘No! Look, I never saw the man before! I don’t know who the hell he is!’

  Lieutenant Moss sighed. ‘I see. Mr Popowcer, you have a partner, is that right?’

  ‘Dick Rufus, yes.’

  ‘Where is Mr Rufus now?’

  ‘I wish I knew. He was supposed to be here almost an hour ago.’

  ‘Is Mr Rufus usually late like this?’

  ‘No, he’s actually very punctual.’

  ‘Would you describe him?’

  ‘Dick’s a man of medium height, I guess you’d say, a few inches shorter than I am; well-built, dark hair, curly; sort of no-colour eyes, blue-green-grey-something.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Dick’s about my age—thirty-five or six.’

  ‘Now, try to remember, Mr Popowcer. This old man here on the couch. Maybe you did know him? I mean, maybe he’s someone you may have met a few years ago, something like that? Maybe he’s somebody’s father—Mr Rufus’s for example—’

  ‘Dick’s father is dead, been dead for years.’

  ‘Can’t you remember ever meeting this man before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A friend of Mr Rufus?’

  ‘He might be a friend of Dick’s, of course, but I do not know who he is.’

  ‘Does Mr Rufus have any enemies that you know of?’

  ‘No... why all this emphasis on Dick Rufus?’

  Moss sighed again. He seemed very tired. ‘Well, Mr Popowcer, Mr Rufus is an hour late, you said. And he’s a punctual man, you said...’

  ‘Yes, but there’s nothing ominous in that. I mean, I’m not worried or anything. Hell show up.’

  ‘I hope so. Because the other thing, see, is that this dead old gentleman’s driver’s licence, Social Security Card, all his credit cards... they all belong to Mr Richard Rufus.’

  Later it was confirmed by the dead man’s fingerprints. He was Dick Rufus, and no mistake, all ninety-odd years of him.

  But it wasn’t until the next morning that I found a scrawl in Dick’s handwriting on his desk calendar: Dial 937. A number that short meant it was right here in the building. I involuntarily glanced at the phone, looked close at the dial, and realised, with an unpleasant flash of fear, that the letters corresponding to the numerals 937 were WXY, DEF, and P R S. In other words, there was another way of dialling 937: Just dial YES.

  Which I did. It rang only once, and then I heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Good morning, Mr Popowcer. We’ve been expecting your call.’

  The Secret of Popowcer

  Chapter One

  The Hunchback of the Opera

  ‘Don’t you mean the Hunchback of Notre Dame?’ I said. ‘Or possibly the Phantom of the Opera?’

  ‘No, Mr Popowcer, I mean the Hunchback of the Opera,’ said Marco del Medico, repeating the phrase he had uttered a moment before. He was qui
te emphatic, his eyes bright as a bird’s, his bald head gleaming as he nodded with sharp, abrupt movements.

  I had learned only recently, to my considerable surprise, that the grand old man was still alive and made his home less than two miles from mine. Never as big a name as, say, Puccini he had been a younger contemporary of his and well spoken of in his time. Of course, his music was rarely played nowadays—he had never had the common touch—but once in a while an adventurous impresario revived one of his all-but-forgotten operas or concertos (much in the same way that Busoni is occasionally resurrected). For decades, he had been living quietly in the suburbs, sustained by his royalties and a small annuity, writing his memoirs, composing special little things for private performances—string quartets and the like.

  ‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘the Hunchback of the Opera. That’s what they called him—behind his back. His name was Benedetto Rinaldi.’

  ‘The great baritone,’ I said.

  ‘Yes—how did you know? I thought no one nowadays...’

  I said quickly, ‘When I was a boy, I used to visit my grandfather. He had an old-fashioned gramophone with an enormous horn. And a pile of scratchy, one-sided records. Cohen on the Telephone, also Caruso, Galli-Curci, Lehmann, McCormack, Chaliapin. And Rinaldi. Singing Valentin’s aria from Faust.’

  ‘It was a role he never sang, never could sing, on the stage,’ said Del Medico.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For the same reason he could not sing Di Luna, Germont, Boccanegra, Amonasro, Escamillo, and a great many others. Those characters are kings, noblemen, warriors, matadors, and so on—imposing figures, requiring a commanding physical presence. And Rinaldi was a pitifully deformed hunchback.’

  ‘He could have played Rigoletto,’ I pointed out.

  ‘He did. And Tonio in Pagliacci. He played both roles, many times. Beautifully, feelingly. As Rigoletto, the phrase, Solo, difforme, povero, became especially poignant on his lips; and as Tonio, his high point was not the flashy Prologue—which he sang superbly—but that little arietta the lovelorn cripple sings to Nedda: So ben che difforme, contorto son io. But how many hunchback roles are there, after all?’

  ‘There’s Alberich in the Ring...’

  ‘Rinaldi was no Wagnerian, and his German was atrocious.’