Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer

by The invaders are Coming

  "Such a thing would be very useful," MacKenzie said. "A shield a few nuclei thick with all the stopping power of a huge block of concrete . . ."

  "And even if it were tissue-paper thin, it would still weigh as much as a four foot slab of lead," Harvey Alexander said.

  MacKenzie blinked, as though somebody had suddenly flashed a bright light in his eye. Then he was roaring with laughter. "Of course it's obvious," he said. "Once it's pointed out. They'll have a fit back home, for not noticing diat."

  "The rest wasn't so obvious," Alexander continued, "but it made sense when you thought it through. Without a shield, no U-metal came through those gates. Therefore, the hot stuff that set off the road monitor was not the U-metal that was later found missing in the plant. So the three missing slugs must have been disposed of inside die plant. If you were looking for it, you could see how easy it would be. There are refuse pipes leading from the plant to the waste dump. If the metal was dumped down those pipes, only a radiation-level check of the dump would ever reveal it. But if that was what happened, then the raid on the Wildwood Plant had to be a forgery. If that raid was something that was deliberately staged—and it must have been—then Project Frisco must have been staged from beginning to end. And that was what Bahr was afraid I would figure out—that die alien invasion has been a hoax from the beginning. There aren't any aliens!"

  Alexander turned to MacKenzie then, and set his drink carefully down on the table. "I also think that BRINT knows that is true, and has known it from the start. But I could be wrong, of course."

  "Oh, no," MacKenzie said slowly. "You aren't wrong. And you can see why we could not afford to have you place your deductions in the hands of DEPCO." The BRINT man's voice was suddenly tired, and tinged with bitterness. "We've been playing a long gamble, and it seemed as though we were winning, at least at first. We were all very clever, we had all the answers to all the questions, until we came to the really big question, and now we find that we don't have tile one answer that we really have to have." He looked at Alexander. "How to stop Julian Bahr before it is too late to stop him."

  "We needed a wedge," MacKenzie said later, "to smash through the wall that DEPCO had built around itself. A balance of power can be maintained only if the two sides of the balance are very nearly equal. On one side we saw the Eastern Bloc, pulling out of the crash with a burgeoning military machine and an aggressive totalitarian government. We were able to hold the Eastern Bloc in check .... barely hold it in check ... by the threat of the Robling missiles. But on the other side, in Federation America, we saw DEPCO grow and expand, entrenching itself more and more firmly as the all-powerful, controlling bureau in the government, following its course of stability at any cost and gradually dragging the whole Western economy to a standstill."

  The Scotsman poured another drink. "We could see it happening on all sides: the involutional thinking, the systematic witch-hunting to drive every leadership figure out of his job before he could even taste the bit, the growing emphasis on the internal sciences—psychology and sociology— and the shunning of the physical sciences and technology. Nobody knows where it might have ended if it had gone on undisturbed, but anyone whose head was not buried in the system could see how it entrenched itself more firmly every year. Every frontier, every challenge was systematically being sliced away, every sign of progress curbed, a whole economy slowly grinding to a halt. This was not Vanner's plan; he saw the stability period as a transition, a 'getting back on their feet again' before picking up the gauntlet. It didn't work that way. The cure drove out the disease—the chaos of the crash years—and then became worse than the disease. How soon the society would have disintegrated completely, nobody knows. But it was clear that a frontier had to be established again, before it was too late."

  "A space frontier?"

  "Anything would have done it," MacKenzie said, "as long as it was a frontier. Some drive was needed to provide a stimulus, a drive that would require a massive national effort to achieve. To allow a war would have meant the certain destruction of Federation America. Only one challenge was big enough, but a drive to space was the one thing, above all things, that DEPCO would block at any cost. The fear and suspicion of spaceships that was engendered by the crash was not a rational fear, but that didn't matter. You know your history of bipartisan politics in the old United States. It took the Republican party thirty years, a major war, a war hero and a decade of unparalleled prosperity to overcome the public reaction to the depression of the '30s. And the crash of '95 made that depression look like a Sunday School picnic."

  "So Bahr was your wedge," Alexander said.

  "Bahr was our wedge. Carl Englehardt didn't recognize the peril in the same terms we did, but he also wanted the spaceship project re-established. His motives were entirely personal and individual; the important thing was that he thought he knew a way to force a reopening of the project. He knew a young, ambitious man in the DIA, a man who was strong enough and tough enough and ruthless enough to drive a hole through DEPCO's wall of over-regulation and smash it down, given a toehold. Englehardt gave him the toehold, a series of carefully staged incidents which led, by inference, to the conclusion that we were on the eve of an alien invasion."

  "Then Englehardt prepared the 'ships' that exploded?" Alexander asked. "What about the Moon?"

  "If you remember that Englehardt has been making intercontinental missiles for years, capable of carrying fusion warheads, it isn't hard to see how he could place a half a dozen unmanned drones on the Moon. The difficult part—in which BRINT co-operated—was handling the leaking of information that followed each successive incident. Bahr knew it was a hoax, and it fit into his plans perfectly. Once started, it all followed nicely: the circulation of a pulp scare-book to prepare the public for the panic that would follow; the step-by-step creation of a national peril which could be met and answered only by a drive to build a space fleet. Vanner had proved that the conquest of space would ultimately require a national effort comparable to a full-scale war, but if Federation America were to support it, it had to be an emotional cause, a fear-cause with a leader who could draw the people along and supply the great force needed to burst through thirty years of entrenched anti-space conditioning."

  MacKenzie spread his hands. "We needed a man with the drive and strength to leap into the breach and use the crisis. We had to have Bahr, but he moved too fast; he was too successful. He didn't fight DEPCO the way we expected him to; he simply walked around DEPCO and left them standing there. Earlier, we might have been able to control Bahr. Now he is out of control, and in a matter of weeks he will have a continent under his thumb, and a military and technical program straining the nation to its limits. In six months he will want the world, and we won't be able to stop him . . ."

  "Can't Englehardt stop him?" Alexander asked. "Surely he has the power."

  MacKenzie gave him an odd look. "Englehardt is dead," he said slowly. "Curiously enough, he was shot down on the street an hour after Bahr made his appeal to Congress." The BRINT man shrugged. "The assassination was blamed on DEPCO fanatics who were determined to block the space project, and Englehardt was given a state funeral. Bahr's speech at the funeral was very touching. When it was over, he nationalized Robling holdings by edict, and doubled the pay of every man in the organization."

  The two men sat silently for a few moments. "It seems to me," Alexander said, "that the job is only half done. You have to leave Bahr in power until he's carried Project Tiger to a fruitful point."

  "And shaken the government apart, and entrenched himself like an iron fist," MacKenzie said. "What do we do when Project Tiger is half-completed and Bahr has made himself invincible?"

  "Then we dump him," Alexander said.

  MacKenzie was about to make a sharp retort, but he looked at the major's face, and realized that he was serious. "We can't do it by brute force. Do you have an idea?"

  "I have an idea," Alexander said. "I think Julian Bahr's great strength can be his weakness. I
'll need help. But if I'm right, when the time comes, I'll dump Julian Bahr."

  "At the height of his power?"MacKenzie asked.

  "Like die tragic hero," said Alexander.

  Chapter Seventeen

  To LIDBY ALLISON it seemed as if the world of nightmare had suddenly become reality. There were people here, a million people in the rooms and corridors, all talking at once, milling around, laughing too loudly, shaking hands too eagerly, with smiles on tiieir faces and fear deep in their eyes. It had all been over after the speech, everybody knew that, yet they had waited for the formality of congressional approval, waited until the resolution had been formally read, and debated, and carried without a dissenting vote. And then the reporters were there by the thousands, flashbulbs popping, a hundred questions in the air, and every eye was on Julian Bahr.

  He was the center of attention, talking, laughing, proclaiming, as all the little men with pads jotted down his words. He was flushed and voluble, almost as though he were drunk. When die vote results came down four men moved in to his side, heavily-built men dressed in psychophan-tic imitation of Bahr, keeping the crowding groups of people from coming too close.

  She watched him in growing horror, and in growing fascination. There had been times when she had seen this clearly, the thing that had been coming from the very first. Now, suddenly, all the restraints were broken, all the barriers down. He had stamped and pounded and bulldozed through the field, and suddenly it was empty before him; he was in command. He stood there, talking, his ego swelling, power and confidence in every word, every movement of his head, every gesture of his hands. And still he was chiving forward, fighting . . .

  He will change the whole country, everything in Federation America into a dynasty, she thought. He will set civilization back six hundred years. There will be no stopping him if he succeeds in this. He is thirty-four years old, and in a week he will be ruling a continent, but that will not be enough. He could be the master of the world, and that would not be enough. By the time he is fifty, the idolatry of ten billion people might still make him feel unloved.

  It seemed to her that this was unreality, a dream she was floating tiirough, and she could only see it with a sense of detachment, as though it were not really happening to her. Even when Bahr was at her side, taking her arm through the crowds, smiling and talking about reform and the part she would play in it, there was no sense of reality. She saw him, and realized with a shock of horror that she was proud of him, excited for him, eager for him. He had fought so hard, he had even fought her, and now he had won, in spite of everything. And now he was making her a part of the victory.

  His white goddess.His empress. His wife, his lover, his concubine, his first love, his partner, his daughter, his sister, his mother . . .

  Reality broke in on the dream with sudden brutality, and the vast panoramic nightmare-lens clamped down to a tight, narrow channel and came into focus on Adams' face.

  Adams, pushing his way through the room, his coat lapels flapping, lank blond hair awry, face white and distorted and ugly as he made his way across toward them. He thrust at the crowds of people that were intervening, and they stepped back as his anger swept the room like a wave. He approached Julian Bahr, and two of Bahr's men appeared at Adams' side, suddenly, each taking an arm, holding him as he writhed to break away from them. But his hate-filled eyes were not turned toward Bahr at all; they were turned toward Libby.

  "You bitch!" he screamed at her, lunging forward to glare into her face. "You bitch! You did it, it's yours. Aren't you proud! Vanner should be proud of his bastard daughter. Oh, yes, he should be proud, and your whore mother, too! You've done their work well for them, haven't you? You've betrayed everything they ever believed in, and now see what you've won for yourself , . ."

  She had a drink in her hand, and she hit him in the face with it so hard that the glass shattered. Something snapped in her mind, and she threw herself on Adams, gashing his face again and again with the broken glass, pouring out all the hatred she had ever felt. And then she heard somebody screaming, and it was Adams screaming, and his face looked like the skin had been hacked off. She stepped back, gasping, and at her side Bahr was laughing, and the DIA men were grinning at her and holding Adams so he couldn't move, and Adams kept screaming, "Traitor! Traitor!"

  Then Bahr nodded, a curt order, and the men dragged Adams out through the door, and Libby was sick, more violently sick than she had ever been in her life. Somebody was helping her across the room, into a lavatory. In the mirror she saw herself, and there was blood all over her hands and arms and dress, and some of it was her blood, but most of it was Adams'.

  All the way home, through the dark wet streets, something in her mind was screaming at her that the nightmare was real, the nightmare was real, the nightmare was real . . .

  He didn't notice that she was not there for quite a long time, and then only vaguely, as he caught himself looking around the room, trying to see where Libby had gone. He chuckled to himself. She had turned on Adams, all right. God how she had turned on him! He hadn't thought that she had it in her, and he felt his pride swell as he thought of it. He'd been right about Libby. She would help him. She knew the DEPCO organization, she would know whom to keep, whom to get rid of. With Libby at his side ...

  But she was not in the room, and he spoke to one of his men, who vanished from his side for five minutes or so, then returned, frowning.

  "She's gone, Chief. She left the lavatory, and somebody saw her hail a cab outside."

  Alarm leaped in his mind, and he blinked, trying to think it through. Not a word to him, nothing, and there were people she would have to see, work to do, plans to be made. "Get a car," he said, "and get these parasites out of here."

  How long had it been since she left? He tried to wade through the drunken exhilaration of the past hours, and he couldn't remember. But something cold was eating away at his chest, and he snarled at the driver and slammed his fist into his palm, wondering why it was that he was actually feeling pain in his chest, physical pain, as though something were crushing the life and breath out of him.

  Outside the apartment building he leaped from the car, jammed die elevator button with his thumb, then cursed and started up the stairs three at a time, with his men panting behind him. He ran down the corridor, digging for keys in his pocket, but he didn't need the key. He stopped at the apartment door, and saw that it was hanging wide open into the darkened room.

  Inside, with the lights on, there was nothing. She was gone. The closet doors hung open, clothes gone as though grabbed up in a desperate sweep of the hand. A suitcase was gone from the shelf. Dresser drawers yawned at him, empty. And in the back room the crib was also empty.

  He stared at the room, unable to believe what he saw, shaking his head helplessly as he tried to fight down the rising wave of fear in his mind, surging in to fill the void left by the shock.

  He looked up at his men, and told them to wait in the hall. He was trembling; he couldn't control the shaking of his hands. He saw his face in the mirror, and slammed off the light switch with a snarl of rage. He stood in the darkness, and then walked over to the window, stared out at the lights of the city, trying to make his hands hold still by gripping the sill with all his strength.

  She was gone as if she had never been there. But now, in the silent room, things were blurred in his mind, confused. Was it Libby who was gone, or was it someone else? Suddenly, it seemed that it had all happened before, so long ago that he could hardly remember, and the bafflement and rage and pain he was feeling now was the same bafflement and rage and pain he had felt then, when someone, someone . . .

  Ruth. A door opened in his mind. Click, a light went onl A face stood stark and revealed. A faceless woman he had dreamed about, a woman and an elephant. Even the thought brought a shudder of fear through his body, and he clenched the window sill. Out across the city he seemed to see fires rising, blazing infernos, with yellow flames licking up into the black sky. A woman's face, b
ut he could see it now stark in every line and hollow, and it was Ruth's face. And he knew that the elephant was only a symbol of the one he did not even dare to dream about.

  Ruth had left him, just as Libby had left him. He had cast it away, buried it, driven it from his mind, but now it was back, fearfully back, etched in orange and crimson on the black night sky.

  Ruth had left him. But that was another place, in another time. Bitterly, then, Julian Bahr remembered it all.

  1995, and the desert installation of the XAR rocket ships. He was twelve years old, an angry, lonely, bitter twelve years in a world where there was no love, no understanding, no place to anchor firmly—a world of absolute authority, utter loneliness, and uncertain affection. He did not know what Howard did on the spaceship, he was an engineer of some sort, working eighteen hours a day in the testing labs, seldom home, and when he was home, the endless siege that Julian could only watch helplessly from the sidelines. Ruth was sick so much of the time, gone so much of the time, and those month-long absences were barren for Julian, utterly barren. Then, when Ruth came back from the hospital, or from the coast where she was "resting," things became warm and alive again. She sang, she chattered, she hugged him and wept over him and drowned him with tearful demonstration. Those returns were the oases of his life, but then Howard would come in, bone weary, and the laughing and singing would stop. In a few days Ruth's warmth would

  recede, and her nervousness would begin again, and Julian would fold inward again.

  Life was life, and the facts of life were simple and unyielding. First there was Howard, who was to be obeyed, with his sarcasm, his cruelty, and the long bitter battles that drove Ruth away again and again. Above his father was a uniformed unknown, the Army, which was powerful and treacherous. His modier, when she came into his life at all, brought warmth and happiness and love. But then she was gone again, without warning, and he was alone with Howard.