The Fellowship of the Hand

by Edward D. Hoch

  “I’ll find out who sold that site to them, you can be damn sure!”

  “I understand it was disposed of as surplus government property, purchased by one of Blunt’s firms for the underground storage of natural gas.”

  “We’ll see about that.” McCurdy puzzled over it a moment and then asked, “If their computer complex is as big as you say, why did they need to tie into the FRIDAY system for their secret election?”

  “Perhaps only to show us the extent of their power,” Crader surmised, but he wasn’t fully satisfied with that explanation.

  “Anything else?”

  “Blunt sent you a message. He said the future belongs to those with the largest computers.”

  “Sounds like a threat to me,” McCurdy said after a moment’s thought.

  “Perhaps,” Crader conceded.

  “I know Blunt. He backed my opponent four years ago.”

  “Is he backing Thomas Wallace this time?”

  “Not that I know of. Until your news I thought he was sitting this election out.”

  “His computers predict a narrow victory for you next month.”

  “That’s generous of him!” President McCurdy snorted. Then, perhaps remembering that Friday was present, he shifted to a more statesmanlike attitude. “But tell me, Professor Friday, is there any possibility that this tampering with your election computer could affect the results of next month’s contest?”

  It was the question Crader had known would be asked, and the professor was ready. “There’s nothing to worry about, sir. As with any type of computer, the magnetic tapes and memory cells can be cleared through a simple operation. It won’t interfere with the election in any way.”

  But the President was far from satisfied. “Nevertheless, doesn’t the very ease with which these interlopers gained access to the FRIDAY-404 system cast a cloud over it? Suppose I should win the election next month by a few million votes, and suppose my opponent then suggests that the computer system was tampered with, through the unauthorized insertion of fraudulent votes? He could point to this happening to bolster his case.”

  Lawrence Friday shook his head. “The two events are entirely different. In this case last week, the unguarded voting machines and computer circuits were used to relay results of a private election to a central office in Chicago. Next month’s voting will be entirely different. There’ll be the usual poll watchers, plus continuous monitoring of the skysphere satellite and a constant check of the readouts. The votes are cast at a predictable rate, depending upon the hour of the day and the number of states having open polls. If, say, there was a sudden surge of three million votes within a minute around two o’clock, we’d know something was wrong because not that many people vote at midday. Likewise, if any fraudulent votes were fed into the system a few at a time we’d discover it too, because the running totals for the candidates are constantly checked against the votes cast all around the country. Your votes plus Thomas Wallace’s votes have to equal the total votes cast, and there’s no possibility of cheating.”

  “You explain it very well,” President McCurdy said, somewhat relieved.

  Friday hurried on to offer more reassuring details, and at the end of another half hour the President was satisfied. He got to his feet and shook hands all around. “Carl, I hope you’ll keep on this matter involving Jason Blunt. I’ve never had any great admiration for the man, and I wouldn’t be surprised at anything he attempted.”

  “We’re continuing our investigation, sir. Earl and I are handling it personally. We’re also checking any possible involvement by HAND.”

  “HAND! I thought their leader was in prison!”

  “He is, but there are some others still around.”

  McCurdy shook his head. “Bad business. We can’t afford to have them blowing up computers so close to election.” He got to his feet. “Carry on, gentlemen. I know the matter is in good hands.”

  He disappeared through a rear door and they were ushered back into the metal-walled corridor. “It seemed to go well,” Friday observed.

  Carl Crader nodded. “As well as could be expected, I suppose. He was a bit disturbed toward the end when I mentioned HAND, though.”

  “Is HAND a real danger?” Friday asked.

  “It could be. They were a danger just last year, and some of their important members are still at large.” Crader didn’t bother to add that he’d once had Euler Frost in his grasp and allowed him to escape. That was another story, but the affair had left him with a certain degree of respect for Frost.

  The rocketcopter was waiting on its pad for the flight back to New York. They dropped Professor Friday in Central Park near the zooitorium and then flew on to the top of the World Trade Center.

  “Earl, you said you checked the prison where Graham Axman is being held?”

  “That’s right. If they let Axman escape now, it’s not our fault.”

  Crader nodded and went back to his desk to check on the accumulation of messages that always awaited him. There seemed nothing else to be done on the Blunt—Ambrose matter, at least not for the moment.

  9 EULER FROST

  HE HAD NOT WANTED to use the stunner on Earl Jazine. The girl he loved had been killed by such a weapon on Venus, and he knew of too many other serious injuries caused by the concussion gun. But at its lowest setting he gambled it would be safe. When Jazine had tried to jump him there’d been little choice, after all, and the weapon had been ready.

  He’d built up his plan to enlist Jazine’s aid over a period of several weeks, and when he learned the CIB man was in Sunsite to question Milly Norris it was an opportunity that couldn’t be overlooked. If it hadn’t worked out completely as planned, at least Jazine had helped him at the Nova office—something he might not have accomplished on his own. He only wished there’d been time to leave a calling card at Nova, in the form of a hydrobomb like they’d used on the Federal Medical Center computers.

  But now Jazine was gone from his plans, and Graham Axman still waited behind bars. Axman’s trial following the bombing of the computers had been swift and efficient. He and two lesser HAND members had drawn twenty-year sentences, and that was the end of it. A few telenewspapers applauded the verdicts, pointing out the danger of any group opposed to the machine-dominated culture, but most had simply remained silent. The affair had passed quickly from the front pages, and to most people Graham Axman and HAND were only half-remembered disturbances in a constantly changing world.

  Euler Frost had spent the previous month scouting the area around the Federal Correctional Institute at Kansas City. The prison, opened in 2011 to replace the outmoded facilities at nearby Leavenworth, was a model of twenty-first-century penology. It was a low, sprawling structure with unbreakable plastic windows instead of bars, fully air-conditioned, and with a hologram screen and telenews printer in every cell. The prisoners spent four hours a day attending classes, and four hours working at a trade. Progressive and comfortable as it was, the prison was also escapeproof. Each cell was equipped with a proximity scanner to check on the inmate’s presence day or night. The walls were guarded by a screen of laser beams that crisscrossed the courtyard, and every vehicle leaving the prison grounds was X-rayed for stowaways.

  Euler Frost learned all this and was not discouraged.

  When he’d first come from the Venus Colony prison last year, Graham Axman had taken him in, helped him find a new life, even transported him to HAND’s island headquarters at Plenish in the Indian Ocean. All this was what Frost remembered, and he knew he could not allow Axman to remain in prison for the better part of twenty years. He knew also that if the government made good its threat of exile to the Venus Colony, Axman would be beyond the help of him or anyone else.

  If escape from the Federal Correctional Institute was impossible, then Frost would just have to see that Axman escaped from outside the prison.

  The talk of shifting the HAND leader to Venus began to play an important part in the emerging escape plan. It was an ea
sy job to determine that official messages were sent to the prison via a closed-circuit teleprinter from Washington. Frost had wanted Earl Jazine to send a false message to the prison, bouncing it off the comsat satellite. Now that was something Frost would have to do himself.

  On Saturday morning he put his plan into effect, summoning Sam Venray, the black man who’d been at his side during the attack on the medical center, and who had worn one of the masks when they kidnapped Jazine. Venray was a small but agile man, with quick, white eyes accented by the blackness of his skin. In an era when mass intermarriage had all but ended the race problem, Venray held himself aloof, refusing even to date a white woman. Frost had asked him once what he was hoping to accomplish and Venray only replied, “I want to keep the blackness in.” It was to keep the blackness in, somehow, that he had joined HAND. “Humans Against Neuter Domination—yeah, man, that sounds like me!”

  Now, facing him in a Kansas City hotel room, Frost said, “Sam, I want you to get out there and watch the prison. Rent an electric and drive up and down by the main gate if you have to. My message will request that Axman be moved from the prison to the Kansas City jetport for transportation to Washington and then to the Venus Colony.”

  “You sure they’ll move him today?”

  “I’m requesting it.”

  “They’ll check back with Washington to confirm,” the black man pointed out quite logically.

  “That’s why I picked a Saturday. There’ll be no one in the Washington office to confirm or deny, and I’m betting they’ll go ahead with the transfer. They’ve already received preliminary word of it, so the news won’t be any big surprise.”

  “So, I’m watching the main gate. Then what?”

  “They’ll bring him out in a prison van. That’s where we have to gamble a bit. We can’t be sure he’ll be inside, but we’ll have to chance it.” Frost unrolled a dimension map. “This is the shortest route to the airport. You follow along. A couple of the boys will be waiting here to laser the tires. I’ll be above, in a rocketcopter, to handle the rest.”

  “What if they kill him?”

  Euler Frost shrugged. “It would be better than twenty years on Venus, believe me.”

  The message was sent at noon, and one hour later Frost was riding above Kansas City at the controls of the rocketcopter. He watched the lines of electric cars on the expressways below, headed for the countryside and the nearby man-made lakes on one of the last warm weekends of autumn. Climate Control had predicted sunshine and there was plenty of it, reflecting off the cockpit window with such dazzling effect that Frost had to turn up the polarization.

  For the first two hours nothing happened, and he was beginning to sense failure in the air. Surely the prison director had decided to wait till Monday, when a check with Washington could be made. Surely he sensed something wrong.

  Then, at a few minutes after three o’clock, the radio crackled into life. Sam Venray’s voice came to him. “Prison van just pulling out. This looks like it.”

  “Hang in there, Sam. Any sign of extra guards?”

  “Negative.”

  “Where are they? I can’t see them yet.”

  “Van just cleared the laser beams. Heading north on the expressway.”

  “Right! Got it!” Frost signaled to the men in the cockpit with him and dropped the rocketcopter a thousand feet straight down.

  That was when he saw the second van leaving the prison gates.

  “Damn!”

  “What is it?” the copilot asked.

  But Frost was busy rousing Venray on his pocket radio. “Sam, there’s a second van! About a mile behind you!”

  “Oh, oh! That’s bad news. Think they’re wise?”

  “Maybe. At least they’re taking no chances.”

  “What now?”

  “Proceed as planned, and let’s see what happens.”

  He dropped a bit lower and saw the glint of the laser beam shoot out from the roadside. The first prison van blew all four tires at once and came to a sudden halt. Armored tires were fine against bullets, but a laser got to them every time.

  Frost saw the smoke bombs hit and dropped lower for the kill. But his eyes were focused down the road, to see what the second prison van would do. Almost at once it headed for an expressway down-ramp, apparently warned by radio of the trouble ahead. He debated only an instant before going after it. If one of the vans was a decoy, it could only be the first one. There was no point in sending the decoy along later.

  He fired both rear rockets to put him ahead of the van, and then banked sharply to come down in front of it. “Get the tires,” he told the man at his side.

  “You’re sure he’s in there?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The laser gun hit the front tires and brought the electric van to a sudden halt. Frost released a pair of smoke rockets as they landed and opened the hatch on his side. He was the first one out, running ahead of the others, using night goggles to see through the blinding smoke that already covered the roadway.

  The door on the side of the van slid open, revealing a uniformed guard with a laser gun. Frost gave him a quick shot with the stunner and pushed his body out of the way, climbing into the van before the driver could react. He hated to use the stunner in the close confines of the van, but there was no other way. The driver’s head bounced back against the plastic window as the shock wave hit him.

  Then Frost pulled the release on the dashboard, opening the rear door. The others from the rocket-copter had reached the van by now, and he heard them in the back, heard a scream and the familiar crackle of a laser gun. He hopped back out of the van in time to see Sam Venray bending over a fallen guard.

  “Did you need to kill him?” Frost barked.

  “No choice,” Venray said.

  “Is Graham in there?”

  “Here!” a familiar voice shouted, and Graham Axman emerged from the prison van, his legs hobbled by chains, his hands fighting the smoke from his eyes.

  Frost grabbed him by the shoulder. “Just hang onto me, Graham. Here, Sam—use that laser on the leg irons. Come on now, Graham. The rocketcopter is down the road about a hundred feet. Put these goggles on so you can see.”

  Graham Axman ran along at his side, and he did not speak again until they were safely in the rocket-copter. “This is a damn sight better than a trip to Venus!” he said then.

  “I thought you’d like it,” Euler Frost replied with a smile. “Good to have you back again.”

  Graham Axman had lost weight during his months in confinement. His eyes still held the same fire, but without his familiar pointed beard there was less of the Satanic about him. Although he was still in his early forties, prison had aged and weakened him. The transformation was shocking to Frost at first, because he had never dreamed that anything could blunt the vigor of the man.

  “I’ll be all right,” Axman said in response to his concern. “Give me a few days, that’s all. They feed you tranquilizers in prison, in the coffee, and it takes a few days for the stuff to wear off.”

  But as the days of early October wore on and Axman’s beard began to grow again, he still had not recovered his full vigor. Talking with him three days after the escape in their hiding place at a deserted farm, Frost found him interested in HAND, but only in a remote, scholarly way. “Tell me what you have been doing,” he urged Frost. “Let me see how well I instructed you.”

  “Well enough for me to free you,” Frost reminded him.

  “What was it you said earlier about the Computer Cops?”

  “I nearly tricked one of them into helping me free you. His name is Earl Jazine, and he works very close to Carl Crader. I arranged his kidnapping in such a manner that it would appear the work of the Nova group. Then I appeared on the scene to rescue him, in order to win his help. It worked to some extent, and he did assist me in entering the Nova offices in Chicago, but when I suggested he might help me free you, he balked.”

  “Nova, Nova! You mention them often, Euler
, but I am not convinced of their danger.”

  “Believe me, Graham, much has happened during the months of your imprisonment.”

  “Certainly! You have taken over the leadership of HAND!”

  For the first time Frost caught the harshness of his tone, the bitterness of his words. “Not at all,” he said hurriedly. “Someone was needed to hold the group together until your release. That is all I have done.”

  “And Nova?”

  “Nova is a menace, Graham. Their memory banks hold the very life and heritage of this nation, the soul of the land. Nova proposes to use a knowledge of the past to perpetuate that past. They desire a machine-controlled society where any sort of revolutionary change would be impossible.”

  But Graham Axman merely shook his head. “The real enemy is still in Washington, Euler, and you must never forget it! The machines of the government are what control us and stifle us. The people will never be really free until President McCurdy is gone.”

  Frost frowned at the words. “That doesn’t sound like you, Graham. It’s not a man HAND’S been fighting all these years—it’s a system.”

  “A man put me in prison. A man wanted me shipped to Venus.”

  But Frost shook his head. “McCurdy is not the enemy. Not the main enemy, at least. Nova has held a secret election to name the president of their revolutionary state. The man we must destroy is Stanley Ambrose, and after him Jason Blunt. With Blunt and Ambrose removed, Nova will be leaderless.”

  Axman’s eyes sparkled with fire. “Not Nova. First President McCurdy, and then we will see. With HAND in charge, Nova will merely wither away.”

  “Graham …”

  “I had much time to think in prison, Euler. HAND must be reorganized from top to bottom. I am once more taking command, but this time of a new and rejuvenated group. Even the name will change, Euler. From now on we will be the Fellowship of the HAND.”

  “Fellowship?” Frost was reminded of Tolkien’s century-old novel, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Edgar Wallace’s even older book, The Fellowship of the Frog. He’d read them both in his youth, when children still read books, and he remembered Wallace’s criminals taking orders from a mysterious voice that issued from the statue of a frog. “Doesn’t that sound a bit juvenile?”