“Really, Doug, I—”
I paced in front of him. “So They go all out to eliminate Fuller’s simulator. They program you to wield the hatchet. You fail. They program all of ARM. Picketing, unrest, violence will get the job done, They figure. But Siskin counters what he thinks is ARM strategy by marshaling public opinion against the pickets. And now it’s stalemate. That’s why the pressure’s been off me lately. The Operator hasn’t had time to check and see whether I’m still willing to believe I was only suffering pseudoparanoia.”
“You’re just rationalizing your hallucinations.”
“The hell I am! I understand clearly now. And I can see I’m not the only one in danger!”
He smiled. “Who else? Me? Because you’ve—ah, contaminated me with forbidden concepts?”
“No. Not just you. The whole world!”
“Oh, come now.” But deep furrows were beginning to show his doubt.
“Look. The Operator has tried every reasonable way of eliminating Simulacron-3-subversion, direct attack by ARM, legislation. But all His efforts have failed. He can’t reprogram Siskin because then the party would take up where Siskin leaves off. He can’t reprogram the party because thousands of reactional entities would be involved, right on down to the grass roots level.
“And he hasn’t made a move for several days now. Which means only one thing: He’s planning a final, all-out attack of some sort or other on the simulator! If it succeeds, our world will be safe again. But if it fails—”
Collingsworth leaned forward tensely in his chair. “Yes?”
Grimly, I went on. “If it fails, there’s only one recourse: He’ll have to destroy the entire complex! Wipe every reactional circuit clean! Deactivate His simulator—our world——and start over from scratch!”
Collingsworth clasped his hands together. And, terrified, I realized abruptly that I might be convincing him of my case! The disastrous consequences were instantly apparent.
The Operator’s attention was off me at the moment. But it wasn’t off Avery! Collingsworth had been insidiously programmed to sabotage the simulator; to help the pollsters attack Reactions, Inc.; even to tread along the brink of acknowledging the true nature of reality in order to convince me I was only a victim of pseudoparanoia!
If the Operator should learn that instead I had convinced Collingsworth, then He would realize the hopelessness of trying to pull me back in line. It would mean total deprogramming, oblivion, for both Avery and me!
Collingsworth raised his head and his eyes locked with mine.
“One of the tests of a system of logic,” he said softly, “is whether the predictions it accommodates are valid. That’s why I was so sure I had accurately diagnosed your symptoms. Just a moment ago, however, you made a forecast of your own. You surmised that the Operator was contriving a final, all-out attack on—”
The door opened abruptly to the accompaniment of whirring tumblers activated by a biocapacitance circuit. Vernon Carr barged in. “Damn it, Avery! Do you realize what time it is?”
“Yes,” Collingsworth said distantly.
“Avery,” I pleaded desperately, “forget what I just said!” I laughed. “Don’t you see I was only trying to build up a case and—and show you that—”
It was no use. I had convinced him. And now the next empathy coupling between the Operator and either him or me would be fatal for both of us.
“Well, what are we going to do with Hall?” Carr asked.
Collingsworth shrugged and rose listlessly. “It really doesn’t make any difference—not now.”
Puzzlement seized Carr’s hawklike features, but only for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “But, of course, you’re right. This is it, Avery! We’ll either succeed and destroy the simulator in the next half hour, or we’ll fail. What Hall does between now and then won’t make any difference.”
He crossed eagerly to the wall and drew back a pair of drapes, exposing a huge video screen. Somehow I sensed I was about to learn why Collingsworth had been stunned by my spontaneous prediction. Carr turned on the switch and the room was immediately engulfed in a pandemonium of tumultuous sound as whirling patches of light and shadow chased one another frantically across the face of the tube.
From a lofty vantage point, the camera zoomed down upon a close-up of the entire REIN building. It was surrounded by a seething sea of reaction monitors that swirled and eddied and washed up almost to the entrance and was thrown back again and again. Each wave was met first by cordons of club-wielding, laser-spraying police, then by thousands of civilians who were supporting them.
Overhead, sound cars wheeled and looped like vultures searching for carrion while, in Siskin’s voice, their loudspeakers screamed exhortations to the defenders. The policemen and civilians were being reminded that Simulacron-3 was mankind’s greatest boon and that on the offensive now were evil powers that would destroy it.
Paralyzing laser beams cut broad swaths of stillness through the attacking forces. But always, behind them, there were more monitors to take the place of the fallen ones. And, even as I watched the action unfold, steady streams of ARM pickup vans descended in the background to discharge reinforcements.
The Reactions building itself was sheathed in an aura of scintillating sparks as projectile guns and brickbats maintained a steady barrage against its repulsion shield.
Vernon Carr hung anxiously in front of the video screen, gesturing aggressively with each assault surge.
“We’re going to make it, Avery!” he kept shouting.
Collingsworth and I only stared at each other, our mutual silence an adequate bridge of communication.
I had no interest in the struggle, somehow. Not that it wasn’t the most crucial battle ever fought. It was. The very existence of an entire world—a simulectronic universe—hinged on its outcome. For if the reaction monitors won and destroyed Fuller’s simulator, the Operator in that Upper Reality would be satisfied and would spare all His creation.
But, perhaps because the stakes were so enormous, I could not bring myself to watch the flow of battle. Or perhaps it was because I knew that, under these circumstances, the Operator would soon couple Himself with Avery. And when that happened it would be the end for both of us.
I wandered over to the door, still open after Carr’s entrance, and out into the hall. Numbly, I thumbed the stud to call the elevator.
I stumbled along the staticstrip, back toward the parking lot. I passed the foyer of a building where a public video screen displayed its panorama of violence from the pickup cameras above the Reactions building. But I only turned my head. I didn’t want to know how the battle was progressing.
A half block from the parking lot I drew up hesitatingly in front of a Psychorama. I stared almost unseeingly at its display posters, which boasted of the current appearance of “The Foremost Abstract Poetrycaster of Our Times—Ragir Rojasta.”
A uniformed attendant appealed to the passing pedistrippers, “Come on in, folks. Matinee performance just starting.”
My mind was a labyrinth of tortuous, terrified thought. It was halted on a dead-center of stark despair. I had to find some way to clear it so I could decide what to do next—if anything. There was no sense in running. For there was no place to hide. I could be empathy coupled or deprogrammed anywhere. So I paid my admission and tottered through the foyer.
I took the first empty place I could find in the circular tiers of seats and let my eyes focus indifferently on the central, revolving dais.
Ragir Rojasta sat there, resplendent in his oriental robes and turban, his arms folded, as the rotation of the stage sent his trancelike stare sweeping across the audience. The play of soft lights against his tawny, severe features presented a soothing contrast that invited me to don the Participation Skullcap.
I didn’t have to close my eyes to be swept into the essence of Rojasta’s conceptualized poetry. Instantly superimposed upon my own field of vision was a great flowing procession of the most dazzling jewels I
had ever seen. Rubies and sapphires, diamonds and pearls tumbled over one another, their coruscating beauty blinding even my electrotelepathic appreciation of their elegance.
Against a hazy background of shifting sand and crawling marine life, they sent their brilliant reflections out to strike vivid illumination into murky depths. Then, like the gaping maw of an enormous seadragon, a vacuous hole opened in the ebon distance. And in its depths sparkled the most lustrous gem imaginable.
All around me, as though I weren’t in a Psychorama at all, I could feel the wetness of water, the loneliness of desolate, submarine depths, the awful crush of despair and hydrostatic pressure.
Then came the violent, lurching transition—from wetness to blistering dryness, from the suffocating loneliness of unfathomable reaches to the choking aridity of a vast stretch of wasteland.
The only concept that had held its stability during the change had been the incomparable gem. Only, now it, too, was metamorphosing—into a delicate, many-petaled crimson blossom that gave off a poignant redolence.
So hypnotic was Rojasta’s projection that I had been sucked irresistibly into the spirit of the reading. And I could now recognize the excerpt:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark, unfathom’d caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Gray’s Elegy, of course.
Now we were looking down on the profuse vegetation flanking one of the Martian canals.
The waters roiled with the restless presence of thousands of—
There was a jarring end to the poetrycast as the main lights came up in the Psychorama. A four-sided video screen dropped down to envelop Rojasta and each facet immediately came to life with a picture of the activity outside Reactions, Inc.
Some semblance of order was being restored. The monitors were falling back before the crippling spray from a score of heavy lasers which had been set up on top of the building.
Federal troops had moved in. They were swarming on the roof. They were dropping down by the hundreds in Army vans.
ARM had lost.
The Operator had lost.
The Upper World had failed in its last desperate attempt to destroy Fuller’s simulator within the bounds of rational expedient. The Operator couldn’t preserve His response-seeking system—our reaction monitors establishment.
I knew what it meant.
This entire world would have to be wiped clean so a new behavior-predicting simulectronic complex could be programmed.
I lowered the now dead Participation Skullcap from my head and merely sat there wondering when it would come. Would universal deprogramming be effected immediately? Or would the Operator first have to consult a special advisory group, a board of directors?
At least, I consoled myself, I didn’t have to worry any longer about being yanked individually, or even being scrutinized through an empathy coupling. If every circuit was to be wiped, I would simply go down the drain with all the rest.
Then, just as I had convinced myself that I was no longer a candidate for special treatment by the Operator, it came.
The visual details of the Psychorama blurred and the tiers of seats spun insanely about me. Bending under the crushing impact of faulty empathic coupling, I staggered out into the foyer. The sea that roared in my ears became booming thunder which gradually faded into what sounded like—rumbling laughter!
I cringed against the wall, aware that even now the Operator was picking every bit of vital information from my mind! And the laughter—like a component of nonresonant coupling—became like the beat of a tympanum in my head, sardonic, sadistic.
Then it was gone and my mind was free once more.
I stumbled out onto the staticstrip—just as an air car, with a crescent and star emblazoned on its side, cushioned down onto the street directly in front of me.
“There he is!” the uniformed driver shouted.
And a laser beam, lethal in its pencil-like thinness, lanced out against the side of the building next to my shoulder, crumbling concrete at its focal point.
I spun around and charged back into the foyer.
“Stop, Hall!” someone called out. “You’re under arrest for Fuller’s murder!”
Was this latest development motivated by Siskin? Had he decided to lower his boom as a final, absolute means of getting me safely out of the way? Or was this a result of programming by the Operator? Was He still sticking to conventional, rational means of disposing of me, despite the fact that He would soon deprogram His entire simulectronic complex?
Two more laser beams lashed out at me before I made it safely back into the Psychorama.
I circled wide around the tiers of seats and plunged out a side exit into the blazing sunlight of the crowded parking lot. Within seconds I was in my car, riding it skyward at full throttle.
14
There was nowhere to go except my cabin on the lake. It was just possible that I might be temporarily safe there if only because it was too obvious a place to hide.
I had no doubt, as I brought the car down into the clearing among needlelike pines and sent it skittering into concealment in the garage, that the police were under orders to shoot to kill. If they were reacting to the tug of Siskin’s strings, that was a certainty.
But out here in the forest, I would at least have a chance for concealment and self-defense should a homicide squad cushion down.
On the other hand, if the Operator was pursuing His own purpose of eliminating me, independent of police action, He would follow one of two courses:
Either He would yank me abruptly, without warning-in which case I could do nothing.
Or He would send His agent to handle the job physically to effect the appearance of suicide or accidental death.
And that was what I had wanted all along: a chance to come face to face with the Contact Unit. Out here, he would be stripped of his anonymity. He would have to show himself and share with me the isolation of the forest.
I went inside the cabin and selected my heaviest laserifle. Checking its charge, I choked it open to a spread beam. I didn’t want to kill the Operator’s agent outright. Not when talking with him might suggest a plan of action.
I sat by the window, facing both the lake and clearing, laid the weapon across my legs and waited.
All my reasoning was, of course, predicated on the assumption that, for some purpose, the Simulectronicist Up There was staying His hand on the switch that would wipe out my entire world. Why He might be waiting, I couldn’t imagine.
For hours on end, the stillness outside was disturbed only by the furtive movement of wild life among the thickets and up in the foliage, the gentle lapping of the lake upon its rocky shore.
Just after sundown, I went into the kitchen and broke open a pack of camp-out rations. Afraid to turn on any lights, I sat huddled beneath one of the windows and went through the mechanical motions of eating. And all the while I couldn’t dismiss the incongruity implicit in the need of an immaterial being for immaterial food.
It was almost dark when I returned to the trophy room, drew the curtain, and tuned in the evening videocast. I adjusted the volume to a whisper.
On the screen was a picture of the debris-strewn street in front of Reactions, Inc. Close-ups of federal troops outside the building were shown next, while the announcer deplored the “bloodshed and violence that have taken their toll on this gruesome day.”
“But,” he went on soberly, “rioting is not the only development that brings Horace P. Siskin’s latest enterprise boldly into the news this evening.
“There is more—much more. There is intrigue and conspiracy. Murder and a fugitive. All are directly involved in the alleged Association of Reactions Monitors’ plot to deprive an anxious world of the blessings that will flow from Horace Siskin’s simulator.”
My own image leaped onto the screen and was identified by the announcer.
/> “This is the man,” he said, “who is wanted for the murder of Hannon J. Fuller, former technical director at Reactions. He is the man whom Siskin trusted implicitly. Into Douglas Hall’s hands was placed the profound obligation of perfecting the simulator after Fuller’s supposedly accidental death.
“But, police charged today, Fuller was actually murdered by Hall for personal gain. And when Hall saw he was going to be denied that gain he turned treacherously on the Siskin Establishment, on the simulator itself.
“For Douglas Hall is the man who was trailed this morning by Siskin’s own security forces as he entered ARM headquarters to seal his treachery. He did that by perpetrating the unsuccessful mass attack on REIN.”
I tensed. Siskin, then, had known instantly about my visit to the pollsters’ headquarters. And he had assumed I was planning to betray his conspiracy with the party. So he had hit his panic button and dispatched the police with shoot-to-kill orders.
And suddenly I recognized one possible reason why the Operator hadn’t yanked me yet: He might have seen that Siskin was, unwittingly and in pursuit of his own objectives, taking care of the job for Him!
Oh, the Operator could help out a bit. For instance, if it appeared the law was dragging its heels, He might pull off another empathic coupling, find where I was hiding, then program the police to conceive of looking for me at the cabin.
He would either arrange it that way, or He would send His Contact Unit to do the job. It was a cinch He wasn’t merely going to yank me, and then have to reorient a whole cast of ID characters to the alternate fact that I had never existed.
But even as I tried to surmise the Operator’s strategy, I realized finally that the entire world might not be erased after all! Perhaps the Operator had decided to iron out the present complications, then have another—an absolutely final—try at eliminating Fuller’s simulator.
The videocaster was still on the subject of my supposed treachery:
“Hall’s heinous activities, however, didn’t end with his alleged murder of Hannon J. Fuller and his purported betrayal of Siskin and the simulator—not as far as the police are concerned.”
Counterfeit World Page 13
