The Zap Gun

  “We really blasted them,” Ricardo Hastings mumbled, chuckling, wheezing, dribbling.

  “Did we?” Lars managed to say.

  “Yes, Mr. Lars,” Ricardo Hastings said. And the garrulous, trivial mumble, somehow, seemed cleared, became lucid. “But not with any so-called ‘Time Warpage Generator.’ That is a fabrication—in the bad sense. I mean a cover-story.” The old man chuckled, but this time harshly. Differently.

  Lars, with extreme difficulty, said, “Who are you?”

  “I am an ambulatory toy,” the old man answered.

  “Toy!”

  “Yes, Mr. Lars. Originally an ingredient of a war-game invented by Klug Enterprises. Sketch me, Mr. Lars. Your compatriot, Miss Topchev, is no doubt sketching, but merely repeating, without realizing it, the worthless visual-presentation formerly produced … and ignored by everyone but you. She is drawing me. You were absolutely right.”

  “But you’re old.”

  “A simple technical solution presented itself to Mr. Klug. He foresaw the possibility—in fact the inevitability—of an application of the new dating-test by carbon-17-B. So my constituents are modifications of organic matter slightly in excess of one hundred years vintage. If that expression doesn’t disgust you.”

  “It doesn’t disgust me,” Lars said, or thought. He could no longer tell if he were actually speaking aloud. “I just plain don’t believe it,” he said.

  “Then,” Hastings said, “consider this possibility. I am an android, as you suspected, but built over a century ago.”

  “In 1898?” Lars asked with bottomless scorn. “By a buggywhip concern in Nebraska?” He laughed, or tried to, anyhow. “Give me another one. Another theory that fits what you know and I know to be the facts.”

  “This time would you like to try the truth, Mr. Lars? Hear it openly, with nothing held back? Do you feel capable? Honestly? You’re sure?”

  After a pause Lars said, “Yes.”

  The soft, whispering voice, perhaps composed of nothing more in this deep-trance relationship than a thought, informed him, “Mr. Lars, I am Vincent Klug.”

  TWENTY - EIGHT

  “The small-time operator. The marginal, null-credit, kicked-around toy man himself,” Lars said.

  “That’s right. Not an android but a man like yourself, only old, very old. At the end of my days. Not as you’ve met me and seen me subsurface, at Lanferman Associates.” The voice was weary, toneless. “I have lived a long time and seen a good deal. I saw the Big War, as I said. As I told everyone and anyone who would listen to me as I sat on the park bench. I knew eventually the proper person would come along, and he did. They got me inside.”

  “And you were main-man in the war?”

  “No. Not for that or any weapon. A time-warpage instrument exists—will exist—but it will not factor in the Big War against the Sirius slavers. That part I made up. Sixty-four years from now, in 2068, I will make use of it to return.

  “You don’t understand. I can come back here from 2068; I’ve done so. Here I am. But I can’t bring anything. Weapon, artifact, news, idea, the most minuscule technological pursap entertainment novelty—anything.” The voice was savage, roused to bitterness. “Go ahead! Telepathically pry at me, tinker with my memory and knowledge of the next six decades. Obtain the specs for the Time Warpage Generator. And take it to Pete Freid at Lanferman Associates in California; get a rush-order on it, have a prototype made right up and used on the aliens. Go ahead! You know what’ll happen? It will cancel me out, Mr. Lars.” The voice cut at him, deafening him, cruel. Corrupted by vindictiveness and the futility of the situation. “And when it cancels me out, by instigating an alternate time-path, it will cancel the weapon out, too. And an oscillation, with me caught in it, will be erected in perpetuity.”

  Lars was silent. He did not dispute; it seemed evident and he accepted it.

  “Time-travel,” said the ancient, decayed Klug of sixty-four years from now, “is one of the most rigidly limited mechanisms arrived at by the institutional research system. Do you want to know exactly how limited I am, Mr. Lars, at this moment in time, which is for me over sixty years in the past? I can see ahead and I can’t tell anything—I can’t inform you; I can’t be an oracle. Nothing! All I can do, and this is very little, but it may be enough—I know, as a matter of fact, whether it’ll be enough, but I can’t even risk telling you this—is call your attention to some object, artifact or aspect of your present environment. You see? It must already exist. Its presence must not in any way be dependent on my return here from your future.”

  “Hmm,” Lars said.

  “‘Hmm.’” Vincent Klug sneered, mocking him.

  “Well,” Lars said, “What can I say? It’s been said; you just now went through it, stage by stage.”

  “Ask me something.”

  “Why?”

  “Just ask! I came back for a reason; isn’t that obvious? God, I’m tied in knots by this damn principle— it’s called—” Klug broke off, choked with impotence and fury.

  “I can’t even give you the name of the principle that limits me,” he said, with descending strength. The battle to communicate—but not to communicate beyond the narrow, proper line—was palpably draining him rapidly.

  Lars said, “Guessing games. That’s right; you like games.”

  “Exactly.” A resurgence of energy pulsed in the dry, dust-like voice. “You guess. I either answer or I don’t.”

  “Something exists now, in our times, in 2004.”

  “Yes!” Frenzied, vibrant, humming excitement; the furious regathering of the life-force in response.

  “You, in this time period, are not a cog. You’re on the outside and that is a fact. You’ve tried to bring it to UN-W Natsec’s attention but since you’re not a cog, no one will listen.”

  “Yes!”

  “A working prototype?”

  “Yes. By Pete Freid. On his own time. After Jack Lanferman gave him permission to use the company shops. He’s so goddam good; he can build so goddam fast.”

  “Where is the device now?”

  A long silence. Then, haltingly, in agony, “I—am—afraid to—say too much.”

  “Pete has it.”

  “N-no.”

  “Okay,” Lars pondered. “Why didn’t you try to communicate with Lilo?” he asked. “When she went into a trance-state and probed at your mind?”

  “Because,” Klug whispered wearily in his dry, rushing voice, “she is from Peep-East.”

  “But the Prototype—”

  “I see ahead. This weapon, Mr. Lars, is for Wes-bloc alone.”

  “Is the weapon,” Lars said, “in Festung Washington, D.C. at this time?”

  Witheringly, the voice of the ancient Vincent Klug eaten away by the destroyer retorted. “If it were I would not be talking to you. I would have returned to my own period.” He added, “Frankly, I have plenty to lose by being here, my friend. The medical science of my own era is capable of sustaining my life on an endurable basis. That, however, is not the case in this year, 2004.” His voice pulsated with the rhythm of fatigue and contempt intertwined.

  “Okay, this device,” Lars said—and sighed—“this weapon originates from my own time and not from the future. You’ve had the prototype made. Presumably it works. So you’ve either taken it back to your own tiny factory or whatever it is you operate!” For a long time he considered, recapitulating in his mind over and over again. “All right,” he said. “I don’t need to ask you any more; we don’t need to strain it. Better not to take any more chances. You agree?”

  “I agree,” Klug said, “if you feel you can continue on your own—with what you now know and no more.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  Obviously he had to immediately approach the Vincent Klug of this period, drag the device out of him. But—and he saw it already—the Vincent Klug of 2004, having invented the device, would not recognize it as a weapon.

  He would not therefore know which object was wanted; K
lug might, in his typical, zany, marginal operations, possess a dozen, two dozen, constructs in every possible stage all the way from the rough sketch, the drafting board, to the final autofac-run retail-sales production items themselves.

  He had broken contact with the ancient Vincent Klug of 2068 prematurely.

  “Klug,” he said instantly, urgently. “What kind of toy is it? A hint! Give me some clue. A board game? A war game?” He listened.

  In his ears, as spoken words, not telepathically received thoughts, the cracked, senile voice mumbled, “Yeah, we really clobbered them, those slavers; they sure didn’t expect us to come up with anything.” The old man wheezing, chuckling with delight. “Our weapons fashion designers. What a washout they were. Or so the aliens thought.”

  Lars, shaking, opened his eyes. His head ached violently. In the glare of the overhead light he squinted in pain. He saw Lilo Topchev beside him, slouched inert, her fingers holding a pen … against a blank, untouched piece of white paper.

  The trance-state, telepathic rapport with the obscured, inner mind of the old “war veteran” Vincent Klug, had ended.

  Looking down, Lars saw his own hand as it gripped a pen, his own sheet of paper. There was no sketch of course; he was not surprised by that.

  But the paper was not blank.

  On it was a scrawled, labored sentence, as if the awkward, unskilled fingers of a child had gripped the pen, not his.

  The sentence read:

  The (unreadable,

  a short word) in

  the maze.

  The something in the maze, he thought. Rat? Possibly. He seemed to make out an r. And the word consisted of three letters, the second of which—he was positive, now, as he scrutinized it—was a.

  Unsteadily, he rose, made his way from the room; he opened door after door, at last found someone, a hospital orderly.

  “I want a vidphone,” Lars said.

  He sat, finally, at a table on which rested an extension phone. With shaking fingers he dialed Henry Morris at his New York office.

  Presently he had Henry on the screen.

  “Get hold of that toy-maker Vincent Klug,” Lars said. “He has a kids’ product, a maze of some kind. It’s gone through Lanferman Associates and come out. A working model exists. Pete Freid made it.”

  “Okay,” Henry said, nodding.

  “In that toy,” Lars said, “there’s a weapon. One we can use against the aliens—and win. Don’t tell Klug why you want it. When you have it, mail it to me at Festung Washington, D.C. by ’stant mail—so there’s no time-lapse.”

  “Okay,” Henry Morris said.

  After he had rung off, Lars sat back, once more picked up the sheet of paper, reexamined his scrawled sentence. What in God’s name was that blurred word? Almost he had it …

  “How do you feel?” Lilo Topchev appeared, bleary-eyed, rubbing her forehead, smoothing back her rumpled hair. “God, I’m sick. And again I got nothing.” She plopped herself opposite him, rested her head in her hands. Then, sighing, she roused herself, peered to see the paper he held. “You derived this? During the trance-state?”

  She frowned, her lips moving. “The—something—in the maze. That second word.” For a time she was silent, and then she said, “Oh. I see what it says.”

  “You do?” He lowered the sheet of paper, and for some reason felt cold.

  “The second word is man,” Lilo said. “The man in the maze; that’s what you wrote during the trance. I wonder what it means.”

  TWENTY - NINE

  Later, subsurface, Lars sat in one of the great, silent meeting-chambers of the inner citadel, the kremlin of Fortress Washington, D.C., the capital city of all Wes-bloc with its two billion. (Less than that now, a substantial portion. But as to this Lars averted his thoughts; he kept his attention elsewhere.)

  He sat with the unwrapped ’stant mail parcel from Henry Morris before him. A note from Henry informed him that this object was the sole maze-toy produced by Klug Enterprises and made up by Lanferman Associates in the last six years.

  This small, square item was it.

  The printed brochure from Vincent Klug’s factory was included. Lars had read it several times.

  The maze was simple enough in itself, but it represented for its trapped inhabitant an impenetrable barrier. Because the maze was inevitably one jump ahead of its victim. The inhabitant could not win, no matter how fast or how cleverly or how inexhaustibly he scampered, twisted, retreated, tried again, sought the one right (Didn’t there have to be a one right?) combination. He could never escape. He could never find freedom. Because the maze, ten-year battery powered, constantly shifted.

  Some toy, Lars thought. Some idea of what constitutes “fun.”

  But this was nothing; this did not explain what he had here on the table before him. For this was a psychologically sophisticated toy, as the brochure put it. The novelty angle, the inspired ingredient by which the toy-maker Vincent Klug expected to pilot this item into a sales success, was the empathic factor.

  Pete Freid, seated beside Lars, said, “Hell, I put it together. And I don’t see anything about it that would make it a weapon of war. And neither did Vince Klug, because I discussed it with him, before I made this prototype and after. I know darn well he never intended that.”

  “You’re absolutely correct,” Lars said. Because why at this period in his life-track should the toy-maker Vincent Klug have any interest in weapons of war? But the later Vincent Klug—

  He knew better.

  “What kind of a person is Klug?” Lars asked Pete.

  Pete gestured. “Hell, you’ve seen him. Looks like if you stuck a pin in him he’d pop and all the air would come out.”

  “I don’t mean his physical looks,” Lars said. “I mean what’s he like inside? Down deep, the machinery that makes him run.”

  “Strange, you putting it like that.”

  “Why?” Lars felt sudden uneasiness.

  “Well, it reminds me of one of the projects he brought to me, a long time ago. Years ago. Something he was eternally puttering around with but finally gave up. Which I was glad of.”

  “Androids,” Lars said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “What was he going to do with the androids?”

  Pete scratched his head, scowling. “I could never quite figure it out. But I didn’t like it. I told him no, every time.”

  “You mean,” Lars said, “he wanted you to build them? He wanted Lanferman Associates to utilize its expertise in that line, on his android project, but for some strange reason he never—”

  “He was vague. Anyhow he wanted them really human-like. And I always had that uneasy feeling about it.” Pete was still scowling. “Okay, I admit there’s layers and layers to Klug. I’ve worked with him but I don’t pretend to understand him, any more than I ever figured out what he had in mind with his android project. Anyhow, he did abandon it and turned to—” he gestured toward the maze—“this.”

  Well, Lars thought, so that explains Lilo’s android sketches.

  General Nitz, who had been sitting silently across from them, said, “The person who operates this maze—if I understand this right, he assumes an emotional identity with that thing.” He pointed at the tiny inhabitant, now inert because the switch was off. “That creature, there. What is that creature?” He peered intently, revealing for the first time to Lars that he was slightly nearsighted. “Looks like a bear. Or a Venusian wub; you know, those roly-poly animals that the kids love … there’s a phenotypal enclave of them here at the Washington zoo. God, the kids never get tired of watching that colony of wubs.”

  Lars said, “That’s because the Venusian wub possesses a limited telepathic faculty.”

  “That’s so,” General Nitz agreed. “As does the Terran porpoise, as they finally found out; it’s not unique. Incidentally, that was why people kept feeling the porpoise was intelligent. Without knowing why. It was—”

  Lars moved the switch to on, and in the
maze the roly-poly wub-like, bear-like furry, loveable creature began to move, “Look at it go,” Lars said, half to himself.

  Pete chuckled as the roly-poly creature bounced rubber-ballwise from a barrier which unexpectedly interceded itself in its path.

  “Funny,” Lars said.

  “What’s the matter?” Pete asked him, puzzled at his tone, realizing that something was wrong.

  Lars said, “Hell, it’s amusing. Look at it struggle to get out. Now look at this.” Studying the brochure, he ran his hands along both sides of the frame of the maze until he located the studs. “The control on the left increases the difficulty of the maze. And the perplexity, therefore, of its victim. The control on the right decreases—”

  “I made it,” Pete pointed out, “I know that.”

  “Lars,” General Nitz said, “you’re a sensitive man. That’s why we call you ‘difficult.’ And that’s what made you a weapons fashion medium.”

  “A prima donna,” Lars said. He did not take his eyes from the wub-like, bear-like, roly-poly victim within the altering barriers that constituted the utterly defeating configuration of the maze.

  Lars said, “Pete. Isn’t there a telepathic element built into this toy? With the effect of hooking the operator?”

  “Yeah, to a certain extent. It’s a low-output circuit. All it creates is a mild sense of identification between the child who’s operating the maze with the creature trapped.” To General Nitz he explained, “See, the psychiatric theory is that this toy teaches the child to care about other living organisms. It fosters the empathic tendencies inherent in him; he wants to help the creature, and that stud on the right permits him to do so.”

  “However,” Lars said, “there is the other stud. On the left.”

  “Well,” Pete said condescendingly, “that’s technically necessary because if you just had a decrease-factor the creature would get right out. The game would be over.”

  “So toward the end,” Lars said, “to keep the game going, you stop pressing the decrease stud and activate the increase, and the maze-circuitry responds by stepping up the difficulty which the trapped creature faces. So, instead of fostering sympathetic tendencies in the child, it could foster sadistic tendencies.”