Dropping a coin into the phone-slot he dialed Lanferman Associates in San Francisco.
“Let me talk to Pete Freid.”
“Mr. Freid,” the switchboard chick at Lanferman said brightly, “is away on business. He cannot be reached, Mr. Lars.”
“Can I talk to Jack Lanferman, then?”
“Mr. Lanferman is also—I guess I can tell you, Mr. Lars. Both of them are at Festung Washington, D.C. They left yesterday. Possibly you could contact them there.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks. I know how.” He rang off.
He next called General Nitz. Step by step his call mounted the ladder of the hierarchy, and then, when he was about ready to call it quits and hang up, he found himself facing the C. in C.
“KACH couldn’t find you,” Nitz said. “Neither could the FBI or the CIA.”
“The dogs snarled,” Lars said. “At me. I heard them. In all my life, Nitz, I never heard them before.”
“Where are you?”
“Seattle.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.”
“Lars, you really look awful. And do you know what you’re doing or saying? What’s this about ‘dogs’?”
“I don’t know what they are,” he said. “But I did hear them.”
General Nitz said, “She lived six hours. But of course there was never any hope and anyhow now it’s over; or maybe you know this.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“They held up the funeral services thinking you might show up, and we kept on trying to locate you. Of course you realize what happened to you.”
“I went into a trance-state.”
“And you’re just now out?”
Lars nodded.
“Lilo is with—”
“What?” Lars said.
“Lilo is at Bethesda. With Ricardo Hastings. Trying to develop a useable sketch; she’s produced several so far but—”
Lars said, “Lilo is dead. Maren killed her with an Italian Beretta pelfrag .12 pistol. I saw it. I watched it happen.”
Regarding him intently, General Nitz said, “Maren Faine fired the Beretta .12 pelfrag pistol that she carried with her. We have the weapon, the fragments of the slug, her fingerprints on the gun. But she killed herself, not Lilo.”
After a pause Lars said, “I didn’t know.”
“Well,” General Nitz said, “when that Beretta went off, somebody had to die. That’s how those pelfrag pistols are. It’s a miracle it didn’t get all three of you.”
“It was suicide. Deliberate. I’m sure of it.” Lars nodded. “She probably never intended to kill Lilo, even if she thought so herself.” He let out a ragged sigh of weariness and resignation. The kind of resignation that was not philosophical, not stoical, but simply a giving up.
There was nothing to be done. During his trance-state, his fugue, it had all happened. Long, long ago. Maren was dead; Lilo was at Bethesda; he, after a timeless journey to nowhere, into emptiness, had wound up in downtown Seattle, as far away, evidently, as he could manage to get from New York and what had taken place—or what he had imagined had taken place.
“Can you get back here?” General Nitz said. “To help out Lilo? Because it’s just not coming; she takes her drug, that East German goofball preparation, goes into her trance, placed of course in proximity to Ricardo Hastings with no other minds nearby to distract her. And yet when she sobers up she has only—”
“The same old sketches. Derived from Oral Giacomini.”
“No.”
“You’re sure?” His limp, abused mind came awake.
“These sketches are entirely different from anything she’s done before. We’ve had Pete Freid examine them and he agrees. And she agrees. And they’re always the same.”
He felt horror. “Always what?”
“Calm down. Not of a weapon at all, not of anything remotely resembling a ‘Time Warpage Generator.’ They’re of the physiological, anatomical, organic substance of—” General Nitz hesitated, trying to decide whether to say it over the probably-KVB-tapped vidphone.
“Say it,” Lars grated.
“Of an android. An unsual type, but still an android. Much like those that Lanferman Associates uses subsurface in its weapons proving. You know what I mean. As human as possible.”
Lars said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
TWENTY - SIX
At the immense parking-field atop the military hospital he was met by three snappily uniformed young Marines. They escorted him, as if he were a dignitary, or perhaps, he reflected, a criminal, or a gestalt of both combined, down-ramp at once to the high security floor on which it was taking place.
It. No such word as they. Lars noted the attempt to dehumanize the activity which he had come here to involve himself in.
He remarked to his escort of Marines, “It’s still better than falling into the hands, if they do have hands, of alien slavers from some distant star system.”
“What is, sir?”
“Anything,” Lars said.
The tallest Marine, and he really was tall, said, “You’ve got something there, sir.”
As their group passed through the final security barrier, Lars said to the tall Marine. “Have you seen this old war vet, this Ricardo Hastings, yourself?”
“For a moment.”
“How old would you guess he is?”
“Maybe ninety. Hundred. Older, even.”
Lars said, “I’ve never seen him.”
Ahead, the last door—and it had some super-sense, in that it anticipated exactly how many persons were to be allowed through—swung temporarily open; he saw white-clad medical people beyond, “But I’ll make a bet with you,” he said, as the sentient door clicked in awareness of his passage through. “As to Ricardo Hastings’ age.”
“Okay, sir.”
Lars said, “Six months.”
The three Marines stared at him.
“No,” Lars said. “I’ll revise that. Four months.”
He continued on, then, leaving his escort behind, because ahead he saw Lilo Topchev.
“Hi,” he said.
At once she turned. “Hi.” She smiled, fleetingly.
“I thought you were at Piglet’s house,” he said. “Visiting Piglet.”
“No,” she said. “I’m at Pooh’s house visiting Pooh.”
“When that Beretta went off—”
“Oh Christ I thought it was me, and you thought it was me; you were sure and you couldn’t look. Should it have been me? Anyhow it wasn’t. And I would have done the same; I wouldn’t have looked if I thought it was headed at you. What I’ve decided, and I’ve been thinking and thinking, never stopping thinking … I’ve been just so damn worried about you, where you went—you had your trance and you simply wandered off. But thinking about her I decided she must never have fired that pelfrag pistol before. She must not have had any idea what it did.”
“And now what?”
“I’ve been working. Oh God how I’ve been working. Come on into the next room and meet him.” She somberly led the way. “Did they tell you I haven’t had any luck?”
Lars said, “It could be worse, considering what’s being done to us every hour or so.” On the trip east he had learned the extent of the population-volume now converted out of existence—as far as Earth was concerned—by the enemy. It was grotesque. As a calamity it had no historic parallel.
“Ricardo Hastings says they’re from Sirius,” Lilo said. “And they are slavers, as we suspected. They’re chitinous and they have a physiological hierarchy dating back millions of years. On the planets of their system, a little under nine light-years from here, warm-blooded life forms never evolved past the lemur stage. Arboreal, with foxmuzzles, most types nocturnal, some with prehensile tails. So they don’t regard us as anything but sentient freaks. Just highly-organized work-horse organisms that are somewhat clever manually. They admire our thumb. We can do all sorts of essential jobs; they think of us the way we do rats.??
?
“But we test rats all the time. We try to learn.”
“But,” Lilo said, “we have lemur curiosity. Make a funny noise and we pop our heads out of our burrows to see. They don’t. It seems that among the chitinous forms, even highly evolved, you’re still dealing primarily with reflex-machines. Talk to Hastings about it.”
Lars said, “I’m not interested in talking to him.”
Ahead, beyond an open door, sat—a stick-like clothed skeleton, whose dim, retracted, withered-pumpkin, caved-in face revolved slowly as if motor-driven. The eyes did not blink. The features were unstirred by emotions. The organism had deteriorated into a mere perceiving-machine. Sense-organs that swiveled back and forth ceaselessly, taking in data although how much eventually reached the brain, was recorded and understood, God knew. Perhaps absolutely none.
A familiar personality manifested itself, clipboard in hand. “I knew you’d eventually reappear,” Dr. Todt said to Lars, but nevertheless he looked drastically relieved. “Did you walk?”
“Must have,” Lars said.
“You don’t remember.”
Lars said, “Nothing. But I’m tired.”
“There’s a tendency,” Dr. Todt said, “for even major psychoses to get walked off, given enough time. The Nomadic Solution. It’s just that there’s not enough time in most cases. As for you, there’s no time at all.” He turned then to Ricardo Hastings. “As to him, what are you going to try first?”
Lars studied the huddled old figure. “A biopsy.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want a tissue-sample taken. I don’t care what from, any part of him.”
“Why?”
Lars said, “In addition to a microscopic analysis I want it carbon-dated. How accurate is the new carbon-17-B dating method?”
“Down to fractions of a year. Months.”
“That’s what I thought. Okay, there won’t be any sketches, trances, any other activity from me, until the carbon dating results are in.”
Dr. Todt gestured. “Who can question the ways of the Immortals?”
“How long will it take?”
“We can have the results by three this afternoon.”
“Good,” Lars said. “I’ll go get a shower, a new pair of shoes and I think a new cloak. To cheer myself up.”
“The shops are closed. People are warned to stay underground during the emergency. The areas taken now include—”
“Don’t rattle off a list. I heard on the trip here.”
“Are you honestly not going to go into a trance?” Dr. Todt said.
“No. There’s no need to. Lilo’s tried it.”
Lilo said, “Do you want to see my sketches, Lars?”
“I’ll look at them.” He held out his hand and after a moment a pile of sketches was given to him. He leafed briefly through them and saw what he had expected—no less, no more. He set them them down on a nearby table.
“They are of an elaborate construct,” Dr. Todt pointed out.
“Of an android,” Lilo said hopefully, her eyes fixed on Lars.
He said, “They’re of him.” He pointed at the ancient huddled shape with its ceaselessly revolving, turret-like head. “Or rather it. You didn’t pick up the contents of its mind. You picked up the anatomical ingredients constituting its biochemical basis. What makes it go. The artificial mechanism that it is.” He added, “I’m aware that it’s an android, and I know the carbon-dating of the biopsy sample will bear this out. What I want to learn is its exact age.”
After a time Dr. Todt said hoarsely, “Why?”
“How long,” Lars said, “have the aliens been in our midst?”
“A week.”
“I doubt,” Lars said, “whether an android as perfectly built as this one could be thrown together in a week.”
Lilo said presently, “Then the builder knew—if you’re right—”
“Oh, hell,” Lars said. “I’m right. Look at your own sketches and tell me if they aren’t of ‘Ricardo Hastings.’ I mean it. Go ahead.” He picked up the sketches, presented them to her; she accepted them reflexively and in a numbed, sightless way turned from one to the next, nodding faintly.
“Who could have built such a successful android?” Dr. Todt said, glancing over Lilo’s shoulder. “Who has the facilities and the capabilities, not to mention the—inspirational talent?”
Lars said, “Lanferman Associates.”
“Anyone else?” Dr. Todt said.
“Not that I know of.” Through KACH, he of course had a fairly accurate concept of Peep-East’s facilities. They had nothing comparable. Nothing was comparable to Lanferman Associates, which after all stretched subsurface from San Francisco to Los Angeles: an economic, industrial organism five hundred miles long.
And making androids which could pass, under close scrutiny, as authentic human beings, was one of their major enterprises.
All at once Ricardo Hastings croaked, “If it hadn’t been for that accident when that power-surge over-loaded the—”
Lars, walking over, interrupted him, abruptly. “Are you operating on intrinsic?”
The ancient, dim eyes confronted him. But there was no answer; the sunken mouth did not stir, now.
“Come on,” Lars said. “Which is it, intrinsic or remote? Are you homeostatic or are you a receptor for instructions coming from an outside point? Frankly, I’d guess you’re fully intrinsic. Programmed in advance.” To Lilo and Dr. Todt he said, “That explains what you call its ‘senility.’ The repetition of certain stereotyped semantic units over and over again.”
Ricardo Hastings mumbled wetly, “Boy, how we clobbered them. They didn’t expect it; thought we were washed up. Our weapons fashion designers, they hadn’t come through. The aliens thought they could just walk right in and take over, but we showed them. Too bad you people don’t remember; it was before your time.” He—or it—chuckled, sightlessly staring at the floor, its mouth twitching in a grimace of delight.
“I don’t,” Lars said, pausing, “buy the idea of the time-travel weapon anyhow.”
“We got the whole mess of them,” Ricardo Hastings mumbled. “We warped their goddam satellites entirely out of this time-vector, a billion years into the future, and they’re still there. Heh-heh.” His eyes, momentarily, lit with a spark of life. “Orbiting a planet that’s uninhabited except by maybe spiders and protozoa. Too bad for them. We caught their ships of the line, too; with the T.W.G. we sent them into the remote past; they’re set to invade Earth around the time of the trilobite. They can win that easy. Beat the trilobites, club them into submission.” Triumphantly, the old veteran snorted.
At two-thirty, after a wait which Lars would not have undergone again at any price, the carbon-dating of the tissue taken from the old man’s body was brought in by a hospital attendant.
“What does it show?” Lilo asked, standing up stiffly, her eyes fixed on his face, trying to apprehend his reaction, to share it with him.
Lars handed her the single sheet. “Read it yourself.”
Faintly she said, “You tell me.”
“The microscopic analysis showed it to be indubitably human, not syntho—that is, android—tissue. The carbon-17-B dating procedures, applied to the tissue-sample, indicate that the sample is one hundred and ten years to one hundred and fifteen years old. And possibly—but not probably—even older.”
Lilo said, “You were wrong.”
Nodding, Lars said, “Yes.”
To himself, Ricardo Hastings chuckled.
TWENTY - SEVEN
On this score, Lars Powderdry said to himself, I have failed as completely as, formerly, I let them down authentic, in time of need, weapons-wise. There has never been one point at which I have really served them, except of course in the old situation, the benign game which Peep-East and Wes-bloc played all those years, the Era of Plowsharing in which we duped the multitude, the pursaps everywhere, for their own good, at the expense of their own proclivities.
I
did bring Lilo to Washington, though, he thought. Maybe that should be entered in the record-books as an achievement. But—what has that accomplished, besides the hideous suicide of Maren Faine, who had every reason for living on, enjoying a full and happy life?
To Dr. Todt, Lars said, “My Escalatium and my Conjorozine, please. Twice the customary dose.” To Lilo he said, “And that East German firm’s product that you have a monopoly on. I want you to double your intake of it at this time. It’s the only way I can think of to increase our sensitivity and I want us to be as sensitive as our systems can withstand. Because we’ll probably only make one real try.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Lilo said somberly.
The door shut after Todt and the hospital staff-members. He and Lilo, with Ricardo Hastings, were sealed off.
“This may,” he said to Lilo, “kill either or both of us, or impair us permanently. Liver-toxicity or brain—”
“Shut up!” Lilo said. And, with a cup of water, downed her tablets.
He did the same.
They sat facing each other for a moment, ignoring the mumbling, slavering old man between them.
“Will you ever recover,” Lilo asked presently, “from her death?”
“No. Never.”
“You blame me? No, you blame yourself.”
“I blame her,” Lars said. “For owning that miserable, lousy little Beretta in the first place; no one should carry a weapon like that or even own it; we’re not living in a jungle.”
He ceased. The medication was taking effect; it paralyzed, like an enormous overdose of phenothiazine, his jaws and he shut his eyes, suffering. The dose, much too much, was carrying him off and he could no longer see, experience the presence of, Lilo Topchev. Too bad, he thought. And it was regret, and pain, that he experienced, rather than fear, as the cloud condensed around him, the familiar descent—or was it ascent?—now heightened, magnified out of all reasonable proportion, by the deliberate over-supply of the two drugs.
I hope, he hoped, that she isn’t going to be required to endure this, too; I hope it is easier on her—knowing that would make it easier on me.