“Enemy,” I said. “Personal revenge.”
That made sense. That was something he could understand. But he hesitated. “Actually, I think you had better tell me. You have no other route to Mr. Rockecenter. There are none.”
“There’s Miss Agnes,” I said, taking my cue from the fourth assistant butler at Pokantickle Estate.
“Oh, god (bleep)!” said Mr. Bury. “I told him and told him to ship that (bleepch) off!” He recovered from his unlawyerlike outburst. He passed a tired hand across his prune wrinkles. “All right,” he said at last. “If you’re up to it, I’ll put you through the mill. But you’ll be wearing concrete shoes in the East River if this is not on the level.”
He saw I was determined. He pushed a buzzer and shortly two different guards came in. Bury pushed some more buttons and spoke rapidly into an interoffice phone. A huge, apelike fellow in very expensive clothes came in.
Bury said, “Take him through the precautionary sector and then take him to see Mr. Rockecenter.”
“What?” yelled the apelike man, incredulously.
“That’s what I said,” frowned Bury. And to me, he added, “If I never see you again, don’t come back.”
Heller, I said to myself, write your will. You’re as good as dead! Maybe worse!
And then, thinking of all this security and precaution, I amended my optimism: Heller was in the soup only if I could actually get to and handle Rockecenter!
PART TWENTY-SIX
Chapter 7
We left the black onyx and silver aluminum front of the Octopus Building. We walked through its landscaped plaza. We crossed the Avenue of the Americas. The alert guards kept a firm grip on me.
We passed the City Musical Hall. We walked through a whole street made into gardens and which ended with all the United Nations flags. We crossed Fifth Avenue. We walked below a bronze statue of Atlas bearing a huge skeletal world upon his back and I wondered if Delbert John Rockecenter must feel that way. We went north a block, passing St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The guards marched sternly on both sides of me.
I wondered what this strange promenade was all about. Were they trying to confuse me or lose me? Or was this a guided tour to show me all the buildings Rockecenter owned personally?
The apelike man stopped in a shop and bought a quart of goat’s milk and a bag of popcorn.
We went all the way back, the way we had come, I supposed, though I was totally lost. We went into an ornate lobby, huge murals all around. We stepped through a small door which had been a blank wall an instant before. We were in an elevator.
We went up. It opened. We got out.
I was transferred to the burly guards in the front room and the original guards gave the new guards my gun and left. The ape-man stayed on, carrying the bag of popcorn and quart of goat’s milk.
The burly guards frisked me. They shoved me through a barricade–rather tight, getting past two machine guns, manned.
Guards in the new room took over. They frisked me. They took my new ID. Then they phoned Senator Twiddle’s office and verified it.
They passed me through another barrier. They also passed them my gun. New guards there took the serial numbers off the gun. They also fired a round in a soundproof box. They phoned the results through to somebody. A sign flashed on a computer:
Weapon has not been used in the
assassination of heads of state lately.
They passed me through another barrier. New guards took over. They frisked me. They took my fingerprints and an instant photograph. They punched it into the FBI’s National Crime Index Computer. It went to Washington. It came back. The screen said:
Not wanted yet.
They put the fingerprint card and photograph in a shredder.
All this time, the ape-man was coming along with the bag of popcorn and quart of goat’s milk.
They pushed me through a barrier to a new set of guards. There was a dental chair. They X-rayed my teeth for poison capsules. They X-rayed my body for any implanted bombs.
They passed me along to the next room and a new set of guards. They examined my wallet for concealed knives. They examined my keys for trick blades. They X-rayed my shoe soles.
They passed me along between two howitzer cannons—a tight squeeze—and I found myself in a room all dark except for one pool of light in the center. There was a desk over to the side. A sign said:
Chief Psychologist
I knew I was amongst friends.
He took me under the light, made me sit on a stool. He examined the bumps on my head. He drew back and nodded.
The ape-man pushed me to a revolving door. I went through. It was a miniature hospital operating room. Two attendants in blue green gowns put out their cigarettes and donned masks.
They stripped me of all my clothes. They took my temperature and blood pressure. They got samples of sputum and put it under a microscope. They took a blood sample and examined that.
The senior of the two nodded and the other rammed me into a sort of glassed closet. They seemed to be filling bottles.
“Hey,” I said to the ape-man. “Is all this necessary?”
“Listen,” he said, “if the Prime Minister of England can go through this without a beef, so can you!”
They had their bottles full. They hit some knobs. I was sprayed with antiseptic.
I came out. They threw my clothes in and they, too, were sprayed with antiseptic.
They stood me and my clothes in front of a dryer.
As soon as I was dressed, the ape-man pointed at the next door. It had steel teeth on both sides that, apparently, could be closed instantly.
A girl was sitting with her feet on the desk, chewing gum. I recognized “Miss Peace” from the news photograph. Aha! He used his own staff for greeting ceremonies. How wise!
The ape-man said, “It’s cleared so far.”
She took her feet off the desk. She opened a gigantic drawer. It was lined with stocks of badges. They were huge. They said, “King” and “Banker” and such things across the top and had a blank line for a name to be filled in under the title.
“Oh, (bleep),” said Miss Peace. “I’m totally out of ‘Unwanted Guest’ buttons. I don’t want him to think I’m inefficient.”
“Give him anything,” said the ape-man. “This milk is liable to go sour and I’m late already.”
She picked up “Derby Winner” and dropped it. She picked up “Hit Man of the Year” and dropped it. She was dithering. “(Bleep)! If I don’t put a button on this guy he won’t know who he’s talking to!”
Apparatus training tells. My quick eye spotted “Undercover Operator Up for Promotion to Family Spy.” I said, “That is the only one you’ve got that covers it. I’m not a king.”
“That’s right,” she said, glancing at me. “You sure ain’t no king.”
“Hurry up, will you,” said the ape-man. “This popcorn will get cold, too! You want me to lose my job?”
She grabbed my ID and scrawled Inkswitch on the “Undercover Operator Up for Promotion to Family Spy” one. She jabbed it into my lapel and into me.
What a man this Rockecenter must be to have such a loyal and dedicated staff!
There was an arched church door on the other side of the office. The ape-man pushed me through it.
I was in an enormous room. It had a vaulted ceiling of cathedral height. It had saint niches with votive candles burning under each saint. The statues were all of Delbert John Rockecenter. There was a big desk–actually an altar.
He was not, however, sitting at his desk. He was in a gilded throne chair, staring at a wall I could not see. Ah, I thought, Delbert John Rockecenter was deep in thought, sorting out the cares of the world with his mighty brain.
I was pushed further into the room. Then I saw what he was looking at. It was a one-way mirror. On the other side of it was the dressing room and toilet of chorus girls. They were taking off their costumes and getting into even scantier costumes. They were
also going to the toilet.
Delbert John Rockecenter became aware that somebody had entered his office. He leaped forward, turned and glared. He was a tall man, past middle age, not much hair. His features were unmistakably those of a Rockecenter—a cross between a politician and a hungry hawk. But it was hard to tell. The whole cathedral office illumination was red.
“Can’t you see I’m having my afternoon snack!” he roared at us.
“I brought it,” said the ape-man, holding out the popcorn and goat’s milk.
“You shouldn’t come in here while I’m concentrating,” said Delbert John. Then he saw me.
He stepped closer. He peered at the big button. “You haven’t been sworn in yet,” he said, “but you might as well start apprenticing.” He waved a hand at the one-way mirror. “I’m just making sure none of those girls are pregnant. I hate babies. You’ve heard of my abortion and infanticide programs, of course. Got to keep the population down. Riffraff!”
He quickly forgot about me. He sat down and resumed his close inspection of the possible pregnancy of the chorus girls. He began on the goat’s milk and popcorn.
This office was apparently parallel with the back of a theater, disguised, perhaps, by the height of the theater stage loft. It was certainly big. The other end of the cathedral room had a balcony that overlooked the parks and city. Its doors were heavy glass, possibly bulletproof.
The ape-man had vanished.
After a while, Rockecenter sighed and punched a button on the side of his huge chair. With a whirr, curtains closed to obscure the one-way mirror. He tossed off the last of the popcorn and then drained the last drops of goat’s milk. “Great stuff,” he sighed. “This is what made Gandhi a world leader.”
He peered at my badge again. “Inkswitch, eh? Well, Inkswitch, what have you done to get yourself promoted to be a family spy? It’s a pretty important post, Inkswitch. Families really can be (bleepards).”
“I’ve always been one of your most trusted undercover men,” I said. And I drew upon our file on him. “I covered up leaks of your links to IG Barben. And I covered up its links to Faustino ‘The Noose’ Narcotici’s mob. What is an undercover man for if not to cover up links and leaks?”
I had his interest. I was taking no great risk: he had hundreds of millions of people sweating out their lives for him. He could not be expected to know even a millionth of his staff.
“Earlier,” I said, “I befriended the family itself but never wanted to mention it. I was even a member of the burial party of Aunt Timantha.”
“Well, well,” he said. “I can see your promotion is long overdue.”
“But I don’t come empty-handed,” I said. “Lately, I have been serving your interests as a Senate Investigator for Senator Twiddle’s Energy Crisis Committee. And when I learned of my promotion, I made a point of gathering up every scrap of data of the most heinous skulduggery anyone could imagine. Senator Twiddle was utterly outraged. When I called it to his attention, he said it was the energy crisis of the century.”
“One of our best men, Twiddle,” said Rockecenter. “Sound. Always consults me before he casts a single vote! So what is this crisis?”
“I know of a plot to introduce a new, cheap energy source on this planet, completely independent of yourself, that would be in total competition to you.”
Nothing else had gotten to him, really. The last word did. “By God! Inkswitch, the only good competition is dead competition!”
“Amen,” I said devoutly, in keeping with this cathedral-like atmosphere.
“We’ve got thousands of patents,” he said, “on devices to make fuel more efficient. We buy them up and throw them in the permanently closed file. Why couldn’t this new development have been put on regular channels?”
“It’s more dastardly than any of those,” I said. “It makes fuel cheap as dirt. And they’ll have a monopoly on the device.”
“Who is this inventor?”
“The name is Jerome Terrance Wister.”
“And he can’t be bought off?”
“I’m absolutely certain he can’t.”
“And he can’t be rubbed out the way some say my great-grandfather disposed of Rudolph Diesel? Into the English Channel in the dark?”
“It’s been tried.”
Rockecenter went over to his desk. The red desk lamps made his face pretty eerie. He punched a button. “Bury! Come over here.”
He gave his throne chair a punch so it swiveled toward the balcony. He looked down at me. “Inkswitch,” he said. “While we are waiting for Bury, I may as well swear you in as a family spy. Raise your right hand. Repeat after me: I hereby do solemnly swear to utilize, support and keep sacred the following family policies . . .”
I raised my right hand. What’s another oath to an Apparatus officer? I repeated after him.
“One: Competition strangles the free enterprise system. Two: The world must continue to believe that as long as D. J. Rockecenter owns everything, they are safe from destructive rivalries. Three: Governments must continue to understand that as long as they do as D. J. Rockecenter orders, they will have plenty of conflicts. Four: The banks must continue to know that as long as D. J. Rockecenter makes a profit, nobody else matters. Five: We stand for democracy so long as it doesn’t get in the way of communism. Six: The population must be educated into the need of euthanasia and wholesale abortion, and cooperate in its own humanocide. Seven: Only what is good for D. J. Rockecenter is good for everybody. Eight: D. J. Rockecenter is the only family member that matters. And Nine: Trust nobody. I hereby faithfully swear to see that these policies are rammed down everybody’s throat, so help me, Rockecenter.”
I had repeated it all.
“Well, that’s done,” he said. “I can’t trust anybody else to do it. I have to be sure.”
Bury came in at that moment. It was through another door. He appeared a bit haggard and worried.
“Bury,” said Rockecenter, sitting down at his altar desk, eerie in the red light, “Inkswitch here says somebody has been running around loose lately, inventing a cheap fuel. You ever hear of a Jerome Terrance Wister?”
The family lawyer turned chalk white!
I grasped the situation in an instant. Bury had never told Rockecenter about that incident! Bury thought the man was dead!
But Apparatus training is smooth stuff. I said quickly, “I can’t imagine how Mr. Bury ever would have heard of him. He’s just an upstart student.” I closed my right eye to Bury out of Rockecenter’s sight.
Bury stood there watching me like a Wall Street attorney sizing up the prosecution.
“This Wister,” said Rockecenter, “seems to be a dangerous menace to society. Invented a cheap fuel and refused to sell out.” He turned to me, “Do you know anything you haven’t told me?”
I could feel Bury go tense. I said, “He’s obviously going to demonstrate it in racing.”
“Ah,” said Rockecenter. He stroked his chin and frowned. Then he lit up and said something I couldn’t for the life of me work out. He said, “Bury! Speak of this invention to nobody. Hire this Wister a public relations man.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bury.
Maybe it was not a loud enough “Yes, sir.” Rockecenter got up and walked very close to Bury. He said, “Ride this thing! Get on it and pump! Ride this until you (bleep) it all up. Understood?”
I was a little bit jolted. The tone of voice! The posture! The only thing missing was the lapel jerk and the “stinger” to be Lombar!
Bury was even more haggard. “Yes, sir.”
That was apparently loud enough. Rockecenter drew back. He pointed at me. “Inkswitch has just been sworn in as a family spy. He’s undercover as a Federal Investigator and I’m assigning him at once to this case!”
Bury looked at me. He suddenly made up his mind. “I’m sure he’ll make a marvelous family spy,” he said. “It will be a pleasure to work with him.”
Bury was gone. I myself rose to leave. But Rockecenter wa
s looking at his watch. “No,” he said. “It will only be a few minutes.”
He walked to the balcony and opened the doors. The soft whirr of traffic came into the cathedral-like room. He waved his arm at the splendid arches.
“You may think this too plain and unpretentious, Inkswitch, now that you’re a family spy. But I’m a modest man. I do not need much. My foundation of doctors was just telling me the other day how pleased they were to have made me immortal. It’s such a good thing for the world to have just one man own it forever. They couldn’t possibly pay the inheritance tax.
“When you came in, I saw that you were wondering why I didn’t marry one of those girls. You’ve been so closely connected to the family—Aunt Timantha and all—that you really have a right to know and won’t go wandering off getting close to any of my god (bleeped) relatives. I don’t have to get married, Inkswitch. That foundation assures me that I’m going to live forever and I don’t need any god (bleeped) son to add to the competition. You understand me, Inkswitch? So don’t go being nice to any other family members. Got it?”
I nodded but he wasn’t looking at me. Evening was sweeping the city which, like the planet, he owned.
He looked at his watch. He looked up. An ecstatic expression came across his face. “Don’t you hear the harp music? It happens every day at this time. Now listen! Listen carefully!”
He paused. Bliss bathed his face. “There! Right on time! There it was! Ah, what beautiful words: ‘The one true God is Delbert John Rockecenter!’”
He turned and rushed to his desk. He came back holding a pen and a piece of paper on a golden tablet. “Oh, I’m so glad to have another witness! Sign this attestation, please.”
I signed but I felt the world was spinning around me.
Audio hallucination! Paranoid schizophrenia! Megalomania!
Just like Lombar!
Delbert John Rockecenter was a stark, staring lunatic!
I was working for TWO crazy men!
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 1
The next few days were a liberal education in how well a great and powerful organization like Rockecenter’s, a juggernaut of efficiency, could (bleep) up a planet. I was overawed with admiration. No wonder Lombar studied Rockecenter so hard! I took notes wherever possible so I could send them through and curry favor with my chief. Earth might be deficient and primitive in many of its technologies but the Rockecenter organization was light-years beyond anything like it in outer space. Five generations of diabolical cunning had made it what it was today: a colossus! A whole planet dancing to the tune of one psychotic man! Magnificent! Compared to this, Heller was a puny nothing! And I would launch the avalanche upon him!