Poul Anderson - Shield

by Shield (Lit)

  Putting on a lounge suit that felt almost as silky as a Martian cloakleaf, he returned to Lean in the solarium. "Come outside till Vivienne arrives," she suggested. "It's such a gorgeous day."

  They strolled over the terrace to the parapet. Leah leaned against it and gazed out across the Sound. A breeze fluttered her hair and shook a few plum blossoms down over her. Vee has paused at this same spot, Koskinen remembered.

  He drew a lungful of untainted air. "You're right about the outdoors today," he remarked. "Sometimes that seemed to be what we missed the most on Mars. Earth's weather, every kind of it."

  "But they have weather there too, don't they?"

  "Yes. Nothing like ours, though. Days so clear that space itself didn't seem to exist between you and the horizon, then night falling at once, no dusk, just suddenly the stars appearing like fireworks, and so cold you could hear the rocks groan as they contracted. Or a dust storm, thin enough for the sunlight to shine through, making diamond sparkles across those old, old crags. Or the spring quickening, when the polar cap melted and the bands of forest came to life again, those grotesque little trees raising their tendrils toward the sun and unfolding yard-long leaves that took on a hundred different colors, greens, russets, golds, blues, and danced as if for joy——" Koskinen shook himself. "Excuse me. For a minute if almost seemed as if I were back there."

  "Would you want to return, ever?" she asked quietly.

  "Yes. Eventually. We got to be good friends with the Martians, you know."

  "Dave said a little about that too. Is 'friends' really the word you want?"

  "No. There was something between all of us, the whole crew as well as the Martians. Affection was a major part of it, but somehow so transformed that—-I don't know. You'd have to experience it yourself to have any idea of what I mean. Now that I've been away from it for a while, I have some trouble understanding the concept myself."

  "I'd like to try," she said.

  "You ought to," he said, caught in a sudden uprush of enthusiasm. "There definitely should be women on the next expedition. We could only realize an incomplete rapport, because we ourselves were incomplete. It'll take the full human unit, man-woman-child, to ... to establish a total relationship with the Martians. You see, they don't communicate just with verbal language. We've got plenty of non-verbal communication on Earth, of course, but very little of it has been systematized or developed. What's a synonym for a grimace? How do you conjugate a wave of your hand? I'm putting it horribly crudely, of course; but what I'm trying to get at is that the Martians look on communication as a function of the whole organism. They have a complete tactile language, for instance, as well as a verbal one, a musical one, a choreographic one, and lots more. And those languages are not equivalent to each other, the way writing is equivalent to speech. They don't say the same things, they don't cover the same range of possible subject matter. But when you use several of them simultaneously . . .can you imagine how complete a view of reality might be approached?

  "Only, for that kind of communication there has to be a psychological affinity, a oneness, between the communicators, because it's so subtle a process. I think we humans learned as much as we could have digested in five years anyway. But next time we ought to go further. And that gets back to the necessity of completing ourselves. I mean by bringing both sexes there, and every age, race, culture we can get."

  "You know," she said, "I begin to see why Dave liked . . . likes you so much. You're a completely unstuffy idealist."

  He glanced away in confusion. "I didn't mean to preach."

  "I wish you would," she said. "I want so much to get an idea of what it was like on Mars, what you did and discovered and thought, everything. After all, Dave was there, and we hardly had a chance to get to know him again before—— But for its own sake too, I'd like to know. And someday go there myself. Actually, didn't the experience of the rapport mean more to you than anything you learned from it?" He nodded, astonished at her quick perceptiveness. "Well, I wish for that experience too," she said. "You've already given me back the wonder in life. People have gotten so blase about spaceships and orbital stations and extra-terrestrial bases that I'd forgotten what it really means. But now I'll see Mars in the sky and think, 'That little red spark is a world,' and feel a chill down my spine. Suddenly the limits have been taken away. Thanks for that, Pete."

  It puzzled him how they had begun talking so intimately so soon. I guess it's that we're in a stress situation and our personal barriers are down, he decided. And Dave belongs to us both. She's a lot like him, whom I've come to know as well as I know myself. Not too much like him, though, he added sophomorically. Then he forgot the matter. It was trivial beside that with which they spent the better part of the day.

  Late in the afternoon Leah came to herself with a shaky laugh. "You've got to excuse me, Pete. I'm on the local committee for the World War One Centennial observances. We're going to re-enact a Liberty Bond rally, if that means anything to you. The whole business looks more foolish than ever, after what you and I have been talking about. But I don't dare do anything unusual, like cutting out of the meeting. Not now.''

  He agreed, thrown unwillingly back to the immediacies, and moped about the place after she was gone. Finally he drifted into an imperial-sized library. A book would at least kill time.

  Vivienne sat there reading. She wore a white dress, reminding him of the night she entertained him, and he wondered in a stunned fashion how he could have forgotten about her.

  "Oh," she said in a lackluster tone. "Hello, there."

  "Why didn't you join us?" he asked. "When you didn't show, we figured you'd decided to sleep instead."

  "No. I came out on the terrace," she shrugged. "But you were so deep in conversation I didn't want to butt in."

  "Vee! We weren't discussing any . . . any secrets. How could we have been?"

  Her lips twitched ever so faintly upward. "Now why did you suppose I'd think that? Of course you weren't."

  "Then why didn't you——"

  The smile ceased to be. She looked away from him. "I know when I'm out of my class," she said, "and frankly, I've got too much pride to play-act at the case being otherwise."

  "What are you talking about?" he protested. "Brains? Good Lord, Vee, you can think rings around ninety percent of the human race."

  "Probably. Brains is not what I meant." Her tone grew jagged. "Look, Pete, I'm not mad at you or anything, but will you please get out of here for a while? And close the door when you go."

  XII

  Koskinen returned the following afternoon from a violent game of handball with Lean—he dared not show himself outside the residence, but it included a gymnasium—to be informed by a servant of a conference at 1600. They changed clothes and went to the study at that hour. Vivienne and Trembecki had already joined Abrams there.

  The executive gave his daughter an unhappy look. "Not you, my dear," he said.

  "Don't be silly, Dad," she protected. "I'm in this as much as anybody."

  "Yes, and I wish you weren't. We're not playing tiddlywinks."

  "I found out the hard way in Europe," Trembecki added, "that the fewer people who have complete knowledge of an operation like this, the better."

  "I wouldn't blab," she said indignantly.

  "Of course not. But there are such things as PI drugs."

  "Do you mean somebody might kidnap me?"

  "No. It's sufficient if they arrest you, just as they did Dave."

  "Oh." She bit her lip. "Yes. What can I do, then, to help?"

  "The hardest thing of all: sit tight."

  "Well——" She squared her shoulders. "I'll be seeing you, Pete. I mean that." Her hand lingered in his for a moment before she went out. The door slid to behind her like a closing mouth.

  "For the same reason," Trembecki said, "I think we'd better leave that bomb around your neck."

  Vivienne stirred uneasily in her chair. One hand went to a small purse clipped on her belt. Slowly she re
laxed again. "Maybe," she said, flat-voiced.

  "You're the logical person to keep the detonator," Trembecki said to her. "You don't know how to make a shield unit yourself, do you?"

  "No. We didn't finish drawing the plans in the Crater, and without a background of theory, what circuits I can remember are just so much junk.''

  "That leaves you the only person who does know, Pete." Abrams's regard of Koskinen was troubled. "Do you agree——if worst comes to worst, Vivienne should be able to silence you? Life as a permanent prisoner wouldn't be fun anyway."

  "I guess so," Koskinen dragged out of himself.

  "Not that I expect any such outcome," Abrams said less glumly. "In fact, things are looking up for us. Sit down and let's talk over our next move." He placed himself behind his desk, bridged his fingers, and considered for a space before he started:

  "Our problem, as I see it, is this. We've got to keep the shield from falling into the wrong hands, yet use it as a bargaining counter to get our friends released and, if possible, to get Marcus out of office. The best way to work is through the President. If he can be convinced of the truth, and I think he can, he will act. After all, once the United States armed forces have shields—most especially, once our cities and other vulnerable points do— then the Protectorate won't need very tight controls over the rest of the world. If MS can't actually be abolished, it can at least be sharply reduced hi size and function. That will please the libertarians and the economy-minded hi Congress, without offending too much those who make a fetish of national security.

  "But it'll take tune for me to get an appointment; and then a single talk won't accomplish much. All I can hope to do the first time is get nun so interested that he'll agree to let you demonstrate the effect. That will have to be done secretly, so Marcus can't forestall us. I wouldn't put it past him to have you assassinated and the generator destroyed, if there's no other way to safeguard his power. Such a meeting between you and the President obviously requires careful pre-arrangement. And then still more time must pass while the President sets the political stage for what will almost be a coup d'&at in legal form. In the meantime, you'll need a safe hiding place.

  "Jan could have arranged that easily hi his old days. But unfortunately, he and I have lived blameless lives for many years now. We haven't got the right kind of contacts. I trust the loyalty of the household staff, but not their ability to play tag with the cops. Given a week or so, we could doubtless arrange a good bolthole for you; but we don't have that week. You mustn't stay here an hour longer than necessary. Your guess was right about MS, my Washington sources tell me. They did pick up so many leads and clues about the Chinese underground that it's taken almost all their resources to follow through. But their attention is sure to turn back on me good and hard as soon as that pressure eases off, which I imagine won't be long now.

  "So ... it is a risk, but I think the least risk we can get by with, if we try turning you over to the Equals."

  "Who are they?" Koskinen asked. "It seems I've heard mention of some such name, but I don't place it."

  "Short for Egalitarians. They're an idealistic movement, a number of people who want the Protectorate converted into a representative world government. That in itself isn't an illegal thing to advocate. Sure, Marcus and men of his stripe have denounced them as softheads and stooges for foreign interests. But nothing has been done about them because there's nothing that needs to be done. They only organize clubs, discuss, propagandize, work in election years for candidates sympathetic to their ideas. They're mainly significant because they attract a lot of intellectuals."

  "They don't sound very promising for our purposes," Vivienne said. "In fact, those Equals I've met in the past tended to be dear old ladies ... of both sexes."

  Abrams laughed. "True. Not all, however. There seem to be some Equals who believe hi direct action. And they don't tell the dear old ladies about that."

  "What sort of action?"

  "if I'd been able to find out in detail, the group wouldn't be worth much. The fact is, though, that outlawed books and pamphlets get published and circulated, calling for violent overthrow of agencies like MS. More significantly, people sometimes disappear when they get in trouble with the Protectorate. Remember Yamashita a few years ago? He was stirring up the Japanese people on quite a large scale—if stirring up is the right word; actually he preached passive resistance. MS arrested him, then lost him again. They haven't caught him yet. But he keeps popping up in remote villages, still drawing crowds to hear him, and vanishes before MS can arrive. There are several similar cases known to me, and doubtless many that I haven't heard of. Well, this sort of thing takes organization. Somebody is operating an underground which isn't nationalistic but universalistic. I suspect very strongly that Equals are involved. They may well be the prime movers."

  "I don't like it," Trembecki muttered. "I think the outfit has engineered some murders too."

  "Maybe. But the victims needed murdering. Like General Friedmann. Remember what he did to stop the protest marches in Rome?"

  "Um-m-m. . . . Granted, I'm not one to talk about niceties. And anyway, I haven't a better suggestion to make. Go on, Nat."

  "So," Abrams said, "there's this Carson Gannoway, executive secretary of the local chapter of the computermen's union, and an Egalitarian. I've dealt with him for years, and in the past couple of days I've had my personal detective staff investigate him to within an inch of his life. He's not overtly involved with the underground, of course, but I've gotten some strong hints. For instance, there've been illegal strikes now and then, with some violence. Gannoway, like the rest of his union's officials, publicly deplored them, asked the men to go back to work, and said he was helpless against their 'spontaneous action.' But, while conspiracy could never be proved, someone had obviously put them up to those walkouts. Now I know Gannoway and I know that he could have prevented or aborted those affairs if he'd really wanted. He's that able. Which suggests he was the actual brains behind them. Or there's the fact that he's been gone on 'vacation' several times precisely when something broke . . . like when the Toronto rioters suddenly acquired guns."

  "Has MS noticed him?" Vivienne asked.

  "No, not particularly, I'm sure. They can't keep tabs on every last one of us, thank God, and Gannoway isn't a conspicuous public figure. It's only because I, as I said, have known him so long, that I slowly got the idea he had connections with the underground. I wasn't about to rat on him. I haven't been violently anti-Marcus until now, but I never liked the way MS operates. Why shouldn't somebody like Yamashita remind his people that they have a heritage of their own? So I simply kept my suspicions to myself. The underground never did me any harm. Now maybe it can help us."

  "You think, then, Gannoway can——" Koskinen choked on his own excitement.

  "Well, we'll try him and see," Abrams said. "Jan phoned him today and asked if he could drop around to his home tonight to discuss a business matter. You two will go along. If he can hide you, great. If not, I'm sure he'll keep his mouth shut. Then we'll arrange a place for you in a warehouse I know of, though it'll be a poor substitute."

  "If he does offer to hide us, but I don't like the looks of the offer, we'll head straight back too," Trembecki said.

  "Us?" Vivienne said. "You're going to be with Pete and me?"

  The Pole nodded. "I'm still tolerably fast with a spitgun," he said, touching a spot beneath his tunic. "Though what I really want is to—— Well, Vee, you can land on your feet as reliably as the next she-tiger, but Pete here seems, frankly, a wee bit naive. I think he could use a word on occasion, from a guy who's had some experience with the underside of the world."

  XIII

  Gannoway's home was a modest apartment in Queens, crowded by a wife and four children. But he had a study of his own which he assured his visitors was soundproof and free of electronic bugs; and his family had been sent out for the evening.

  A tall, angular, somewhat Andrew Jackson-featured man, he closed
the study door and stood considering the others. Koskinen shifted from foot to foot under that gaze, glanced out the window at the glittering sprawl of the night city, back again to the comfort of Vivienne beside him, and did not know what to say. When Gannoway broke the silence, it was Trembecki he addressed.

  "You must have some reason for bringing me these outlaws, Jan, and you're not the type to try to frame me. But I'd appreciate it if you'd end the suspense."

  "Outlaws?" Vivienne exclaimed. "Has the alarm been 'cast?"

  "Yeah, an hour or so ago," Gannoway said. "On the evening news. Names and photos, with a tape excerpt from Mr. Koskinen's last phone call to the Bureau. You're dangerous foreign agents, did you know?"

  "Damn! I'd hoped for a little more time," Trembecki said. "But evidently the Chinese job is completed. They'll be after you now in full force, Pete."

  "What does MS really want you for?" Gannoway asked.

  "That's a long story," Trembecki said. "You'll hear it if."

  "I knew the Mars expedition had been taken into 'protective custody,' of course, and wondered why. I'm sorry about Nat's boy."

  "Part of getting him back is to keep these kids free," Trembecki said. "We have to hide them away for a period of time, a month or longer. You know every place Nat's got will be checked, just because Dave's arrest has made him a natural ally of theirs. Can you take care of them?''

  "Here? Don't make me laugh. And while I sympathize with anybody in that position, why should I jeopardize my family, as well as myself, on your account?"

  "On your own account too," Trembecki said. "Wouldn't you like to get rid of Marcus? Pete, here, has a way to do so, if we can apply it."

  Gannoway's features remained immobile, but the breath sucked sharply in between his lips. "Sit down and tell me."

  "I'm afraid you'll have to take my word," Trembecki answered. "We've had our differences now and then, you and Nat and I, but you know we aren't doublecrossers."

  Gannoway shook his head. "Sorry. Your judgment of what's right and proper might not square with mine. Besides, I couldn't do a thing by myself. Others would be involved, who do not know you personally. They'd have to be convinced the risk was worth taking."