The Fellowship of the Hand

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Certainly! You were never a prisoner.” He waved his hand. “Report what you like. We have no secrets.”

  “Then why did the rocketcopter leave so quickly after it deposited us? I had the distinct impression you were trying to avoid having our location pinpointed by anyone who might be following.”

  A shrug. “A simple precaution against HAND. We remember what they did at the Federal Medical Center.”

  “All right,” Crader said. “You showed me all this, and you showed it for a reason. You want me to carry a message back to President McCurdy.”

  “That is correct.”

  “What message?”

  “Tell him what you saw here. Tell him …” Jason Blunt paused, choosing his words with care. “Tell him the future belongs to those with the largest computers.”

  7 EARL JAZINE

  HE’D BEEN IN CHICAGO only once in the last decade, on a routine computer investigation involving fraudulent tax returns. The city had changed little in the meantime, though it still reminded Jazine of a compact New York, throwing its towers to the sky but never quite equaling the lure of Manhattan.

  He’d left Euler Frost at the jetport, and while Frost scouted the location of the secret election headquarters, Jazine used the time to have photo prints made of the material in his microfilm camera. He read again the Venus letter of Stanley Ambrose, and saw again the man’s smiling face at his Softball game.

  “Stanley Ambrose, where are you?”

  No answer came, because there was no one in the hotel room to answer him. He sighed and flipped on the vision-phone, punching out the direct line to Carl Crader’s office at CIB headquarters. When he saw Judy on the other end, he said, “Hi, doll! The chief around?”

  “No, and I’m beginning to worry. He hadn’t planned to be away overnight.”

  “Have you checked with Jason Blunt?”

  “Not yet, but I may have to. How about you, Earl? Where are you?”

  “Chicago. With Euler Frost.”

  “Frost!”

  “It’s a long story. Look, I should be back by tomorrow. If the chief shows up, tell him.” He blew her a kiss and clicked off. Frost should be calling soon, and he wanted the phone to be free.

  Jazine met Euler Frost toward evening, in the area of downtown once referred to as the Loop. They traveled along a moving sidewalk until they reached a tall, slender building near the lakefront.

  “This is the place,” Frost explained. “Nova Industries. All we have to do is get in.”

  “Shouldn’t be too difficult,” Jazine said. “Just stick with me.”

  Nova Industries occupied the entire seventy-sixth floor of the building, and they quickly established that the elevator was programmed to bypass that floor after six o’clock. Since newer buildings like this lacked fire stairs, Jazine knew there was no other way onto the floor. “It’s like a time lock on a bank vault,” he explained to Frost. “But there is a way to beat it.”

  “How?”

  Jazine worked quickly inside the elevator, flipping a panel to expose the clockwork mechanism. From his pocket he produced a miniature electromagnet which he pressed against the face of the clock. “These new time locks are great, but you can speed them up if you know how.” He started to rotate the electromagnet. “This’ll be the fastest night this elevator ever saw!”

  He took the magnet away and pressed the button for the seventy-sixth floor. Nothing happened. He tried again, advancing the clock another hour. This time when he pressed the button the number 76 lit up. “We’re on our way,” he said softly to Euler Frost.

  The offices of Nova Industries were like a dozen others Earl Jazine had checked out during the past year. A dummy corporation always operated along certain standard lines, whether its purpose was the changing of race-track odds or the overthrow of the federal government.

  “Computer terminals,” Frost said, shining his light around.

  “You don’t need that thing.” Jazine adjusted the polarized windows and flipped on the radiant ceiling. “Now you take those files while I check out these computers.”

  It was long, tiring work, but at the end of an hour he had what they’d come for. The election figures had been erased from the FRIDAY-404 system by the man who killed Rogers, so it was necessary for Jazine to counterfeit a signal to the master memory unit to obtain the data he needed. It was something like an old-fashioned safe cracker testing the combinations of the vault.

  Finally, though, he had it. Over 80,000 votes had been cast in the election, which took place on October 1st. They had come from the USAC mainly, but there was scattered overseas voting from various Nova subsidiaries and drilling islands. The result was the same as the figures Jazine had first discovered in the FRIDAY-404 system, but he didn’t tell Frost.

  STANLEY AMBROSE 45,390

  JASON BLUNT 36,455

  They left the Nova offices the same way they’d entered, and Jazine set back the time clocks with his electromagnet. Then they returned to his hotel room and looked over what they had.

  “The election has been held, and it appears that Ambrose won.” Euler Frost bit his lip and frowned. “It doesn’t help me or my informant at all.”

  “If you could tell me who your informant is …”

  “A young lady very close to Jason Blunt.”

  “His wife?”

  “I can’t tell you any more. I’ve told you too much already.” He picked up the little plastic overnight case he carried and started to open it. “Earl, I have to ask you to help me on something else.”

  “I’ve bent the rules already,” Jazine said. “I don’t know how far I can go without reporting to the chief. What is it now?”

  “There are many people affiliated with HAND throughout the world. They are Graham Axman’s people mainly, since he did much of the organizing for HAND while I was a political prisoner on the Venus Colony.”

  “We’d like to have a list of those people.”

  “So you could arrest them? Ship them all off to Venus? Can’t you see that the Blunt—Ambrose group, whatever it is, represents a far greater threat to this country than HAND? They are organized enough to hold secret elections, using the regular equipment for a presidential election. The figures we found indicate this group has over eighty thousand voting members! Can you imagine what a secret society of eighty thousand members could do to this country?”

  “Not much,” Jazine observed. “In the last century there were plenty of pressure groups with more members than that—a few even bent on revolution—and they never got anywhere.”

  “But they didn’t have computers, did they?” Frost asked triumphantly. “No, if HAND stands aside and lets them win this one …”

  “Just what do you intend doing?”

  “That’s the point! I’ve kept HAND going in this country, but without Axman I’m helpless on the overseas contacts. That island in the Indian Ocean, those Oriental girls he used so well …”

  “Why do you need me?”

  “I need you because I need Graham Axman. HAND needs Graham Axman.”

  “He’s in prison,” Jazine said, stating the obvious.

  “In prison and due for transfer to the Venus Colony.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, I do! His lawyer told me last week! Earl, I’ve been to the Venus Colony. I know what it’s like up there.”

  “I thought Ambrose did away with the penal aspects while he was there.”

  “I’m the living proof that he didn’t! The Venus Colony has become our Siberia. Instead of sending families there like the Russo-Chinese do, we deport criminals and political prisoners.”

  “Axman broke the law. You’re damned lucky you’re not in prison with him.”

  Euler Frost stood there, weighing his next words. Finally he spoke. “We have to get him out, Earl.”

  “Out?”

  “Out of prison. You have to help me get him out, like you helped me tonight.”

  “Hey, wait a minute! That
business tonight was one thing, but helping a federal prisoner to escape is something else! You seem to forget whose side I’m on!”

  “I was hoping you were on HAND’s side.”

  “Well, I’m not. I could arrest you for just talking about helping Axman escape. The only reason I’ve gone along with you this far is because you saved my life in that damned salt mine!”

  “Since you owe me a life, give me Graham Axman’s.”

  Earl Jazine shook his head. “It’s not mine to give.”

  Frost looked almost sad. “Very well,” he said, “then I’ll do it without you.”

  “I may have to prevent that.”

  Jazine moved forward, around the bed, as Euler Frost’s hand came out of his bag. He was holding a stunner. “I’m sorry about this.”

  “Hell,” Jazine barked, “not twice in one week!” He launched himself across the bed at Frost, and he was half in the air when the stunner caught him in the side. He felt the thud of the concussion against his body, felt the instant of pain on his already broken ribs, and went down hard.

  When he came to, a half hour later, Euler Frost was gone. He established that fact and then simply stayed where he was on the floor. For a long time he was afraid to move his body, afraid of feeling the stab of pain in his broken ribs. Finally, after another quarter hour, he slowly propped himself up on one arm and used the bed to pull himself up the rest of the way. He felt like hell, but no further damage seemed to have been done to his ribs.

  He started to phone New York, and then realized the office would be closed now. The best thing he could do would be to warn the prison where Axman was being held, and then hop the next jetliner back home. He placed a call to the warden at the Federal Correctional Institute in Kansas City. The deputy warden was on duty at that hour, and his face on the vision-phone screen was bored and disinterested. He noted the information and promised Jazine that no one would be escaping from his prison that night or any other night.

  Feeling that he’d done all he could, Jazine checked out of the hotel and flew back to New York.

  The next day was Friday, and he found Carl Crader in the office quite early, running over some reports with Sabin and a new man from the commerce unit. Jazine chatted with Judy until he was free, and then ran rapidly through his experiences since leaving the hospital.

  Crader listened in silence, and only spoke at the end. “Do you have the pictures?”

  “Pictures?” Jazine had almost forgotten about them. “Oh, sure—you mean of Stanley Ambrose and his letter to Milly Norris.”

  Crader took the prints and spread them out on his desk. He seemed to be searching for something, but Jazine couldn’t imagine what. Finally he said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “What, chief?”

  “Much of what you’ve told me jibes with my own experiences with Jason Blunt. He admitted the existence of a secret organization, and even admitted the election part of it. He flew me to Utah to inspect an underground computer complex that would make your mouth water. But the way Blunt tells it, his group is a benefit to the nation, not a threat.”

  “Was it a benefit when they kidnapped me and tried to kill me in that salt mine?”

  “That’s just the trouble,” Crader said.

  “What trouble?”

  “These pictures.”

  “What about them?” Jazine walked to the desk and peered down at the prints.

  “Well, you had the camera in your pocket when you were imprisoned in the radioactive salt mine, right?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Earl, if that salt mine had been radioactive, it would have fogged the film in your camera. Since the prints show no fogging, it means there was no radioactivity. You were never in danger in that salt mine. Euler Frost rescued you from nothing at all. The whole kidnapping and rescue was an elaborate HAND plot.”

  8 CARL CRADER

  JAZINE SAT DOWN. “I can’t believe it, chief.”

  “The facts speak for themselves, Earl. Euler Frost lied about following you there. He lied about rescuing you. If you stop to think about it, why should these masked men kidnap you, drive you an hour away, talk about a trial, and then send you down the chute into a salt mine? It sounds more like one of those old lodge initiations than a serious attempt at murder. True assassins would have finished the job when they had you naked in that woman’s bed.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that part!” Jazine complained.

  “He used you, Earl. Frost used you.”

  “For what?”

  “To get into that Chicago office building. And to spring Axman from jail. When he saw you wouldn’t go that far, he used his stunner on you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What I don’t know is where that leaves us. Since Frost lied to you about one thing, did he lie to you about everything? Did I get the straight story from Jason Blunt after all?”

  “What about the attack on me at the zooitorium? That was no joke!”

  “True enough. Nor was the murder of Rogers. But which side is the tattooed man on?” Crader thought for a moment and then answered his own question. “Not HAND’s, certainly, because if they were so anxious to kill you a few days ago, they’d have finished the job when they had you a prisoner.”

  “All right,” Jazine agreed. “So what do we do now?”

  “Report to President McCurdy,” Carl Crader said promptly. “As yet he knows nothing about this secret election business, nor does he know about Jason Blunt’s underground computer complex. I also have something of a message for him, from Blunt.”

  “The President’s not going to like it,” Jazine predicted.

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “He’s especially not going to like all this tampering with the FRIDAY-404 computer, just four weeks before election day.”

  Crader knew that Earl had a good point. President McCurdy, running for reelection against the former governor of Ontario, would be concerned that the affair might raise questions about the accuracy of the computerized tally. “All right, Earl, let’s tackle that problem before it even arises. Can you get Lawrence Friday to fly to Washington with us this afternoon and help reassure the President?”

  “I can get him if he’s willing to leave his animals.” Jazine reached for the vision-phone. “But this time I’ll try calling him. No more trips to the zooitorium for me!”

  “Ask him to be here at one. We’ll take the rocket-copter down. With luck he’ll be back by four.”

  “Right.”

  Crader buzzed for Judy. “Phone the New White House, Judy. Try to clear a one thirty appointment with the President for myself, Earl, and Lawrence Friday. Tell them it’s urgent.”

  Crader had never met Lawrence Friday before, though he recognized the slender, stoop-shouldered man at once from his holograms. “Sorry to take you away from your animals,” he said by way of greeting.

  “No, no.” Friday waved away the apology. “It was a slow day anyway. And one doesn’t get a summons to the New White House every day.”

  The flight from the top of the World Trade Center to the copter pad at the New White House took just twenty-five minutes, which was good time. They were kept waiting only a few moments before being ushered down the sterile steel corridors to the presidential lounge. Though the bombproof nature of the building had been necessitated by the bombing of the original White House in 2018, the metal walls still reminded Crader unpleasantly of Jason Blunt’s underground city.

  President Andrew Jackson McCurdy was a man of the people. Like his famous namesake two centuries earlier, he ruled the party with an iron fist and was a vigorous spokesman for the wishes of the voters. And yet, for all of that, there was something almost wise and fatherly about President McCurdy. He had just enough gray in his hair to contrast sharply with the string of boyish chief executives who’d preceded him, just enough fire in his speech to excite the voters one more time.

  “How are you, Carl?” he asked, stepping
forward to greet them. “Good to see you again. And Earl … And Professor Friday, I believe. I’ve been an admirer of your work for some time.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Friday replied.

  “I hope you’re going to get me reelected next month!”

  “I hope so too. The FRIDAY-404 is ready for those returns!”

  “Good, good. Now, Carl—just what was so urgent?”

  They sat down and Crader began. “You aren’t going to like this, sir.”

  “Try me.”

  “The FRIDAY-404 system has been used by a private group to hold some sort of election. The balloting took place last week—on October first—involving upwards of eighty thousand persons throughout the USAC and overseas.”

  “What? What are you talking about, Carl?”

  “A secret election.”

  “For what?”

  “Possibly for a shadow government to replace the legal government of the USAC.”

  “But how could such a thing be? How could they gain access to the system?”

  “They didn’t gain access to each individual voting machine, of course, but they did manage to tie into the regional relay stations, and through them to the orbiting satellite we use. The data on the secret election apparently was then fed back to earth to their own computers. A random signal managed to reach the FRIDAY system, though, and it was discovered before it could be erased. That’s how we found out about it.”

  President McCurdy scratched his nose. It was obvious he still didn’t believe a word of it. “Who were the candidates in this so-called election?”

  “Jason Blunt, the millionaire oilman, and Stanley Ambrose, former director of the Venus Colony.”

  “Ambrose! I wouldn’t put anything past Jason Blunt—but Ambrose! Does he admit his part in this?”

  “We haven’t been able to locate him, sir. He seems to have disappeared since returning from Venus last year.”

  “Disappeared?” The President pondered that. “And what about Jason Blunt?”

  “He admits the existence of this group, but claims there is no intention to overthrow the government. He took me on a tour of an underground computer complex in Utah.” Crader described the place in detail.