“Masha, Masha …” He rumpled her hair as he would a child’s. “You are so much a woman in some things, and yet still a youngster in others. Don’t you see, life today is computers! There’s nowhere we could go on earth to escape the influence of the machines. Back on the island? In case you’ve forgotten, we have computerized drilling machinery, a computerized security system, even computerized climate control, thanks to the federal government. When you get out of bed in the morning and find your breakfast prepared, that’s done by computer too!”
“But none of these depend upon those things back in Utah. That’s my point, Jason—let Stanley Ambrose have the underground city!”
“I’ll see it destroyed first.”
Below, like a jewel of green in the blue of the Gulf, their island appeared. The rocketcopter dipped toward it, avoiding a flight of gulls that spiraled up from the water. In another moment they were on the ground.
Jason Blunt entered the big house and went immediately to the video where a printout of the afternoon news awaited him. Scanning the headlines and seeing nothing but the usual presidential campaign news, he transferred his attention to the message center. There were stock quotations and oil futures, along with a drilling report from a new island off South Africa that looked promising. But the thing that caught his eye was a one-sentence unsigned messagegram.
“Sunsite pioneers seek meeting at earliest convenience.”
Sunsite.
It was from Milly Norris, and something had happened. She’d never contacted him by messagegram before, directly to his home. He ripped the plastic from the machine and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he walked down the long hall to the solarium where Masha waited.
She was stretched on the floor, nude in the glow of afternoon sunlight, waiting to make love. It had become a ritual on days when he was home, harking back somehow to those early days of honeymooning aboard the Strombol, when everything was sunshine and sensuality.
“I must go away,” he said quietly.
“Again, darling? But you’ve been away.”
“It’s business. There was a messagegram waiting for me.”
“Business with Stanley Ambrose?”
“No. Oil business.”
“Must you leave right now?”
He stared down at the curve of her thighs. “Yes.”
“Oh, very well!” she sighed, rising slowly to her feet. She hugged him to her and gave him a long, deep kiss. “Hurry back!”
“I will,” he promised.
He’d always hated Sunsite. There was something about the stolid framework of the town that reminded him once more of computer circuits. At least the old cities had a wonderfully unplanned look about them, a hodgepodge of streets and alleyways that he still found charming. There was nothing charming about Sunsite, not even the quaint old church in the town square.
Now, an hour after sundown, Milly Norris was waiting for him in the square by the church, watching a hologram band concert on one of the coin machines. She looked up as he approached and said, “Imagine people going to the parks to hear real bands, Jason! Why don’t they do it anymore?”
“Musicians are too expensive, like everything else.”
“I suppose so.”
“I got your message. Why so urgent?”
She snapped off the hologram and the image faded from around them. There was only the park once more, a bit drab despite the festive neon trim to the trees. “Something happened. I thought you should know about it.”
“What?”
“A man named Earl Jazine came to see me. He’s with the Computer Investigation Bureau.”
“I know them,” he said. “Jazine’s boss called on me.”
“They know about using the FRIDAY-404 for the secret election. They know that you and Stanley were the candidates.”
“What else do they know?”
“That was about all, but Jazine sure asked a lot of questions.”
“About Ambrose?”
“Certainly. I showed him the letters and holograms, and he made photocopies of them.”
“Do the Computer Cops have any idea where Ambrose is?”
She shook her head. “No. But they’re looking for him.”
“So Jazine went away unhappy?”
“He was kidnapped.”
Jason Blunt felt a tingle of fear. “Kidnapped? From where?”
“Well, from my bed, if you must know. He was just climbing in when these masked men with stunners burst into the apartment.”
“God, you’ll sleep with anybody!” He considered the possibilities of her story. It could be a lie, but there seemed no reason for her to make it up. “Who were the men?”
“I told you they were masked! They took Jazine away and that’s the last I saw of him.”
“How’d they know he was here?”
“Now how in hell should I know that? Do you think I told them?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Sometimes I wonder just whose side you’re really on, Milly.”
“Is there another side besides yours?”
“Yes. There’s always Stanley Ambrose.”
She sighed in the darkness. “I told you I haven’t seen him in six years.”
“But I’ve seen him, Milly. He mentions you sometimes.” He hesitated and then added, “Is it possible that five years on another planet could have deranged him somehow, lightened his brain cells?”
“I know a man who was on Venus ten years and he seems perfectly all right.”
“Who’s that?”
She looked away. “No one you know.”
“Someone else you’re sleeping with?”
Her eyes flashed, catching the neon reflection from the trees. “That’s none of your damned business.”
He thought, perversely, of Masha on the floor of the solarium, bathed in the afternoon sunlight. “Are we going up to your place?” he asked.
“The bed might be occupied.”
“Stop it!”
“Go home and fuck one of your oil wells!”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I have no hold on you, no right to question your private life.”
“Damn right!”
“Want to watch another band concert?”
“No.” Softly. He wondered if she was crying, but in the dark he couldn’t be sure.
“What, then?”
“Let’s go back.”
“To the apartment?”
“Yes.”
They boarded a moving sidewalk and rode to her street. Standing beside her, Jason Blunt tried to puzzle out the meaning of it all. If someone had truly kidnapped Jazine, the CIB man, who had it been? Ambrose, perhaps? Or even that antimachine group, HAND? Maybe they were still around, as Carl Crader had implied.
Suddenly he reached a decision. “It could be dangerous back at your apartment. It was dangerous for Jazine last night.”
“Where, then?”
“My rocketcopter is parked at the town airstrip. It has a bed.”
“I don’t do it in rocketcopters.”
“You should try sometime.”
“Goodnight, Jason. Take care.”
“You’re leaving me?”
“What you said is true. The apartment isn’t safe.”
“A motel, perhaps?”
“There are no motels in Sunsite. Everyone lives here, and nobody visits.”
“You’ve had quite a few visitors lately.”
“Not overnight.”
They’d reached the sidewalk terminus, and she stepped off to enter her apartment. “I’ll leave you here,” he said. Already there was a gnawing fear deep in his stomach.
“Good-bye, then.”
There was no kiss, no embrace. He stepped onto the opposite sidewalk and was borne away.
All the way back to the rocketcopter he half expected to encounter Stanley Ambrose, a shadowy figure who would inform him quite clearly that he had lost the election.
12 MILLY NORRIS
ON THE SATURDAY OF Graham Axman’s daring escape, Milly Norris had read about it in the nightly telenewspaper. She’d called Frost on the vision-phone at once.
“Euler, how are you?”
“Fine. Good to see you.”
“Is this circuit safe?”
His familiar grin came back at her from the screen. “It is if anything is. I debugged it myself. If anyone tried a tap or a cut-through, the picture would scramble.”
“I just read about Axman.”
“Yeah. Really something, huh?”
“Were you there?”
“More or less. It was fun.”
“Euler, I summoned Jason and told him about Jazine, just as you suggested. But I’m afraid he’s stopped trusting me. He wouldn’t come back to the apartment.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Can I come there, where you are?”
“Sure. I want you to meet Axman, anyway. Better give us a few days, though. He needs some conditioning to recover himself. Prison hit him hard.”
“I’ll be there Wednesday.”
“Fine,” he said, and the screen went blank.
She leaned back in the chair and thought about Euler Frost. There had been many men in her life, even before Stanley. At the age of nineteen she’d fallen in with a band of Trekers, the remains of an old television fan club active in the late twentieth century. In their own way, the Trekers were much like the flippies of South New York, who painted their bodies and indulged in harmless orgies. A year with them, passed around among a circle of willing males, had been more than enough for Milly. After that she moved west to Sunsite, a quiet little town where everything was programmed—even, she sometimes thought, the sex.
She’d met Stanley Ambrose while he was teaching at the local university, after the death of his wife. The affair had been convenient for them both, and she’d never dreamed that it would lead to the present complications. First there’d been Jason Blunt, wealthy and willing, who’d come for information and stayed for a bit of loving. That had been shortly after Stanley returned to earth from his government service on Venus. Since she knew nothing about Stanley’s present activities, she’d been a bit surprised when Jason kept up the relationship, even confiding bits and pieces of information about his business relationship with Stanley.
It had been that relationship which most interested Euler Frost when he appeared on the scene. And it was Euler who most interested her. He was younger than Jason, and handsomer in a rough-hewn way. If he lacked the money to lavish expensive diamonds on her, he was still a man to be trusted. She told him about Stanley, and more—she told him about Blunt and his questions. She told him of Blunt’s computerized dreams, and of the great underground city in the desert.
And when Earl Jazine appeared at her office that afternoon, her first thought was to warn Euler. He’d taken it from there, with the kidnapping and all that came after. He’d even suggested that she summon Jason to give him a full report. Euler was nothing if not devious.
Sitting back in her chair, still facing the blank screen of the vision-phone, she wondered what it would be like to meet Graham Axman. During these past months Euler’s talk had been of little else, and now that Axman was free at last she had the feeling that momentous events were waiting to transpire.
Yes, Graham Axman.
He was a man to meet.
But then the meeting came, on that midweek evening, and she was vaguely disappointed. She was even more disappointed when Axman came to her room later that night to pump her for information. Was this the man Euler had wanted so badly to free from prison? This wild-eyed devil who planned to attack the New White House?
She expressed her misgivings to Euler the following morning at breakfast, while Graham Axman wandered alone out by the fields. “He wanted me, Euler. He wanted me against you. He wanted sex, and more than that.”
“You may be exaggerating. He’s been in prison for several months, and that might have contributed to his sexual frustrations, but he’ll be all right.”
“He hardly sounded like it yesterday. Euler, I believe in HAND, I believe in what you’re fighting for, but Graham Axman will tear the organization apart! Before you know it you’ll be bickering like Stanley Ambrose and Jason Blunt. You’ll be holding your own secret election!”
“It’s hardly gone that far,” he said, trying to reassure her. “HAND is Graham’s organization, after all. I’m sure he’s only trying to do what he thinks is right.”
“HAND was Graham’s organization, Euler. Now it’s yours. You have to lead it.”
“We’ll see.”
Axman returned at that moment, striding through the sliding door of the little kitchen and robbing his hands together. “It’s brisk out there! Don’t they have climate control in this part of the country?”
“Not this far out,” Euler told him.
Axman took some coffee from the masterbrew. “How are you this morning, Milly? Have a goodnight’s sleep?”
“Very good, thanks.” She avoided his eyes, not knowing how much he might have overheard.
“A good night’s sleep is what I needed. I’m beginning to shake off the prison pallor. A bit more sleep and sun and I’ll be back to my old self.”
Milly’s eyes narrowed as she weighed his words. He did indeed seem improved from the previous evening, but she wondered if it was a true improvement or only some sort of act. Euler had told her once of Axman’s acting experience in his youth, when his father produced shows on the island of Plenish. His whole new attitude might be nothing more than the work of a clever actor.
But how was she to know?
“Glad to hear it,” Euler was saying. “Do we go ahead, then?”
Axman nodded. “We’ll start planning the attack on this underground computer complex. President McCurdy can wait.”
They shook hands, and in Euler Frost’s face Milly could see a reflection of old times.
But still she wondered.
She went back to Sunsite on the weekend, and settled into the office routine once more. It was not the busy period at the tax office—payment schedules were always planned so that nothing came due during the month before elections—and so she passed her time on Monday in conversation with the other programmers, thinking up elaborate lies to explain her absence of a few days.
That night, as she entered her apartment after a quick computerized dinner at the office, the vision-phone was buzzing. She answered it at once, expecting to see a girlfriend’s familiar face. Instead, there was only a hazy blur on the screen. Some joker was covering the lens, which probably meant an obscene call.
“Milly—how are you?”
“Who is this?”
“Don’t you recognize my voice, Milly?”
“No.” And yet there was something about it …
“It’s Stanley. Stanley Ambrose.”
“My God! Let me see you!”
The haze fell away from the screen and her eyes focused on the dim, uncertain presence of Stanley Ambrose. How long had it been? Six years?
“How do I look, Milly?”
“I … don’t know. Different.”
“I want to see you.”
“Sure. Where are you?”
“Here.”
“In Sunsite?”
“Yes.”
She could feel her heart thumping. Seeing old friends—old lovers—always affected her like this. “When can we get together?”
“Tonight. I want to see you tonight, Milly. Can you meet me?”
Panic gripped her as she sought for an excuse. “Gee, this is a rain night. We have climate control, and the rain is supposed to start around eleven.”
“Milly, this is Stanley, I want to see you!”
“Well, hell, you’ve been back a year and now you’re in a big rush all of a sudden! I’m supposed to drop everything and run off to meet you!”
“I can’t explain it, Milly. I’ve had some business matters.”
“I heard about the
m.”
“You did? From where?”
“We’ll talk about it. Where are you?”
“In the amusement area. I’m calling from a booth near the rocket ride.”
“Can’t you come here?”
“I think your place is being watched, Milly. I have many enemies these days.”
“All right. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
She remembered to wear her waterproof cape in the event she wasn’t back before the eleven o’clock rain started. These things weren’t exact, and on some Monday nights the rain had been known to begin nearly an hour early.
The streets of Sunsite were almost empty as she took the moving sidewalk to the amusement area. Monday was never a big night for going out, and since it had been designated a rain night there was one more reason to keep people at home. As she neared the amusement area on the south side of the town the sidewalk became a bit more crowded, mostly with teen-age girls in bodysuits and dyed hair, prowling in groups while waiting for the boys to appear. Among teen-agers there was always action, even on rain nights. It made her think of her own teen years, and then surprisingly of Earl Jazine. She’d known him so briefly, but he was something like the boys she used to date, before the Treker days.
There were few older people at the amusement area, and she wondered why Stanley had picked it for a meeting place. Moving past the pneumatic merry-go-round and the gravity house, she tried to get her bearings. Without children, and too old to date the teen-age boys, she’d had little reason to come here. The place was strange to her, a dream of strobe lights and screaming kids and signs that urged one to Walk on the Moon Just Like Spacemen or Experience Anti-Gravity for Only a Dollar! It was like another planet, but perhaps that was its purpose.
She passed the mirror maze and the electric tumble, and finally spotted the rocket ride she sought. At first she saw no one resembling Stanley Ambrose, but then as she neared her destination he stepped out from the shelter of a dime-up machine.
“Hello, Milly.”
“Stanley.” Her eyes tried to focus on him in the garish light, but she could see only a pleasant, smiling figure who seemed to have no relation to her. He’d lost weight, and his face was drawn, and when he spoke his voice had an odd, far-off quality.
The Fellowship of the Hand Page 9
