The Diploids and Other Flghts of Fancy

by Katherine MacLean

  ON THE way over to the police station at four thirty he heard a shot. It came from God knows where, and it missed, but there was no telling how close it had come. He didn’t stop to investigate; he merely hurried his stride down into the nearest belt entrance and merged himself into the crowd. No one turned to see what the sound was. There was enough noise in the quiet city in the first home-going rush to partially muffle it and make it seem like a normal street sound, and there was no reason for anyone else to think of a possibility of shots. Violence was too unusual to be expected.

  Stepping on a belt the crowd dispersed over the local and express strips, and for a moment Mart was exposed again before the belt carried him out of shot range of the platform. There was no shot, but he was sweating as he found a chair and sat down. It would be easy to be killed that way. The unwary passers-by of the city could not defend him; they simply provided an innocent camouflage and ambush from which Devon could take easy aim without being noticed.

  The rest of the way over he was wary and alert, but there were no more shots.

  At the station the police informed him that they had not managed to locate Devon in his usual haunts, but they had alerted hotels and airlines to watch for him.

  “If you set someone to follow me,” Mart said, “You’ll probably follow Devon too. He’s probably waiting for me somewhere along my usual route home. He tried to get me again today.” He began to have the futile feeling that the police were not particularly interested. The reply confirmed that feeling.

  “We don’t do much body guarding anymore Mr. Dev—Mr. ah—Breden. We’re pretty busy, and there aren’t as many cops as there used to be. Automatic alarms take care of protection against burglary and housebreaking. Hypno-questioning has made it pretty difficult for professional crooks, because they find themselves on the suspects’ line-up every time there’s a crime in the city, and if they did it, they find themselves saying so. There’s no profit in the business, and there aren’t so many crooks as there used to be. We have things to do, but most cops are college trained specialists. We route the traffic of the city on all levels, on different loads and flow directions at different times of day; we calculate the maximum load limit of each route and how to reroute from it if it breaks down. We keep things moving and keep jams from piling up. We keep people from getting hurt around fires and power failures and broken water mains, things like that. The city is a big machine and we have to know where all the controls and keypoints are, and keep the wheels turning. You see—” he spread his hands—“we just don’t have any dumb lug with nothing better to do than guard one single man.”

  It sounded like a speech he had made often to plaintive citizens. “You see our position?”

  Doggedly Mart asked, “But you have some department to investigate shootings, don’t you?”

  “Of course. We have Homicide and Crimes of Violence sections—mostly plainclothes investigation.” The officer smiled. “No matter how unprofitable it is, people still get mad enough to try to kill each other.”

  “How do I attract its attention?” Mart asked, “By getting myself killed?”

  The officer was amused and patronizing. “Don’t worry. If he’s as far gone as he sounds from your story we’ll probably pick him up tomorrow for taking off his clothes and sitting in the middle of Times Square blowing bubbles. He won’t be around long enough to bother you.”

  Breden remembered Devon’s trim appearance, and his pride when apparently he had been sane. He had probably been close to paranoia for a long time, and vanity and surface self-esteem held him back from any conspicuous oddity. Probably he’d be witty and poised to the end, and go to the mental hospital with his sandals shined, his stickpin fastening his tossed-back rain-cape dashingly at the shoulder, his Phi Beta Kappa key impeccably in place and his wristwatch wound, the picture of a sane man being led away by lunatics.

  EXCEPT for a small obstacle like trying to kill long range by television, Devon was his choice for the murderer-most-likely-to-succeed. If the police wouldn’t protect him, he would have to protect himself.

  “I guess I’ll buy a gun.” He said it with malicious pleasure, knowing it was legal, but almost unheard of, for a man to carry a weapon for self-defense. Let them have their attention attracted by a gun battle in the streets, if nothing else would do it.

  The fattish man blinked, his smile fading slightly. “This is a crowded town mister. You can’t go shooting guns off in a city, because you’d be mowing down the bystanders six to a slug. I can’t stop you, but if you’re licensed, how about borrowing something from us to shoot at him, something not so dangerous?”

  Mart was suddenly interested, remembering the spectacular police weapons in the hands of the screen heroes. He’d been watching them enviously for years. “How about a fizz pistol? I’ve always wondered if they really work like they do on teevee shows—”

  “No! Those aren’t for civilians. You’d gas crowds at every shot. You know the penalty for unauthorized use of hypno-drugs—sixty-years-to-life, or even death. If I loaned a hypno-loaded pistol out to a civilian we’d both be behind bars before you were out the door. We can’t use them ourselves for questioning without being under bond and having three witnesses and a tape recording of every word.” He seemed genuinely upset. Apparently someone in the department had been rated down for misuse of hypno recently, for he paused and wiped his forehead with a paper handkerchief, and then tried a feeble smile. “No, all I’ve got for unauthorized types like yourself is a curare automatic. It won’t hurt anybody if you handle it carefully. Just aim low; try not to shoot anyone in the eye, huh?”

  Mart walked out feeling better able to defend himself. In one pocket was a button push that would put a directional call for help on the radios of patrol wings, and in the other a small flat automatic that threw a hollow bullet filled with a harmless drug of the curare type that made its victim instantaneously limp and unable to move. Two shots would cause unconsciousness, and three, death. He had been warned to shoot for the legs where a puncture would cause little damage, and to stop when one bullet had penetrated.

  Back on the subsurface belt conveyers he kept alert for the sight of a slim old man in an iridescent pearl grey suit. He would have to see Devon first or no weapon would help him…

  In his apartment he called his parents, or the people whom he had always loved and thought of as his parents. They were retired on one of the Florida Keys. He asked, as tactfully as he could, about his birth.

  “I’m sorry you found out about that, Marty,” said his father over the televiewer. He stood on the screen, tanned and healthy with wrinkles weathered deep into his face. A flaming orange shirt with fluorescent green seagulls flying across his chest put a strain on the screen’s color system, and the seagulls wavered from bluer to yellower green as the scanner struggled to approximate its shade. Through a window behind him was visible a view of deep blue sky and white sand. “We thought it might hurt your feelings, if you found out. But I guess you’re old enough to know that it doesn’t matter.”

  “Could you tell me who were my real parents?”

  “I don’t know, Marty—it never seemed important to us. The only one who knew was my brother Ralph—he helped arrange the adoption—but he wouldn’t say, except to say that they were good people. He’d promised not to tell I guess. He was a doctor, and doctors have to keep their secrets.”

  “No reflection on you, Dad, but I’m curious. I’d like to find out. Could you tell me how to get in touch with Uncle Ralph?”

  “Why, he died about two years ago. We mentioned it to you in a letter, but I guess you forgot.”

  They talked pleasantly about other things for a while, and then he switched off thoughtfully, his problem coming up in his mind. Doctor Ralph Breden had known who his parents were, but he had been dead for two years.

  IF THERE was an unknown species of man, what was it doing in Omaha?

  And if these men traveled among ordinary men, how did they manage to keep their e
xistence a secret? The ability to keep the secret required money, intelligence and organization. And why did they want to stay secret? His imagination drifted toward the idea of a conspiracy again, and he smiled and rejected it. All these tenuous deductions were based on the idea that he was of an alien species, and that was merely an unproven hypothesis. There probably could be some other explanation of his physical peculiarities.

  His thoughts were broken by a sound like someone turning the knob of his apartment door. It was locked of course, and it would be no use to anyone to turn it. He finished his shower and dressed hurriedly, scanning the corridor through the door viewplate before stepping out. No intruder was lurking there, and he began to wonder if the sound had been imagination. When he got to the street a feeling of being watched suddenly came with complete conviction. Casually he put his back against the nearest wall and inspected the street, checking each person.

  Many people walked by. Some noticed him and glanced at him with the usual disconcerted reaction deepening to suspicion as they noticed his searching eyes, and the tension of his hands in his pockets.

  He noticed the change in their expression and wondered bitterly how little provocation it would take to have them decide he had done something and call the police. Sourly he gave up looking and walked on his way, taking his chances on a bullet. The feeling of being watched continued.

  In the airbus waiting room he had a chance to look around without attracting attention to himself and being stared at. People always looked around in waiting rooms, searching for first sight of whoever they were waiting for. His careful inspection of the room went unnoticed. There was no one in evidence who looked like Devon. Apparently Devon was not following him after all.

  Mart picked up a newspaper from a mechanical vender. The headlines were much the same as yesterday’s. As he nipped toward the back pages an ad in a lower corner caught his eye. It was a picture of a hand, held out flat, the fingers separated, and it reminded him of his problem. The ad was nondescript, easy to pass without seeing. It could have been selling anything—astrology—palm reading—insurance. “Worried?” the caption read. “Dissatisfied? Seeing…”

  People began to stream down from the upper level exits. The airbus had come in. Worried? Smiling wryly he folded the newspaper, dropped it into a trash dispenser and watched the draft suck it away into darkness. Dissatisfied? Smiling more broadly he went slowly home. The feeling of being watched was with him again, but he hadn’t seen anyone who looked like Devon, and he was beginning to get used to the feeling.

  WHEN he stepped into his office the next day the viewer was chiming.

  He switched it on while taking off his overshirt, and Nadine appeared on the screen. “Hey, the Martians are advertising for you.”

  “What do you mean?” He took the curare gun and the alarm button the police had given him from his pockets and carefully placed them in a desk drawer.

  When he glanced back at the screen she was holding up a magazine with a full page ad showing a well drawn hand, almost two thirds life size. “Did you see this ad?” It looked like an enlarged replica of the one he had glanced at in the newspaper the day before.

  “I noticed it,” he admitted. “Didn’t read it.”

  “Notice the hand?”

  “Yeah, what’s it about? Palm reading?”

  “Count the fingers.”

  The hand was well drawn and looked normal, but this time he didn’t have to count. He could see the difference. Six fingers.

  This was it. The thing he had been looking for. He wondered how often the ad had run. How many years had he been passing it by? He tried to control the eagerness in his voice. “What does it say? Read it!”

  She read clearly. “Restless? Dissatisfied? Seeing dots before your eyes—too many fingers on your hands? Call Wesley C-06320. We might be what you’re looking for.” She glanced up eagerly. “And at the bottom here it says, “National Counseling Service 1862-A Halshire Avenue. That’s right in the city!”

  “We can check on it this lunch. Have the time free?”

  “I can fit it in. I don’t want to miss any of this.”

  They found that the address on Halshire Avenue was a huge, beautiful white building with a three-story-high webbed-bronze archway opening on exclusive Halshire Place. Recessed inconspicuously into the white stone wall a long way from the main door was a private entrance. It was padded in morocco leather, studded with bronze studs and labeled inconspicuously with a small bronze plate. National Counseling Service. Through a porthole window inset in the door they could see a waiting room which was luxurious with the expensive Spartan simplicity of modernistic furniture.

  Nadine touched his arm. “Going in?” People passed them in the sunlight, going both ways in orderly separate streams on the wide green sidewalk. Some glanced at them with faint interest. Some glanced back at him after they had passed, with that expression of puzzlement that he always noticed.

  He glanced at his watch. It had taken them fifteen minutes to reach the address, and they both had appointments at one. “No. We have to save a little time for lunch.”

  A well dressed man came out, flagged a taxi, and drove away without giving them a glance.

  “Martian going to lunch,” murmured Nadine.

  THEY ate in a nearby drugstore, sitting at a counter looking at the impassive white stone face of the towering building across the street. The separate entrance was a luxury for which the building must have charged high rent. Apparently the National Counseling Service could afford such expensive whimseys. They ate hastily in silence, considering the implications of what they had seen. The National Counseling Service had money and power, and they were interested in him for some reason.

  That advertisement was obviously directed at him and others like him. He wondered how many others there were to see the ad.

  “Power…” he mused. “A big organization too…”

  Nadine set a sliding pointer on the menu and pushed a button at its base. “We don’t know how much space they’ve taken behind that swank front. Maybe it’s just intended to look expensive to frighten off people who are attracted by the ad and genuinely come for counseling.” She sipped a malted milk that came out of the automatic mixer and continued thoughtfully. “If I were using a front like that, I think I’d give a little genuine counseling to make it stand up.”

  She had bought another magazine on the way over, and she began flipping through it as she talked. Pictures in fluorescent inks glowed vividly as she flipped past them. Suddenly a page turned up in cool black and grey, the familiar spread hand. “Here it is!” Nadine flattened the magazine and they looked at it together.

  “Puzzled?” He read the black letters, “Discontented? We don’t read palms, but we can tell you about yourself—call the National Counseling Service. We find unusual situations for unusual people.”

  “Now they’re threatening you with an unusual situation,” Nadine remarked skeptically. They had finished their lunches and it was time to go back to work. “What are you going to do, Mart?” They dropped their meal tabs in the slot and paid the amount the machine rang up. The turnstile yielded and passed them through. They stood on the sidewalk looking at the towering impassive building across the street.

  “Go in and look around, I guess. I’ll have to wait till after work. Would you like to come in with me?”

  “No.” She looked up at him soberly, the sunlight touching her face in sprinkles of light as it filtered through the elms overhead. “This looks secret, Mart. They probably wouldn’t tell you anything if you had anyone with you, or even said you’d confided in anyone about this. I want to hear about it, but I’d better just spend the time looking some stuff up in the science and technology room at the library. Call me there when you find out anything, will you Mart?”

  “Right.” He made his face solemn and asked, “Date?”

  “Date,” she smiled. Hurrying together they went down the belt entrance and back toward the afternoon’s work.
r />   IV

  FIVE hours later, with, his hand on the bronze knob of the leather-covered door, he hesitated briefly, looking: in through the small window set in the door. There was still no one inside the waiting room as far as he could see. Was the whole organization waiting for him as a trap waits for a mouse?

  Then he thought of Devon, free somewhere, and looking for him with a gun. He glanced anxiously over his shoulder. There was only the stream of brightly clad people, looking wilted in the dusty late afternoon heat, going wherever people go after work. Women, girls, young men, old men—no one familiar, but there was no use standing there like a target. He turned the knob, pushed through the door and was inside. The door shut after him softly.

  As it closed, the sounds of the city dwindled and vanished, and he was in a sound-proofed silence as still and remote as the room of a deserted house on some distant hillside.

  It was the pine scent that had made him think of mountains, he realized after a moment. A cool drift of air brushed against his face as if somewhere near there were wide windows open to a breeze that had come through an evergreen forest.

  The waiting room was comfortably darkened, with recessed lights in the small bookcase, and wide stylized chairs in polished wood and rough dark green cloth with small adjustable spotlights clamped to the left arm of each chair for easy reading.

  He felt almost hidden standing in the half dark, and his tension faded. Under the glass coffee table an indirect light shone on a lower shelf, glowing on a scattering of varicolored pamphlets and bound booklets with the name National Counseling Service in script on the cover.

  The waiting room remained soundless and peaceful. Apparently no one was going to interrupt or ask him why he was there. Through a small archway he could look down a softly lighted corridor and see the blank wall where it turned. Breden sat down and picked up a pamphlet. The back section was filled by a reassuring collection of honest-looking graphs and statistics. He turned to the front and started at the first page.