The Minority Report: 18 Classic Stories

  Beam said: "I'm leaving. Good luck."

  "Stick around."

  "Sorry." Beam moved toward the hall door. "This is yours, not mine. I've got my own business to attend to... I'm doing research for a hot-shot nonferrous mining concern."

  Ackers eyed his coat. "Are you pregnant?"

  "Not that I know of," Beam said, coloring. "I've led a good clean life." Awkwardly, he patted his coat. "You mean this?"

  By the window, one of the police gave a triumphant yap. The two bits of pipe tobacco had been discovered: a refinement for the third specification. "Excellent," Ackers said, turning away from Beam and momentarily forgetting him.

  Beam left.

  Very shortly he was driving across town toward his own labs, the small and independent research outfit that he headed, unsupported by a government grant. Resting on the seat beside him was the portable TV unit; it was still silent.

  "First of all," Beam's gowned technician declared, "it has a power supply approximately seventy times that of a portable TV pack. We picked up the Gamma radiation." He displayed the usual detector. "So you're right, it's not a TV set"

  Gingerly, Beam lifted the small unit from the lab bench. Five hours had passed, and still he knew nothing about it. Taking firm hold of the back he pulled with all his strength. The back refused to come off. It wasn't stuck: there were no seams. The back was not a back; it only looked like a back.

  "Then what is it?" he asked.

  "Could be lots of things," the technician said noncommittally; he had been roused from the privacy of his home, and it was now two-thirty in the morning. "Could be some sort of scanning equipment. A bomb. A weapon. Any kind of gadget." Laboriously, Beam felt the unit all over, searching for a flaw in the surface. "It's uniform," he murmured. "A single surface."

  "You bet. The breaks are false--it's a poured substance. And," the technician added, "it's hard. I tried to chip off a representative sample but--" He gestured. "No results."

  "Guaranteed not to shatter when dropped," Beam said absently. "New extra-tough plastic." He shook the unit energetically; the muted noise of metal parts in motion reached his ear. "It's full of guts."

  "We'll get it open," the technician promised, "but not tonight."

  Beam replaced the unit on the bench. He could, with bad luck, work days on this one item--to discover, after all, that it had nothing to do with the murder of Heimie Rosenburg. On the other hand ...

  "Drill me a hole in it," he instructed. "So we can see it."

  His technician protested: "I drilled; the drill broke. I've sent out for an improved density. This substance is imported; somebody hooked it from a white dwarf system. It was conceived under stupendous pressure."

  "You're stalling," Beam said, irritated. "That's how they talk in the advertising media."

  The technician shrugged. "Anyhow, it's extra hard. A naturally-evolved element, or an artificially-processed product from somebody's labs. Who has funds to develop a metal like this?"

  "One of the big slavers," Beam said. "That's where the wealth winds up. And they hop around to various systems ... they'd have access to raw materials. Special ores."

  "Can't I go home?" the technician asked. "What's so important about this?"

  "This device either killed or helped kill Heimie Rosenburg. We'll sit here, you and I, until we get it open." Beam seated himself and began examining the check sheet showing which tests had been applied. "Sooner or later it'll fly open like a clam--if you can remember that far back."

  Behind them, a warning bell sounded.

  "Somebody in the anteroom," Beam said, surprised and wary. "At two-thirty?" He got up and made his way down the dark hall to the front of the building. Probably it was Ackers. His conscience stirred guiltily: somebody had logged the absence of the TV unit.

  But it was not Ackers.

  Waiting humbly in the cold, deserted anteroom was Paul Tirol; with him was an attractive young woman unknown to Beam. Tirol's wrinkled face broke into smiles, and he extended a hearty hand. "Beam," he said. They shook. "Your front door said you were down here. Still working?"

  Guardedly, wondering who the woman was and what Tirol wanted, Beam said: "Catching up on some slipshod errors. Whole firm's going broke."

  Tirol laughed indulgently. "Always a japer." His deep-set eyes darted; Tirol was a powerfully-built person, older than most, with a somber, intensely-creased face. "Have room for a few contracts? I thought I might slip a few jobs your way... if you're open."

  "I'm always open," Beam countered, blocking Tirol's view of the lab proper. The door, anyhow, had slid itself shut. Tirol had been Heimie's boss ... he no doubt felt entitled to all extant information on the murder. Who did it? When? How? Why? But that didn't explain why he was here.

  "Terrible thing," Tirol said crudely. He made no move to introduce the woman; she had retired to the couch to light a cigarette. She was slender, with mahogany-colored hair; she wore a blue coat, and a kerchief tied around her head.

  "Yes," Beam agreed. "Terrible."

  "You were there, I understand."

  That explained some of it. "Well," Beam conceded, "I showed up."

  "But you didn't actually see it?"

  "No," Beam admitted, "nobody saw it. Interior is collecting specification material. They should have it down to one card before morning."

  Visibly, Tirol relaxed. "I'm glad of that. I'd hate to see the vicious criminal escape. Banishment's too good for him. He ought to be gassed."

  "Barbarism," Beam murmured dryly. "The days of the gas chamber. Medieval."

  Tirol peered past him. "You're working on--" Now he was overtly beginning to pry. "Come now, Leroy. Heimie Rosenburg--God bless his soul--was killed tonight and tonight I find you burning the midnight oil. You can talk openly with me; you've got something relevant to his death, haven't you?"

  "That's Ackers you're thinking of."

  Tirol chuckled. "Can I take a look?"

  "Not until you start paying me; I'm not on your books yet."

  In a strained, unnatural voice, Tirol bleated: "I want it."

  Puzzled, Beam said: "You want what?"

  With a grotesque shudder, Tirol blundered forward, shoved Beam aside, and groped for the door. The door flew open and Tirol started noisily down the dark corridor, feeling his way by instinct toward the research labs.

  "Hey!" Beam shouted, outraged. He sprinted after the older man, reached the inner door, and prepared to fight it out. He was shaking, partly with amazement, partly with anger. "What the hell?" he demanded breathlessly. "You don't own me!"

  Behind him the door mysteriously gave way. Foolishly, he sprawled backward, half-falling into the lab. There, stricken with helpless paralysis, was his technician. And, coming across the floor of the lab was something small and metallic. It looked like an oversized box of crackers, and it was going lickety-split toward Tirol. The object--metal and gleaming--hopped up into Tirol's arms, and the old man turned and lumbered back up the hall to the anteroom.

  "What was it?" the technician said, coming to life.

  Ignoring him, Beam hurried after Tirol. "He's got it!" he yelled futilely.

  "It--" the technician mumbled. "It was the TV set. And it ran."

  II

  The file banks at Interior were in agitated flux.

  The process of creating a more and more restricted category was tedious, and it took time. Most of the Interior staff had gone home to bed; it was almost three in the morning, and the corridors and offices were deserted. A few mechanical cleaning devices crept here and there in the darkness. The sole source of life was the study chamber of the file banks. Edward Ackers sat patiently waiting for the results, waiting for specifications to come in, and for the file machinery to process them.

  To his right a few Interior police played a benign lottery and waited stoically to be sent out for the pick-up. The lines of communication to Heimie Rosenburg's apartment buzzed ceaselessly. Down the street, along the bleak sidewalk, Harvey Garth was still at his prop
aganda booth, still flashing his BANISH it! sign and muttering in people's ears. There were virtually no passersby, now, but Garth went on. He was tireless; he never gave up.

  "Psychopath," Ackers said resentfully. Even where he sat, six floors up, the tinny, carping voice reached his middle ear.

  "Take him in," one of the game-playing cops suggested. The game, intricate and devious, was a version of a Centaurian III practice. "We can revoke his vendor's license."

  Ackers had, when there was nothing else to do, concocted and refined an indictment of Garth, a sort of lay analysis of the man's mental aberrations. He enjoyed playing the psychoanalytic game; it gave him a sense of power.

  Garth, Harvey

  Prominent compulsive syndrome. Has assumed role of ideological anarchist, opposing legal and social system. No rational expression, only repetition of key words and phrases. Idee fixe is Banish the banishment system. Cause dominates life. Rigid fanatic, probably of manic type, since...

  Ackers let the sentence go, since he didn't really know what the structure of the manic type was. Anyhow, the analysis was excellent, and someday it would be resting in an official slot instead of merely drifting through his mind. And, when that happened, the annoying voice would conclude.

  "Big turmoil," Garth droned. "Banishment system in vast upheaval... crisis moment has arrived."

  "Why crisis?" Ackers asked aloud.

  Down below on the pavement Garth responded. "All your machines are humming. Grand excitement reigns. Somebody's head will be in the basket before sun-up." His voice trailed off in a weary blur. "Intrigue and murder. Corpses ... the police scurry and a beautiful woman lurks." To his analysis Ackers added an amplifying clause.

  ...Garth's talents are warped by his compulsive sense of mission. Having designed an ingenious communication device he sees only its propaganda possibility. Whereas Garth's voice-ear mechanism could be put to work for All Humanity.

  That pleased him. Ackers got up and wandered over to the attendant operating the file. "How's it coming?" he asked.

  "Here's the situation," the attendant said. There was a line of gray stubble smeared over his chin, and he was bleary-eyed. "We're gradually paring it down."

  Ackers, as he resumed his seat, wished he were back in the days of the almighty fingerprint. But a print hadn't shown up in months; a thousand techniques existed for print-removal and print alteration. There was no single specification capable, in itself, of delineating the individual. A composite was needed, a gestalt of the assembled data.

  1) blood sample (type O) 6,139,481,601

  2) shoe size (11 1/2) 1,268,303,431

  3) smoker 791,992,386

  3a) smoker (pipe) 52,774,853

  4) sex (male) 26,449,094

  5) age (30-40 years) 9,221,397

  6) weight (200 lbs) 488,290

  7) fabric of clothing 17,459

  8) hair variety 866

  9) ownership of utilized weapon 40

  A vivid picture was emerging from the data. Ackers could see him clearly. The man was practically standing there, in front of his desk. A fairly young man, somewhat heavy, a man who smoked a pipe and wore an extremely expensive tweed suit. An individual created by nine specifications; no tenth had been listed because no more data of specification level had been found.

  Now, according to the report, the apartment had been thoroughly searched. The detection equipment was going outdoors.

  "One more should do it," Ackers said, returning the report to the attendant. He wondered if it would come in and how long it would take.

  To waste time he telephoned his wife, but instead of getting Ellen he got the automatic response circuit. "Yes, sir," it told him. "Mrs. Ackers has retired for the night. You may state a thirty-second message which will be transcribed for her attention tomorrow morning. Thank you."

  Ackers raged at the mechanism futilely and then hung up. He wondered if Ellen were really in bed; maybe she had, as often before, slipped out. But, after all, it was almost three o'clock in the morning. Any sane person would be asleep: only he and Garth were still at their little stations, performing their vital duties.

  What had Garth meant by a "beautiful woman"?

  "Mr. Ackers," the attendant said, "there's a tenth specification coming in over the wires."

  Hopefully, Ackers gazed up at the file bank. He could see nothing, of course; the actual mechanism occupied the underground levels of the building, and all that existed here was the input receptors and throw-out slots. But just looking at the machinery was in itself comforting. At this moment the bank was accepting the tenth piece of material. In a moment he would know how many citizens fell into the ten categories ... he would know if already he had a group small enough to be sorted one by one.

  "Here it is," the attendant said, pushing the report to him.

  Type of utilized vehicle (color) 7

  "My God," Ackers said mildly. "That's low enough. Seven persons--we can go to work."

  "You want the seven cards popped?"

  "Pop them," Ackers said.

  A moment later, the throw-out slot deposited seven neat white cards in the tray. The attendant passed them to Ackers and he quickly riffled them. The next step was personal motive and proximity: items that had to be gotten from the suspects themselves.

  Of the seven names six meant nothing to him. Two lived on Venus, one in the Centaurus System, one was somewhere in Sirius, one was in the hospital, and one lived in the Soviet Union. The seventh, however, lived within a few miles, on the outskirts of New York.

  Lantano, David

  That clinched it. The gestalt, in Ackers' mind, locked clearly in place; the image hardened to reality. He had half expected, even prayed to see Lantano's card brought up.

  "Here's your pick-up," he said shakily to the game-playing cops. "Better get as large a team together as possible, this one won't be easy." Momentously, he added: "Maybe I'd better come along."

  Beam reached the anteroom of his lab as the ancient figure of Paul Tirol disappeared out the street door and onto the dark sidewalk. The young woman, trotting ahead of him, had climbed into a parked car and started it forward; as Tirol emerged, she swept him up and at once departed.

  Panting, Beam stood impotently collecting himself on the deserted pavement. The ersatz TV unit was gone; now he had nothing. Aimlessly, he began to run down the street. His heels echoed loudly in the cold silence. No sign of them; no sign of anything.

  "I'll be damned," he said, with almost religious awe. The unit--a robot device of obvious complexity--clearly belonged to Paul Tirol; as soon as it had identified his presence it had sprinted gladly to him. For... protection?

  It had killed Heimie; and it belonged to Tirol. So, by a novel and indirect method, Tirol had murdered his employee, his Fifth Avenue front man. At a rough guess, such a highly-organized robot would cost in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.

  A lot of money, considering that murder was the easiest of criminal acts. Why not hire an itinerant goon with a crowbar?

  Beam started slowly back toward his lab. Then, abruptly, he changed his mind and turned in the direction of the business area. When a free-wheeling cab came by, he hailed it and clambered in.

  "Where to, sport?" the starter at cab relay asked. City cabs were guided by remote control from one central source.

  He gave the name of a specific bar. Settling back against the seat he pondered. Anybody could commit a murder; an expensive, complicated machine wasn't necessary.

  The machine had been built to do something else. The murder of Heimie Rosenburg was incidental.

  Against the nocturnal skyline, a huge stone residence loomed. Ackers inspected it from a distance. There were no lights burning; everything was locked up tight. Spread out before the house was an acre of grass. David Lantano was probably the last person on Earth to own an acre of grass outright; it was less expensive to buy an entire planet in some other system.

  "Let's go," Ackers commanded; disgusted by such opulen
ce, he deliberately trampled through a bed of roses on his way up the wide porch steps. Behind him flowed the team of shock-police.

  "Gosh," Lantano rumbled, when he had been roused from his bed. He was a kindly-looking, rather youthful fat man, wearing now an abundant silk dressing robe. He would have seemed more in place as director of a boys' summer camp; there was an expression of perpetual good humor on his soft, sagging face. "What's wrong, officer?"

  Ackers loathed being called officer. "You're under arrest," he stated.

  "Me?" Lantano echoed feebly. "Hey, officer, I've got lawyers to take care of these things." He yawned voluminously. "Care for some coffee?" Stupidly, he began puttering around his front room, fixing a pot.

  It had been years since Ackers had splurged and bought himself a cup of coffee. With Terran land covered by dense industrial and residential installations there was no room for crops, and coffee had refused to "take" in any other system. Lantano probably grew his somewhere on an illicit plantation in South America--the pickers probably believed they had been transported to some remote colony.

  "No thanks," Ackers said. "Let's get going."

  Still dazed, Lantano plopped himself down in an easy chair and regarded Ackers with alarm. "You're serious." Gradually his expression faded; he seemed to be drifting back to sleep. "Who?" he murmured distantly.

  "Heimie Rosenburg."

  "No kidding." Lantano shook his head listlessly. "I always wanted him in my company. Heimie's got real charm. Had, I mean."

  It made Ackers nervous to remain here in the vast lush mansion. The coffee was heating, and the smell of it tickled his nose. And, heaven forbid--there on the table was a basket of apricots.