"Hold it. Party ahead, Linc. Sector 21."
"Shoot a picture."
"Here it is..."
"Sorry. No sale."
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 9."
"Let's have the picture."
"Here it comes..."
"Nope. No sale."
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 17."
"Shoot a picture."
"Hey! It's a goddam bear!"
"Don't run! Negotiate!"
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 12."
"Shoot a picture."
"Here it comes..."
"No sale."
"AAAAAAA-choo!"
"That the blizzard?"
"No. I'm a cloud-burst."
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 41."
"Shoot a picture."
"Here it is."
"Not them."
"How do you climb a palm tree?"
"You shinny up."
"Not up. Down."
"How'd you get up, your honor?"
"I don't know. A moose helped me."
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 37."
"Let's have the picture."
"Here it comes."
"No sale."
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 60."
"Go ahead."
"Here's the picture..."
"Pass 'em by."
"How long do we have to keep on travelling?"
"They're at least eight hours ahead."
"No. Correction, peepers. They've got eight hours start but they may not be eight hours ahead."
"Spell that out, will you, Linc."
"Reich may not have trekked straight ahead. He may have circled around to a favorite spot close to the gate."
"Favorite for what?"
"For murder."
"Excuse me. How does one persuade a cat not to devour one?"
"Use Political Psychology."
"Use your Barrier screen, Mr. Secretary."
"Party ahead, Linc. Sector 1."
"Shoot a picture, Mr. Superintendent."
"Here it is."
"Pass 'em by, sir. That's Reich and Hassop."
"WHAT!"
"Don't make a fuss. Don't make anybody suspicious. Just pass 'em by. When you're out of sight, circle around to Sector 2. Everybody head back for the Gate and go home. All my thanks. From here on I'll take it alone."
"Leave us in on the kill, Linc."
"No. This needs finesse. I don't want Reich to know I'm abducting Hassop. It's all got to look logical and natural and unimpeachable. It's a swindle."
"And you're the thief to do it."
"Who stole the weather, Powell?"
The departing peepers were propelled by a hot blush.
* * *
This particular square mile of Reservation was jungle, humid, swampy, overgrown. As darkness fell, Powell slowly wormed his way toward the glimmering camp fire Reich had built in a clearing alongside a small lake. The water was infested with hippo, crocodile, and swambat. The trees and terrain swarmed with life. The entire junglette was a savage tribute to the brilliance of Reservation ecologists who could assemble and balance nature on the point of a pin. And in tribute to that nature, Reich's Defensive Barrier Screen was in full operation.
Powell could hear mosquitoes whine as they batted against the outer rim of the barrier, and there was an intermittent hail of larger insects caroming off the invisible wall. Powell could not risk operating his own. The screens hummed slightly and Reich had keen ears. He inched forward and peeped.
Hassop was at ease, relaxed, just a little beglamoured by the idea of intimacy with his puissant chief, just a little intoxicated by the knowledge that his film cannister contained Ben Reich's fate. Reich, working feverishly on a crude, powerful bow, was planning the accident that would eliminate Hassop. It was that bow and the sheaf of fire-tipped arrows alongside Reich that had eaten up the eight hours start on Powell. You can't kill a man in a hunting accident unless you go hunting.
Powell lifted to his knees and crawled forward, his senses pinpointed on Reich's perception. He froze again as ALARM clanged in Reich's head. Reich leaped to his feet, bow ready, a featherless arrow at half-cock, and peered intently into the darkness.
"What is it, Ben?" Hassop murmured.
"I don't know. Something."
"Hell. You've got your Barrier, haven't you?"
"I keep forgetting." Reich sank back and built up the fire; but he was not forgetting the Barrier. The wary instinct of the killer was warning him, vaguely, persistently... And Powell could only marvel at the intricate survival mechanism of the human mind. He peeped Reich again. Reich was mechanically resorting to the tune-block he associated with crisis: Tenser, said the Tensor, Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. Behind that there was turmoil; a mounting resolution to kill quickly... kill savagely... destroy now and arrange the evidence later...
As Reich reached for the bow, his eyes carefully averted from Hassop, his mind intent on the throbbing heart that was his target, Powell drove forward urgently. Before he had moved ten feet, ALARM tripped again in Reich's mind and the big man was on his feet once more. This time he whipped a burning branch from the fire and hurled the flare toward the blackness where Powell was concealed. The idea and execution came so quickly that Powell could not anticipate the action. He would have been fully illuminated if Reich had not forgotten the Barrier. It stopped the flaming branch in mid-flight and dropped it to the ground.
"Christ!" Reich cried, and swung around abruptly at Hassop.
"What is it Ben?"
In answer, Reich drew the arrow back to the lobe of his ear and held the point on Hassop's body. Hassop scrambled to his feet.
"Ben, watch out! You're shooting at me!"
Hassop leaped to one side unexpectedly as Reich let the arrow fly.
"Ben! For the love of — " Suddenly Hassop realized the intent. He turned with a strangulated cry and ran from the fire as Reich notched another arrow. Running desperately, Hassop smashed into the barrier and staggered back from the invisible wall as an arrow shot past his shoulder and shattered.
"Ben!" he screamed.
"You son of a bitch," Reich growled, and notched another shaft.
Powell leaped forward and reached the edge of the Barrier. He could not pass it. Inside, Hassop ran screaming across the far side while Reich stalked him with half-cocked bow, closing in for the kill. Hassop again smashed into the Barrier, fell, crawled, and regained his feet to dart off again like a cornered rat, Reich following him doggedly.
"Jesus!" Powell muttered. He stepped back into the darkness, thinking desperately. Hassop's screams had aroused the jungle, and there was a roaring and an echoing rumble in his ears. He reached out on the TP Band, sensing, touching, feeling. There was nothing but blind fear, blind rage, blind instinct around him. The hippos, sodden and viscid... the crocodiles, deaf, angry, hungry... swambats, as furious as rhinoceri whose size they doubled... A quarter mile off were the faint broadcasts of elephant, wapiti, giant cats...
"It's worth the chance," Powell said to himself. "I've got to bust that Barrier. It's the only way."
He set his blocks on the upper level, masking everything except the emotional broadcast, and transmitted: fear, fear, terror, fear... driving the emotion down to its primitive level... Fear, Fear, Terror, Fear... FEAR - FLIGHT - TERROR - FEAR - FLIGHT - TERROR - flight!
Every bird in every roost awoke screaming. The monkeys screamed back and shook thousands of branches in sudden flight. A barrage of sucking explosions sounded from the lake as the herd of hippos surged up from the shallows in blind terror. The jungle was shaken by the ear-splitting trumpetings of elephants and the crashing thunder of their stampede. Reich heard and froze in his tracks, ignoring Hassop who still ran and sobbed and screamed from wall to wall of the Barrier.
The hippos hit the barrier first in a blind, blundering rush. They were followed by the swambats and the crocodiles. Then came the elephants. Then the wapiti, the
zebra, the gnu... heavy, pounding herds. There had never been such a stampede in the history of the Reservation. Nor had the manufacturers of the Defensive Barrier Screen ever anticipated such a concerted mass attack. Reich's Barrier went down with a sound like scissored glass.
The hippos trampled the fire, scattered it and extinguished it. Powell darted through the darkness, seized Hassop's arm, and dragged the crazed creature across the clearing to the piled packs. A wild hoof sent him reeling, but he held on to Hassop and located the precious film cannister. In the frantic blackness Powell could sort the frenzied TP broadcasts of the stampeding animals. Still dragging Hassop, he threaded his way out of the main stream. Behind the thick bole of a lignum vitae Powell paused to catch his breath and settle the cannister safely in his pocket. Hassop was still sobbing. Powell sensed Reich, a hundred feet away, back against a fever tree, bow and arrows clutched in his stricken hands. He was confused, furious, terrified... but still safe. Above all, Powell wanted to keep him safe for Demolition.
Unhitching his own Defensive Barrier Screen, Powell tossed it across the clearing toward the embers of the fire where Reich would surely find it. Then he turned and led the numb, unresisting Code Chief toward the Gate.
13
THE REICH CASE WAS READY for final submission to the District Attorney's office. Powell hoped it was also ready for that cold-blooded, cynical monster of facts and evidence, Old Man Mose.
Powell and his staff assembled in Mose's office. A round table had been set up in the center, and on it was constructed a transparent model of the key rooms of Beaumont House, inhabited by miniature android models of the dramatis personae. The lab's model division had done a superlative job, and actually had characterized the leading players. The tiny Reich, Tate, Beaumont, and others moved with the characteristic gaits of their originals. Alongside the table was massed the documentation the staff had prepared, ready for presentation to the machine.
Old Man Mose himself occupied the entire circular wall of the giant office. His multitudinous eyes winked and glared coldly. His multitudinous memories whirred and hummed. His mouth, the cone of a speaker, hung open in a kind of astonishment at human stupidity. His hands, the keys of a multiflex typewriter, poised over a roll of tape, ready to hammer out logic. Mose was the Mosaic Multiplex Prosecution Computer of the District Attorney's Office, whose awful decisions controlled the preparation, presentation, and prosecution of every police case.
"We won't bother Mose to start with," Powell told the D.A. "Let's take a look at the models and check them against the Crime Schedule. Your staff has the time sheets. Just watch them while the dolls go through the motions. If you catch anything our gang's missed, make a note and we'll kick it around."
He nodded to De Santis, the harassed Lab Chief, who inquired in an overwrought voice: "One to one?"
"That's a little fast. Make it one to two. Half slow motion."
"The androids look unreal at that tempo," De Santis snarled. "It can't do them justice. We slaved for two weeks and now you—"
"Never mind. We'll admire them later."
De Santis verged on mutiny, then touched a button. Instantly the model was illumined and the dolls came to life. Acoustics had faked a background. There was a hint of music, laughter, and chatter. In the main hall of Beaumont House, a pneumatic model of Maria Beaumont slowly climbed to a dais with a tiny book in her hands.
"The time is 11:09 at that point," Powell said to the D.A.'s staff. "Watch the clock above the model. It's geared to synchronize with the slow motion."
In rapt silence, the legal division studied the scene and jotted notes while the androids reproduced the actions of the fatal Beaumont party. Once again Maria Beaumont read the rules of the Sardine game from the dais in the main hall of Beaumont House. The lights dimmed and went out. Ben Reich slowly threaded his way through the main hall to the music room, turned right, mounted the stairs to the Picture Gallery, passed through the bronze doors leading to the Orchid Suite, blinded and stunned the Beaumont guards, and then entered the suite.
And again Reich met D'Courtney face to face, closed with him, drew a deadly knife-pistol from his pocket and with the blade pried D'Courtney's mouth open while the old man hung weak and unresisting. And again a door of the Orchid Suite burst open to reveal Barbara D'Courtney in a frost-white transparent dressing gown. And she and Reich feinted and dodged until Reich suddenly blew the back of D'Courtney's head out with a shot through the mouth.
"Got that material from the D'Courtney girl," Powell murmured. "Peeped her. It's authentic."
Barbara D'Courtney crawled to the body of her father, seized the gun and suddenly dashed out of the Orchid Suite, followed by Reich. He pursued her down into the darkened house and lost her as she darted out through the front entrance into the street. Then Reich met Tate and they marched to the Projection Room, pretending to play Sardine. The drama came to an end at last with the stampede of the guests up to the Orchid Suite where the dolls burst in and crowded around the tiny dead body. There they froze in a grotesque little tableau.
There was a long pause while the legal staff digested the drama.
"All right," Powell said. "That's the picture. Now let's feed the data to Mose for an opinion. First, Opportunity. You won't deny that the Sardine game provided Reich with perfect opportunity?"
"How'd Reich know they were going to play Sardine?" the D.A. muttered.
"Reich bought the book and sent it to Maria Beaumont. He provided his own Sardine game."
"How'd he know she'd play the game?"
"He knew she liked games. Sardine was the only legible game in the book."
"I don't know..." The D.A. scratched his head.
"Mose takes a lot of convincing. Feed it to him. Won't do any harm."
The office door banged open and Commissioner Crabbe marched in as though heading a parade.
"Mr. Prefect Powell," Crabbe pronounced formally.
"Mr. Commissioner?"
"It has come to my attention, sir, that you are perverting that mechanical brain for the purpose of implicating my good friend, Ben Reich, in the foul and dastardly murder of Craye D'Courtney. Mr. Powell, such a purpose is grotesque. Ben Reich is an honorable and leading citizen of our country. Furthermore, sir, I have never approved of that mechanical brain. You were chosen by the electorate to exercise your intellectual powers, not bow in slavery to that—"
Powell nodded to Beck, who began feeding the punched data into Mose's ear. "You're absolutely right, commissioner. Now, about the Method. First question: How'd Reich knock out the guards. De Santis?"
"And furthermore, gentlemen..." Crabbe continued.
"Rhodopsin Ionizer," De Santis spat. He picked up a plastic sphere and tossed it to Powell who exhibited it. "Man named Jordan developed it for Reich's private police. I've got the empiric processing formula ready for the Computer, and the sample we mocked up. Anybody care to try it?"
The D.A. looked dubious. "I don't see the use. Mose can make up his own mind about that."
"In addition to which, gentlemen..." Crabbe summarized.
"Oh come on," De Santis said with unpleasant cheerfulness. "You'll never believe us unless you see it for yourself. It doesn't hurt. Just makes you non compos for six or seven—"
The plastic bulb shattered in Powell's fingers. A vivid blue light flared under Crabbe's nose. Caught in mid-oration, the Commissioner collapsed like an empty sack. Powell looked around in horror.
"Good heavens!" be exclaimed. "What have I done? That bulb simply melted in my fingers." He looked at De Santis and spoke severely. "You made the covering too thin, De Santis. Now see what you've done to Commissioner Crabbe."
"What I've done!"
"Feed that data to Mose," the D.A. said in a voice rigid with control. "This I know he'll buy."
They made the Commissioner's body comfortable in a deep chair. "Now, the murder method," Powell continued. "Kindly watch this, gentlemen. The hand is quicker than the eye." He exhibited a revolver from th
e police museum. From the chambers he removed the shells, and from one of the shells he extracted the bullet. "This is what Reich did to the gun Jerry Church gave him before the murder. Pretended to make it safe. A phoney alibi."
"Phoney, hell! That gun is safe. Is that Church's evidence?"
"It is. Look at your sheet."
"Then you don't have to bother Mose with the problem." The D.A. threw his papers down in disgust. "We haven't got a case."
"Yes we have."
"How can a cartridge kill without a bullet? Your sheet doesn't say anything about Reich reloading."
"He reloaded."
"He did not," De Santis spat. "There was no projectile in the wound or the room. There was nothing."
"There was everything. It was easy once I figured the clue."
"There was no clue!" De Santis shouted.
"Why, you located it, De Santis. That bit of candy gel in D'Courtney's mouth. Remember? And no candy in the stomach."
De Santis glared, Powell grinned. He took an eye-dropper and filled a gel capsule with water. He pressed it into the open end of the cartridge above the charge and placed the cartridge in the gun. He raised the gun, aimed at a small wooden block on the edge of the model table, and pulled the trigger. There was a dull, flat explosion and the block leaped into fragments.
"For the love of — That was a trick!" The D.A. exclaimed. "There was something in that shell besides water." He examined the fragments of wood.
"No, there was not. You can shoot an ounce of water with a powder charge. You can shoot it with enough muzzle velocity to blow out the back of a head if you fire through the soft roof of the mouth. That's why Reich had to shoot through the mouth. That's why De Santis found the bit of gel. That's why he found nothing else. The projectile was gone."
"Give it to Mose," the D.A. said faintly. "By God, Powell, I'm beginning to think we've got a case."
"All right. Now, Motive. We picked up Reich's business records, and Accounting's gone through them. D'Courtney had Reich with his back to the wall. With Reich it was 'if you can't lick 'em, join 'em.' He tried to join D'Courtney. He failed. He murdered D'Courtney. Will you buy that?"