On a dressing table, he spotted a gun and picked it up. There were stasis screen controls on it, but a series of buttons along the side indicated some sort of combination lock—which explained why the citizens didn’t bother to fool with them; they probably were set to explode on tampering.
He dropped it and went through the back of the suite. There windows opened on a closed court. It was a drop of no more than ten feet, and he took it. One set of windows was dark. He kicked through one of them, and banged his head against something hanging from the ceiling. By the dim light of the red and green lights on a control panel, he suddenly recognized it as the laboratory of Sarnoff.
He knew the way out, now—and one which was probably less besieged than others, simply because men avoided something that was a chancre in their minds. But he halted suddenly, moving toward the control panel.
Blake was right—there was a scattering of tools in a drawer under it, and barely enough light to work by. He yanked out the two guns and opened them; they were familiar enough—mere simplifications of the complete models his brother had made.
Blake ripped the tiny coil out of one hastily, and fitted it into open space in the other. There was room enough. He found small screwdrivers and began working on the adjustments to the coils, hoping that the numbering around the slots was the same. Alpha 10 changed to alpha 2 to give a protective sphere instead of an offensive beam; beta 5 would regulate the speed which would be denied penetration; delta 7 should be about right for energy penetration. He checked that, setting it up to 9, until the green bulbs seemed to come down to the red, and back to 7. Apparently, there had been no basic change in the little coils, and offensive and protective coils were still the same, except for setting. He found contacts within the gun for the second coil, indicating that both models were made from the same basic parts. He had to leave the defensive coil on, since he could find no way of installing a switch.
If his settings were right, he was now safe from bombs and bullets, though a club or a knife would kill him as easily as before. But the main problem was the offensive beams from other guns, and there a rough setting would cancel it out.
He shoved the gun that was now complete into its holster and headed toward the entrance.
From the side, a quiet voice reached him. “Nice work, Thomas Blake!”
The lights snapped on to show Sarnoff standing expressionlessly beside the main door.
CHAPTER 8
Sarnoff nodded toward the gun that had snapped out in Blake’s hand. “It probably works now, just as you expect. But it wasn’t that which gave you away. You might as well put it way, anyhow; naturally, I’m shielded.”
Blake had already realized that, from the gun on the other’s hip. He dropped his own back, trying to estimate his chances to reach the other before the man could get out the door. It seemed impossible.
Sarnoff nodded again. “You’re right; you couldn’t make it. I’ve been ready for you since you tripped the alarms getting in here. I could, have shot you while you were working on the gun, you see. But naturally, I didn’t.”
“Naturally.”
“Certainly; why else do you think I faked the last half of the mind burning? I’m all in favor of your living. I’d hate to try to figure out any system of logic that would permit you to be killed without ruining most of the life I’ve led these last years. Anyhow, I always back the winner.”
Blake let it sink in, and began breathing again. “You mean you’re on the side of the rebels?”
“Hardly.” A trace of a smile flickered over the other’s face and vanished again. “I’m on the side of whichever one wins, though that’s rather obvious, if you’ll use your head. I fish you out of the past for your distinguished senior self—and I make sure that you go into the head of a man the rebel spy Mark wanted saved; he can’t prove I’m on his side, but he suspects so—particularly after I showed him the rough diagram of the restorer a year ago and never noticed the parts he stole.”
“Mark’s dead,” Blake told him.
“I know—he was a fanatic, so of course he’s dead. But he wasn’t the leader of the group anyhow! I have my connections, still. I’ll come out on top—as a realist always will, unless he’s a deliberate villain which I’m not.”
“All right,” Blake conceded wearily. He had no time to talk of idealism and realism now, when his first job was to escape long enough to locate Sherry. “So what happens next?”
Sarnoff shrugged. “So you go out the door, I suppose, and into the arms of the Guards who are there—or down this little private stair to the subway station, where you’ll never be noticed by now. And I report to your rebel leaders—whom you don’t know—that you are the original Blake, complete with all plans for the James Blake statidyne gun.”
Blake turned toward the little private door, and was almost surprised to find that there was a stairway there. Probably most of the so-called “public” sections of the palace had such exits.
Sarnoff’s voice halted him. “Not a louse, Blake,” he said quietly. “Just an opportunist, like every successful animal up the long road of evolution. And paradoxical as you may think it, I privately wish you the best of luck. I’ve thoroughly liked your senior self, and I would probably like you. Take care of yourself.”
The laboratory was suddenly dark. Blake stumbled down the stairs, to find that the riots were nearly over, and the subways were running smoothly again. Guards were patrolling the platform, but the monotrain was already in. For the third time, Blake barely made it before the door could close.
He grinned bitterly at Sarnoff’s words that were still ringing in his ears. It wasn’t hard to tell who’d lose, at least; Blake had forty-three cents to his name, and knew’ nothing about the city. The State wanted him as an attempted assassin. Now, with Sarnoff’s spreading the good word, the rebels would be looking for him as a traitor to them, and the very man they most wanted to eliminate from all history. It wouldn’t do to argue immutable time with them, either.
He was safe from bombs, bullets, and guns—but there was always the knife. And when she found the facts, even Sherry might be happy to use it.
He should never have been stampeded into mob action—his reason for killing the Bigshot because of the first meeting was no more valid than the Bigshot’s reason for trying to destroy him in self-defense. And now that he cooled down, he could never take the secret of the guns to the rebels. There had been blood enough shed, without putting them in a position to exterminate all the other side.
He never knew exactly how he managed to get through the night. Time after time, he saw Guards or rebels patrolling, and he suspected most of them were looking for him. Probably the complete dejection and the slowness of his walk saved him, they must have been looking for a man who was skulking up dark alleys, or running from them.
He found the house where he had first come to in the cellar by sheer hunt and try search, though he knew the general location. It was locked, of course, and he realized suddenly that he did not know the secret for opening it.
But he was tired of running, and a cellar door in the shack across the street was open. He crossed to it, and went inside, leaving the door open a crack.
Daylight crept through the opening, and reached the full brightness of noon. There was no sign of Sherry. Above him, he could hear a family stirring over their noon lunch, discussing the riots. Apparently they had been involved only indirectly, but there was enough misery in their guesses as to how many of their friends would be picked up and mindburned.
At four in the afternoon, Guards came and broke in the house where the place of meeting was. They scoured it thoroughly, then posted it.
Blake knew that Sherry hadn’t told on him—she should have, if she’d heard the truth about him, but he was sure somehow that she would never turn him over to the Guards. He also knew then that she’d never keep the rendezvous.
He buckled his gun on more firmly, knocked the dust off his knees where he had been kneeling, and stood up
. The cellar door creaked as he went through it, but the Guards did not look up from their duty. Blake crossed the street and went up to them.
“If you’re looking for a lady, she won’t be here,” he said, and only the deadness of his voice registered in his own ears.
The younger Guard growled impatiently. “Scram. We know what we’re doing!”
“Dan!” The senior Guard glowered at the other. “That’s enough of that. Citizen, the State apologizes; but I’m afraid your information is already in the papers, so we do know about it.”
Blake nodded, and shuffled off down the dingy street. He found a newsstand and put down a coin for one of the papers he had managed forty years in the past. It was thinner, due to the paper scarcity, but the lack was mostly in the advertising. He had no trouble finding the story.
Sherry was dead!
She’d been found by the Guards early in the morning with a printed label claiming she had betrayed the cause by ruining the shot. It was clearly murder.
He might have guessed. The hatred that had flowered so long had to take root somewhere, and she had been as good a scapegoat as any other, Blake supposed. He dropped the paper into a can without bothering to read further. He’d seen that she was being kept at the palace morgue for the claiming of her body.
They’d dragged him into this crazy future to keep him from killing himself, by a tortuous logic of their own. Then they’d tossed him to the other side, to force him to kill himself. Now, the only good thing he’d found was killed, and nothing else had been accomplished. No paradox had been solved; but if the Bigshot remembered when he had been dragged here, he could have saved Sherry, at least.
Blake saw another of the Guards on the corner, and approached him quietly. “Where can I find the subway to the palace?”
“To your left three blocks,” the Guard answered absently. Then he looked up, reached for his gun, and moved forward. “Your identification papers, citizen!”
“No matter,” Blake told him. “I’m the assassin!”
CHAPTER 9
Blake swung on his heel and headed toward the subway. He didn’t bother to look back at the faint sound of the gun being drawn. Either his shield worked, and he would have no way of knowing whether the man fired, or he’d find out soon enough. Nothing happened.
Then the Guard was running up to him, white of face, with the gun shaking in his hands. The man stuttered as he grabbed for Blake’s arm. “You’re under arrest!”
“All right,” Blake agreed. “I’m it; now you go hide.”
He walked on steadily, while the Guard pawed at his arm and then desisted. Physically, he was more than a match for most of the Guards, and their superior weapons had lost all superiority. Blake could have watched the whole civilization shatter and have cared as little as he did for the shock on the other’s face.
He found the subway entrance while the Guard was tardily blowing his whistle. He was beginning to think the trains ran every fifteen seconds, since one was again waiting. He climbed on, with the puffing Guard at his heels. “You’ll get used to it, whatever your name is,” he told the other.
“Colton,” the black-clad man told him unhappily. “And why couldn’t you have picked someone else? I broke a toe and got a brick Over my head last night. Today—you!”
“Tough. I guess you’ll just have to string along until we find some of your buddies to subdue me, Colton.”
Colton nodded glumly, and they sat in silence while the quiet train moved along. Blake was emotionally numbed, and the problems that had bothered him were operating only on a semiconscious level.
No man, he supposed, could really accept predestination. The idea was something that could be agreed to on an intellectual level, but inside a man had to feel that he decided things for himself. Actually, there were no paradoxes; everything was decided, and things didn’t happen because of either his actions or those of his older self—they happened only because that was the way they happened. The Bigshot was no more responsible than he was.
It wasn’t hard, when you considered things carefully, to see why he’d tried to eliminate his younger self and put himself out of danger. Intellectually, he might realize nothing he did could alter the fabric of the events that must happen, but emotionally he couldn’t stand by—and his logic was as much shaped by emotions as by facts.
And even explaining why he did things was a refusal to accept predestination, Blake knew. Looking for the reason behind his own or any other man’s actions meant an attempt to see why something happened or didn’t happen—and there was no real “why” in a universe on a fixed time track.
He got up at the palace stop and went out with Colton at his heels. The Guard again reached for his whistle, but stopped when he saw Blake head for the door leading to the stairs that went up to Sarnoff’s laboratory. The door was locked, of course, but a blast from the gun opened it.
Sarnoff was opening the upper door as Blake came to it, and he motioned the two men inside. “I heard you break the other,” he explained. “I’ve been expecting you. Guard there’s nothing you can do—your prisoner’s as untouchable as I am.”
Colton shrugged, but stayed.
“Where’s Sherry’s body?” Blake asked woodenly.
Sarnoff moved toward the end of the room, where a couch had been brought in. He lifted the sheet silently. “She’s in good hands, Tom,” he said softly. “She was my daughter, though you wouldn’t know that. And she hated me, long before she ran away to join your group. I used to wonder, once in a while, what happened to her. Now—I know.”
Blake looked down at the still figure. Sherry still bore the look he had last seen, though her eyes were closed. Her clothing was in place, he noticed, with even her toes concealed. He was glad of that.
“She must have hated me,” he said, at last.
Sarnoff shook his head. “No—she never knew; she was dead before I passed the word about you.”
His expressionless face studied her body, and then he drew the sheet up.
Blake sighed softly, and turned toward the entrance to the main palace, with Colton still at his heels. Sarnoff shook his head slightly, and moved toward another door, waiting for them until Blake shrugged and climbed into the little elevator. Then Sarnoff pressed the top button, and they moved upward.
There was neither austerity nor overlavishness to the private part of the palace. Blake took it for granted; he’d been brought up to have good taste, and becoming a dictator hadn’t changed that.
There were a few men in the outer office, but they left at Sarnoff’s motion, retreating into a second room beyond. Here and there along the walls were niches where Guards might be stationed, but Blake could see no sign of them—they were at least well hidden.
Sarnoff picked up a phone from a desk and pressed a button. “Tell his Excellency I have the assassin,” he said. Then, after a moment, he turned back to Blake. “We’ll have to wait. He’s taking a bath—or calling his top Guards. He’s grown nervous, these last few days.”
Blake dropped to the seat behind the desk. He picked up a volume there, saw that it was a leather-bound biography of himself, and started to put it down. Then he opened it and began scanning it.
There’d been war, after all. He’d had to wait two terms as Governor to become President, and then it was only a few weeks before the hydrogen bombs fell—too little time to prepare. He’d saved most of the cities with his large shields, but the terrible days had made an absolute dictatorship necessary; and through that, it hadn’t been too hard to conquer the whole world, given both large supplies of bombs and a base immune to the bombs of others. Blake skimmed on, surprised to see how often Sarnoff’s name cropped up. The man was obviously far more than a mere scientist.
And there was another name that meant nothing. Ainslee seemed to be almost as important as the dictator, though the people never had mentioned him.
Blake put the book back, just as the phone buzzed and a group of Guards in spotless white uniforms came out.
Sarnoff motioned them aside, and they fell into step behind as Blake headed toward the door. Colton started forward, and then shrugged helplessly. He turned back slowly, probably to return to his beat.
This was it, Blake told himself. This was the point toward which the whole silly business had been driving. It seemed almost anticlimactic.
The Bigshot sat at a small desk, surrounded by his Guards. He was probably shielded, but he seemed to have less faith in the shield than it deserved. His voice was nervous as he rearranged the papers before him, and some of the power seemed to have drained from his face. But he gathered himself together.
“You are charged with an attempt to assassinate your rightful ruler,” he began.
Blake cut him off. “I’m here by my own will—as much as either one of us can have a will. And I’m shielded; I combined two of your citizen guns into the weapon James invented—the weapons on the papers in the secret drawer of my desk.”
The older man sat stiffly for a long minute. Then he put down the papers he held. “So all my efforts go for nothing? Your brain wasn’t exterminated. But there are still enough men here to overcome you physically, even if you are shielded.”
“It won’t work,” Blake told him. “It’s all happened before, from your viewpoint; and I suggest that you dismiss the Guards.”
The Bigshot nodded. “Guards dismissed,” he said slowly. They stared at him, but slowly withdrew, leaving only the two men who were both Thomas Blake and Sarnoff behind.
Theoretically, there was no way to end what was now a perfect stalemate—except that the Bigshot could always call back his Guards to batter Blake down with their fists; there was no way in which he could win.
But he had resolved, all that before, and knew the answer. He knew that in this case, his decision to accept the facts would inevitably create those facts—so far as even the decision was his free will. Predestination seemed to be working, and that would make the decision something he had no control over, too.
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 68
