Double Star

  She did not argue, but followed me back to the car. This time I climbed into the back seat, sat there looking dignified, and let her chauffeur me to Gate 3.

  It was not the gate we had come in. I think Dak had chosen it because it ran less to passengers and more to freight. Penny paid no attention to signs and ran the big Rolls right up to the gate. A terminal policeman tried to stop her; she simply said coldly, “Mr. Bonforte’s car. And will you please send word to the Commissioner’s office to call for it here?”

  He looked baffled, glanced into the rear compartment, seemed to recognize me, saluted, and let us stay. I answered with a friendly wave and he opened the door for me. “The lieutenant is very particular about keeping the space back of the fence clear, Mr. Bonforte,” he apologized, “but I guess it’s all right.”

  “You can have the car moved at once,” I said. “My secretary and I are leaving. Is my field car here?”

  “I’ll find out at the gate, sir.” He left. It was just the amount of audience I wanted, enough to tie it down solid that “Mr. Bonforte” had arrived by official car and had left for his space yacht. I tucked my life wand under my arm like Napoleon’s baton and limped after him, with Penny tagging along. The cop spoke to the gatemaster, then hurried back to us, smiling. “Field car is waiting, sir.”

  “Thanks indeed.” I was congratulating myself on the perfection of the timing.

  “Uh…” The cop looked flustered and added hurriedly, in a low voice, “I’m an Expansionist, too, sir. Good job you did today.” He glanced at the life wand with a touch of awe.

  I knew exactly how Bonforte should look in this routine. “Why, thank you. I hope you have lots of children. We need to work up a solid majority.”

  He guffawed more than it was worth. “That’s a good one! Uh, mind if I repeat it?”

  “Not at all.” We had moved on and I started through the gate. The gatemaster touched my arm. “Er… Your passport, Mr. Bonforte.”

  I trust I did not let my expression change. “The passports, Penny.”

  She looked frostily at the official. “Captain Broadbent takes care of all clearances.”

  He looked at me and looked away. “I suppose it’s all right. But I’m supposed to check them and take down the serial numbers.”

  “Yes, of course. Well, I suppose I must ask Captain Broadbent to run out to the field. Has my shuttle been assigned a take-off time? Perhaps you had better arrange with the tower to ‘hold.’”

  But Penny appeared to be cattily angry. “Mr. Bonforte, this is ridiculous! We’ve never had this, red tape before—certainly not on Mars.”

  The cop said hastily, “Of course it’s all right, Hans. After all, this is Mr. Bonforte.”

  “Sure, but—”

  I interrupted with a happy smile. “There’s a simpler way out. If you—what is your name, sir?”

  “Haslwanter. Hans Haslwanter,” he answered reluctantly.

  “Mr. Haslwanter, if you will call Mr. Commissioner Boothroyd, I’ll speak to him and we can save my pilot a trip out to the field—and save me an hour or more of time.”

  “Uh, I wouldn’t like to do that, sir. I could call the port captain’s office?” he suggested hopefully.

  “Just get me Mr. Boothroyd’s number. I will call him.” This time I put a touch of frost into my voice, the attitude of the busy and important man who wishes to be democratic but has had all the pushing around and hampering by underlings that he intends to put up with.

  That did it. He said hastily. “I’m sure it’s all right, Mr. Bonforte. It’s just—well, regulations, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Thank you.” I started to push on through.

  “Hold it, Mr. Bonforte! Look this way.”

  I glanced around. That i-dotting and t-crossing civil servant had held us up just long enough to let the press catch up with us. One man had dropped to his knee and was pointing a stereobox at me; he looked up and said, “Hold the wand where we can see it.” Several others with various types of equipment were gathering around us; one had climbed up on the roof of the Rolls. Someone else was shoving a microphone at me and another had a directional mike aimed like a gun.

  I was as angry as a leading woman with her name in small type but I remembered who I was supposed to be. I smiled and moved slowly. Bonforte had a good grasp of the fact that motion appears faster in pictures; I could afford to do it properly.

  “Mr. Bonforte, why did you cancel the press conference?”

  “Mr. Bonforte, it is asserted that you intend to demand that the Grand Assembly grant full Empire citizenship to Martians; will you comment?”

  “Mr. Bonforte, how soon are you going to force a vote of confidence in the present government?”

  I held up my hand with the wand in it and grinned. “One at a time, please! Now what was that first question?”

  They all answered at once, of course; by the time they had sorted out precedence I had managed to waste several moments without having to answer anything. Bill Corpsman came charging up at that point. “Have a heart, boys. The Chief has had a hard day. I gave you all you need.”

  I held out a palm at him. “I can spare a minute or two, Bill. Gentlemen, I’m just about to leave but I’ll try to cover the essentials of what you have asked. So far as I know the present government does not plan any reassessment of the relation of Mars to the Empire. Since I am not in office my own opinions are hardly pertinent. I suggest that you ask Mr. Quiroga. On the question of how soon the opposition will force a vote of confidence all I can say is that we won’t do it unless we are sure we can win it—and you know as much about that as I do.”

  Someone said, “That doesn’t say much, does it?”

  “It was not intended to say much,” I retorted, softening it with a grin. “Ask me questions I can legitimately answer and I will. Ask me those loaded ‘Have-you-quit-beating-your-wife?’ sort and I have answers to match.” I hesitated, realizing that Bonforte had a reputation for bluntness and honesty, especially with the press. “But I am not trying to stall you. You all know why I am here today. Let me say this about it—and you can quote me if you wish.” I reached back into my mind and hauled up an appropriate bit from the speeches of Bonforte I had studied. “The real meaning of what happened today is not that of an honor to one man. This”—I gestured with the Martian wand—“is proof that two great races can reach out across the gap of strangeness with understanding. Our own race is spreading out to the stars. We shall find—we are finding—that we are vastly outnumbered. If we are to succeed in our expansion to the stars, we must deal honestly, humbly, with open hearts. I have heard it said that our Martian neighbors would overrun Earth if given the chance. This is nonsense; Earth is not suited to Martians. Let us protect our own—but let us not be seduced by fear and hatred into foolish acts. The stars will never be won by little minds; we must be big as space itself.”

  The reporter cocked an eyebrow. “Mr. Bonforte, seems to me I heard you make that speech last February.”

  “You will hear it next February. Also January, March, and all the other months. Truth cannot be too often repeated.” I glanced back at the gatemaster and added, “I’m sorry but I’ll have to go now—or I’ll miss the tick.” I turned and went through the gate, with Penny after me.

  We climbed into the little lead-armored field car and the door sighed shut. The car was automatized, so I did not have to play up for a driver; I threw myself down and relaxed. “Whew!”

  “I thought you did beautifully,” Penny said seriously.

  “I had a bad moment when he spotted the speech I was cribbing.”

  “You got away with it. It was an inspiration. You—you sounded just like him.”

  “Was there anybody there I should have called by name?”

  “Not really. One or two maybe, but they wouldn’t expect it when you were so rushed.”

  “I was caught in a squeeze. That fiddlin’ gatemaster and his passports. Penny, I should think that you would carry them rathe
r than Dak.”

  “Dak doesn’t carry them. We all carry our own.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a little book. “I had mine—but I did not dare admit it.”

  “Eh?”

  “He had his on him when they got him. We haven’t dared ask for a replacement—not at this time.”

  I was suddenly very weary.

  Having no instructions from Dak or Rog, I stayed in character during the shuttle trip up and on entering the Tom Paine. It wasn’t difficult; I simply went straight to the owner’s cabin and spent long, miserable hours in free fall, biting my nails and wondering what was happening down on the surface. With the aid of anti-nausea pills I finally managed to float off into fitful sleep—which was a mistake, for I had a series of no-pants nightmares, with reporters pointing at me and cops touching me on the shoulder and Martians aiming their wands at me. They all knew I was phony and were simply arguing over who had the privilege of taking me apart and putting me down the oubliette.

  I was awakened by the hooting of the acceleration alarm. Dak’s vibrant baritone was booming, “First and last red warning! One third gee! One minute!” I hastily pulled myself over to my bunk and held on. I felt lots better when it hit; one third gravity is not much, about the same as Mars’ surface I think, but it is enough to steady the stomach and make the floor a real floor.

  About five minutes later Dak knocked and let himself in as I was going to the door. “Howdy, Chief.”

  “Hello, Dak. I’m certainly glad to see you back.”

  “Not as glad as I am to be back,” he said wearily. He eyed my bunk. “Mind if I spread out there?”

  “Help yourself.”

  He did so and sighed. “Cripes, am I pooped! I could sleep for a week… I think I will.”

  “Let’s both of us. Uh… You got him aboard?”

  “Yes. What a gymkhana!”

  “I suppose so. Still, it must be easier to do a job like that in a small, informal port like this than it was to pull the stunts you rigged at Jefferson.”

  “Huh? No, it’s much harder here.”

  “Eh?”

  “Obviously. Here everybody knows everybody—and people will talk.” Dak smiled wryly. “We brought him aboard as a case of frozen canal shrimp. Had to pay export duty, too.”

  “Dak, how is he?”

  “Well…” Dak frowned. “Doc Capek says that he will make a complete recovery—that it is just a matter of time.” He added explosively, “If I could lay my hands on those rats! It would make you break down and bawl to see what they did to him—and yet we have to let them get away with it cold—for his sake.”

  Dak was fairly close to bawling himself. I said gently, “I gathered from Penny that they had roughed him up quite a lot. How badly is he hurt?”

  “Huh? You must have misunderstood Penny. Aside from being filthy—dirty and needing a shave—he was not hurt physically at all.”

  I looked stupid. “I thought they beat him up. Something about like working him over with a baseball bat.”

  “I would rather they had! Who cares about a few broken bones? No, no, it was what they did to his brain.”

  “Oh…” I felt ill. “Brainwash?”

  “Yes. Yes and no. They couldn’t have been trying to make him talk because he didn’t have any secrets that were of any possible political importance. He always operated out in the open and everybody knows it. They must have been using it simply to keep him under control, keep him from trying to escape.”

  He went on, “Doc says that he thinks they must have been using the minimum daily dose, just enough to keep him docile, until just before they turned him loose. Then they shot him with a load that would turn an elephant into a gibbering idiot. The front lobes of his brain must be soaked like a bath sponge.”

  I felt so ill that I was glad I had not eaten. I had once read up on the subject; I hate it so much that it fascinates me. To my mind there is something immoral and degrading in an absolute cosmic sense in tampering with a man’s personality. Murder is a clean crime in comparison, a mere peccadillo. “Brainwash” is a term that comes down to us from the Communist movement of the Late Dark Ages; it was first applied to breaking a man’s will and altering his personality by physical indignities and subtle torture. But that might take months; later they found a “better” way, one which would turn a man into a babbling slave in seconds—simply inject any one of several cocaine derivatives into his frontal brain lobes.

  The filthy practice had first been developed for a legitimate purpose, to quiet disturbed patients and make them accessible to psychotherapy. As such, it was a humane advance, for it was used instead of lobotomy—“lobotomy” is a term almost as obsolete as “chastity girdle” but it means stirring a man’s brain with a knife in such a fashion as to destroy his personality without killing him. Yes, they really used to do that—just as they used to beat them to “drive the devils out.”

  The Communists developed the new brainwash-by-drugs to an efficient technique, then when there were no more Communists, the Bands of Brothers polished it up still further until they could dose a man so lightly that he was simply receptive to leadership—or load him until he was a mindless mass of protoplasm—all in the sweet name of brotherhood. After all, you can’t have “brotherhood” if a man is stubborn enough to want to keep his own secrets, can you? And what better way is there to be sure that he is not holding out on you than to poke a needle past his eyeball and slip a shot of babble juice into his brain? “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” The sophistries of villains—bah!

  Of course, it has been illegal for a long, long time now, except for therapy, with the express consent of a court. But criminals use it and cops are sometimes not lily white, for it does make a prisoner talk and it does not leave any marks at all. The victim can even be told to forget that it has been done.

  I knew most of this at the time Dak told me what had been done to Bonforte and the rest I cribbed out of the ship’s Encyclopedia Batavia. See the article on “Psychic Integration” and the one on “Torture.”

  I shook my head and tried to put the nightmares out of my mind. “But he’s going to recover?”

  “Doc says that the drug does not alter the brain structure; it just paralyzes it. He says that eventually the blood stream picks up and carries away all of the dope; it reaches the kidneys and passes out of the body. But it takes time.” Dak looked up at me. “Chief?”

  “Eh? About time to knock off that ‘Chief’ stuff, isn’t it? He’s back.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Would it be too much trouble to you to keep up the impersonation just a little while longer?”

  “But why? There’s nobody here but just us chickens.”

  “That’s not quite true. Lorenzo, we’ve managed to keep this secret awfully tight. There’s me, there’s you.” He ticked it off on his fingers. “There’s Doc and Rog and Bill. And Penny, of course. There’s a man by the name of Langston back Earthside whom you’ve never met. I think Jimmie Washington suspects but he wouldn’t tell his own mother the right time of day. We don’t know how many took part in the kidnapping, but not many, you can be sure. In any case, they don’t dare talk—and the joke of it is they no longer could prove that he had ever been missing even if they wanted to. But my point is this: here in the Tommie we’ve got all the crew and all the idlers not in on it. Old son, how about staying with it and letting yourself be seen each day by crewmen and by Jimmie Washington’s girl and such—while he gets well? Huh?”

  “Mmm… I don’t see why not. How long will it be?”

  “Just the trip back. We’ll take it slow, at an easy boost. You’ll enjoy it.”

  “Okay. Dak, don’t figure this into my fee. I’m doing this piece of it just because I hate brainwashing.”

  Dak bounced up and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re my kind of people, Lorenzo. Don’t worry about your fee; you’ll be taken care of.” His manner changed. “Very well, Chief. See you in the morning, s
ir.”

  But one thing leads to another. The boost we had started on Dak’s return was a mere shift of orbits, to one farther out where there would be little chance of a news service sending up a shuttle for a follow-up story. I woke up in free fall, took a pill, and managed to eat breakfast. Penny showed up shortly thereafter. “Good morning, Mr. Bonforte.”

  “Good morning, Penny.” I inclined my head in the direction of the guest room. “Any news?”

  “No, sir. About the same. Captain’s compliments and would it be too much trouble for you to come to his cabin?”

  “Not at all.” Penny followed me in. Dak was there, with his heels hooked to his chair to stay in place; Rog and Bill were strapped to the couch.

  Dak looked around and said, “Thanks for coming in, Chief. We need some help.”

  “Good morning. What is it?”

  Clifton answered my greeting with his usual dignified deference and called me Chief; Corpsman nodded. Dak went on, “To clean this up in style you should make one more appearance.”

  “Eh? I thought—”

  “Just a second. The networks were led to expect a major speech from you today, commenting on yesterday’s event. I thought Rog intended to cancel it, but Bill has the speech worked up. Question is, will you deliver it?”

  The trouble with adopting a cat is that they always have kittens. “Where? Goddard City?”

  “Oh no. Right in your cabin. We beam it to Phobos; they can it for Mars and also put it on the high circuit for New Batavia, where the Earth nets will pick it up and where it will be relayed for Venus, Ganymede, et cetera. Inside of four hours it will be all over the system but you’ll never have to stir out of your cabin.”

  There is something very tempting about a grand network. I had never been on one but once and that time my act got clipped down to the point where my face showed for only twenty-seven seconds. But to have one all to myself—

  Dak thought I was reluctant and added, “It won’t be a strain, as we are equipped to can it right here in the Tommie. Then we can project it first and clip out anything if necessary.”

  “Well—all right. You have the script, Bill?”