Bealls didn’t trust the Telecom. He was using very conventional computer equipment. Must have raided some museum. On the console was an untidy sheaf of papers. The sight, surrounded as I was with dormant Broach machinery, made me uneasy If I went through a hole in this world, where would I end up?
Print didn’t carry well through goggles, so I risked a match: circuit diagrams, mathematical notations, Vaughn Meiss’s name neatly typed in the corner of each sheet—the contents of that empty aluminum notebook, but with many marginal comments in a different hand.
I turned slowly, showing everything to the double lenses of Ed’s miniature Telecom pickup, hoping it was equipped with some sort of light-amplifier. As I climbed upstairs with a sigh of relief, and was threading my way toward Madison’s office, the telltale turned purple—orange to the naked eye.
Ed stood before the eye-and-pyramid plaque, now split down the middle to reveal a cabinet in the wall behind. “I’m afraid I’ve done it,” he whispered. “Notice your indicator?”
“Yeah. What have you got here?”
“Nothing I know anything about.” The cabinet was divided into dozens of small compartments, each holding a tiny silvery goblet no bigger than a thimble. “Ten rows of eight—eighty of these doohickeys in all.”
“Close it up, and let’s get out of here. Find anything else?”
“In the lecture-hall closet, carefully tucked into a pile of table linens—these …” Three canned reels of sixteen millimeter film lay on the desk, half concealed in a fancy napkin. I struck another match:
TF 53-9354
CLASSIFIED
MOPPING UP IN THE ATOMIC AGE
POST-STRIKE TACTICAL DEPLOYMENT
PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT
CLASSIFIED
“Training films—!”
“Put that out! Didn’t I show you—” He twisted one of my eyepieces—a softly glowing light was visible through the lenses.
“Army indoctrination films,” I repeated. “What are the others?”
“Something about ‘anti-guerrilla counter-insurgency,’ and …”
“Well?”
“How hydrogen bombs work.”
“Saw that one myself, when they were trying to involve us in Civil Defense. Don’t let that classified crap fool you, they show this stuff to the troops—and on TV, Sunday afternoons. But they can’t have brought this with them the day I—”
“No, they couldn’t. We’d better get out of here, back to the kitchen!” Which is where we went, my nerves screaming every inch of the way. Ed wanted to stop off for sightseeing.
“Are you out of your mind? This thing’s been orange for—”
“Three minutes. Don’t panic. I just want to see what Madison wouldn’t show us.”
Admittedly, I’d thought it peculiar that we weren’t allowed into a room just off the small kitchen. I held my S & W, trying to keep the muzzle steady. He opened the door, we started in—
Ed went for his gun. “Hold it!” I whispered hoarsely. “He won’t do us any harm now.” Huddled on the floor between two hanging beef carcasses was a body, frozen stiff. Oddly, it didn’t seem cold in the tiny room. “What is this place?”
“Paratronic freezer. Something like a microwave oven, only the other way around. Shuts down when the door opens.” The body was propped in a sitting position, ice crystals glittered in the light from our goggles. “Here’s the sheath to your Rezin. Want it?” Ed rotated the body onto its face. Clothing and flesh were tattered at the back, as if blasted with a shotgun—nothing fatal, just messy and painful. Some of those gleaming particles wouldn’t be ice, but glass from my bedroom window. We’d found our intruder.
“Tricky Dick Milhous,” Ed said, “a third-rate second-story man. He’s no assassin, just a petty crook. Nice way they paid him off. Couldn’t have been pleasant, freezing in the dark.”
I shuddered. “Shouldn’t we get out of here, before the same thing happens to us?” Shelves full of foil-swathed packages glinted dully in the eerie half-light.
“Right. We’ll make an anonymous call. The CLA can—”
Our wristlights, through the goggles, had turned bright blue. I didn’t even peek—the freezer door was swinging shut. I plunged through, revolver in hand, figuring to nail whoever—“There’s no one here!”
“Doors close when the alarms go off!” Ed said, hurrying past me. “Old-fashioned, but effective.” Happily, someone had removed the one between kitchen and hall. Bells were clanging as we reached the back door. “This would be locked if we hadn’t taped it.” We did a fast sneak down the alley. “Can’t cross the underground now with all this racket. We’ll have to risk the Greenway.”
“Let’s do it!”
“Look out!” He yanked me behind a bush as a car full of uniforms whisked around the corner. We were trapped. There’d be security in all four undergrounds, a perimeter established before we could get across.
I rose, dusting off my knees. “Follow my lead and try not to look guilty.” I turned the corner, strode deliberately down the sidewalk, Ed dithering along behind me for once, and right up to the front door of the Alexander Hamilton Society. Guards were milling in and out.
“Bear Brothers, consulting detectives,” I rapped. “We’re staking out a burglar. Find him yet?”
The patrol boss looked us over with a grudging smile. “Ed! Might’ve known you’d show up. Didn’t know you had a brother. Who’re we supposed to find, the ghost of Alexander Hamilton?”
Ed opened his mouth, I barged ahead with “Win Bear, Captain, just in from, uh, Tlingit. It’s Tricky Dick Milhous we’re looking for. Busted into a place we’re … responsible for the other night, and damn near killed a resident.”
“Uh—right!” Ed added brightly. “We’ll probably find him here somewhere. This is an old bulkhead security system.”
The captain looked skeptical. “Well, you boys do your homework, anyway. If you’re right, we’ll all be collecting bonuses. Been after Dick for three weeks, after the job he pulled over at Wasserchranken’s. Hear about that?”
“We’ve been on another case.”
“Yeah. I heard about that. Some guys get all the publicity. Well, let’s take a look around.”
Ed was showing the strain. Not enough practice in deception. My own heart was pumping briskly against the film cans rolled up in their embroidered napkin and stashed inside my tunic. Hanging back a little, I whispered. “How long does it take a corpse to freeze clear through in that thing?”
“Only a few minutes—paratronics—ask Deejay about it.”
“Sometimes I wish they’d stuck with home appliances. Well, Stanley, how do we get out of this gracefully?”
“Stanley?”
“To my Oliver—and this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
Ed frowned. “I worry about you. Have to hang around until they find him. Then we’ll—what was the expression?”
“Slope? Vamoose? Make like a hockey team and—”
“Split,” he said, watching the men reopen doors. “What’ll they make of that empty sheath and the glass splinters?”
“Won’t see them for the ice, at first,” I answered. “Anyway, we’re not responsible for the peculiarities of some small-time crook, are we?”
“‘Not our department,’ right?”
I grinned. “We’ll make a bureaucrat out of you yet.”
It took forty-five minutes, but find that body they did, in one of the longest due courses of my life. At any moment Madison might be back, and that wouldn’t be any fun. Of course, he’d learn later that we’d been here, but by then, he’d have other things on his mind, such as the body in his freezer—And if it isn’t a burglar, Mr. Madison, what’s he doing here?—and three missing cans of film.
Finally congratulations were in order, cigars passed around, Tricky Dick sledded away to greener pastures, and we were off in a cloud of expelled breath. It was only midnight: if Deejay were on her toes, Madison might still be answering dope
y questions.
“Tell me something, partner …” I’d found something better than coffee behind the driver’s seat. “What about the alarm defeater we left back there? Especially when they trace it to us—I mean you—and maybe I’d better scratch that ‘partner,’ too.”
He shook his head. “I hate losing valuable equipment, but considering the alternative … They’ll assume it’s Tricky Dick’s. No trademarks, no serial numbers, no problem, really.”
“Surely there are other ways—”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Win, you’re the only person in the entire Confederacy who knows about fingerprints, I promise!”
“Okay, since I’m playing Poor Dumb Nut, answer me another: we saw Madison, Kleingunther, Bealls, and Burgess leave tonight, the place was dark. But weren’t there supposed to be other Hamiltonians living in? How’d you figure—”
“Elementary, my dear Whatsit. Madison lied to keep us out of some of the rooms. We saw conservatories, a gymnasium, all kinds of lecture halls. But only one small kitchen, and no dining room large enough for more than half a dozen people. Ergo, nobody besides Madison, Kleingunther, and their two American guests!”
The hair started to rise on the back of my neck, and I wondered if I should let him live through the night. “Turn in your calabash, Sherlock! Didn’t it occur to you that the residents might cook in their rooms?” I pulled a corner of Madison’s napkin out of my tunic. Embroidered in satin, the Eye-in-the-Pyramid shone dully in the dashboard lights. “Or that they might simply redress their lecture halls for dinner? What in hell do you think that linen closet was for?”
He jammed on the brakes, slewed over to the roadside, and sat, staring blindly into space. “Great government! I never thought of that!”
“SQUAAWK!” The Telecom lit up, Lucy’s worried face crammed in the focus beside Forsyth’s. “Get back here quick, boys! While you were doin’ it to them, they’ve gone an’ done it to Clarissa!”
XVI: Balance of Madness
Authoritarianism is one hell of an act to follow. Every tenth-bit parlor-Prussian is under the happy delusion that “when comes the Revolution,” he’s gonna be on top of the heap. It’s the dumbest con on record, but if it didn’t work on some of the people, some of the time, we wouldn’t be freezing our asses off here at the South Pole, would we?
—Buchwaid and Breslin
The World’s Last Authentic War Correspondents
SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1987
“Horrible!” cried Clarissa. Ed sat paralyzed, his face a frozen mask.
“Never realized what it could mean in a populated area.” Lucy wiped her eyes as if to erase the images: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the rest.
“They purpose doing that to us?” Deejay trembled with anger as the films showed buildings, automobiles, ships resting innocently at anchor, vaporized beneath the mushroom cloud.
“Only if you don’t knuckle under. It’s pretty simple. An old game where I come from. They finish their Broach, bring in troops and weapons, and the Hamiltonians are suddenly in charge—under SecPol supervision, of course.”
Lucy emitted a disgusted grunt.
“That Broach is a pretty narrow bottleneck,” Captain Forsyth observed. “We could close it off with a couple ounces of Hercules’ No. 6.”
Ed stirred. “It isn’t that simple, Cap. These people have developed mass-warfare into a science.”
“To the neglect of everything else,” said Lucy.
“Perhaps so. At any rate, all they need is a hole the size of—what did you estimate, Win?”
“A typewriter case—or an automotive fusion reactor.”
“Yes, and they don’t need it more than a few minutes. Once they have weapons like these, we’ll have to leave them alone. They’ll be holding the entire city for ransom.”
“And with a secure base,” I added, “there’s nothing to stop them setting up Broaches everywhere. Give them a week and they’ll own this world. With the resources and the technology available here, they’ll own mine, too.”
“But why, Win? Would they do something like this for money?”
“Clarissa, they have all the money they need—they own the printing presses. They want power: utter control over the populations of two worlds—more, counting your colonies.”
“Many more,” Deejay said, “if there are other worlds the Broach can reach—we haven’t begun to explore that possibility yet.” She shuddered.
The six of us were gathered in Ed’s living room. It had been time-consuming but not particularly difficult to hand-crank film from reel to reel past a recording pickup. The Telecom had done the rest, we were watching the result. The actual films were back in their cans, stashed in the deepest recesses of Mulligan’s Bank and Grill.
Before we’d done anything else, Deejay had insisted on seeing my recordings of Madison’s basement, and pronounced, to our tremendous if temporary relief, that Bealls was weeks from sustaining even a microBroach. “He’s a subcompetent,” she’d added, scanning his jury-rigged assemblies, “working from third-hand information. On his own, he could putter away till Doomsday without making a dent in the continuum.”
Now we watched the last of the government films, this one on occupying areas that have been H-bombed into submission. It was terrifying; I kept imagining Deejay raped at bayonet-point; Ed shot for resistance; Forsyth’s fur falling out; Lucy vanishing in a cloud of incandescence.
“I don’t understand! These people have shot me, attacked Ed and the captain, murdered their own hitman, and now this latest outrage on Clarissa! Why don’t we just round up some muscle and—”
Lucy sighed. “Winnie, ain’t a body in this room—least of all me—wouldn’t do that in a minute, ’specially after what happened to Clarissa last night, but it can’t be done that way! Think, and you’ll understand why.”
“Go ahead, Your judgeship, this I’ve got to hear.”
“Well first, nobody’s gonna break into that fortress of theirs twice.”
“That’s right,” the captain said. “My dispatcher says they’ve ordered three squads from Brookstone’s, and a weapons specialist. That means lasers—big ones.” He wrinkled his upper lip and bared his teeth—definitely not an expression of good humor among his people.
“Why not get four squads, then, and even bigger lasers? Once everybody understands, every security company in Laporte will—”
“Companies don’t fight each other.” He shook his bandaged head. “Nobody’d last five minutes in this business—wouldn’t deserve to—if all justice amounted to were ‘My thugs’re tougher’n yours!’ We’re supposed to preserve the peace—otherwise, we’d just go back to your arrangement, and have some real wars.”
“What the captain isn’t saying,” Ed added, “is that there’s simply no profit in smashing one another to pieces. That was settled, long ago.”
Lucy nodded. “Little village off the East Coast—one gang decided they’d try running things, four or five other companies objected. Before the dust settled, they’d nearly wiped each other out. Manhattan, if I recall correct. Ever since, security outfits—and their insurance companies—have been big supporters of adjudication.”
“Well, I won’t take what they did to Clarissa! If I have to—”
“Calm down, boy! Give an old lady a little credit—and about fifteen more minutes. I got a connection or two, and one of my best is about to pay off. Wait and see!”
Clarissa crossed the room, laid a hand on my shoulder. “Win, I’m all right—really. Just frightened, and they didn’t do me any lasting harm.”
I looked up, seeing unshed tears quivering in her eyes. “Sweetheart, if I believed that, I’d be a great prospect for Florida real estate. If I ever get my hands on those …”
She patted my shoulder again and went back over to sit by Ed. If only she’d come to me … Well, no point thinking about it—always a bridesmaid, etc. At least she was alive, reason enough to rejoice.
The doorbell chose that moment to ring. I
loosened my forty-one in its holster. A little paranoid, perhaps, but considering last night’s events—
“Ladies and gentlemen …” Lucy announced from the hallway, “The President of the North American Confederacy!”
The president entered, pausing a moment to commiserate with Forsyth, expressing pleasure at meeting Deejay, nodding grimly over the news while being introduced to Clarissa, greeting Ed like an old friend. Under the peculiar circumstances, I had to be introduced to the president, too. But no one had to introduce her to me.
I know Jenny Noble when I see her.
“I MADE SOME stupid assumptions last night,” Ed told the president, “as Win tactfully pointed out later. One of them was that Burgess would attend Madison’s lecture, just because he left at the same time.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Clarissa argued. “What else could you assume?”
“That’s right, dummy,” I said. “I ought to know that bastard myself by now. He’s haunted my worst nightmares for thirty years.”
Jenny was sitting next to Ed, a truly presidential bourbon in her pretty hand. Clarissa’d made room by sitting at his knee. I don’t know what Ed’s got, but logically, I should have it too, shouldn’t I?
Only it wasn’t Jenny Noble here. My counterpart shares a common name with me, we’re lucky having different nicknames to avoid confusion. Jenny Noble’s opposite number calls herself Jenny Smythe.
“Who’s telling this story?” Clarissa protested. “The person it happened to, or the Two Bears?”
“Well tell it, then, Goldilocks!” Ed answered.
“All right, I’d stayed late with a client who’s having a rough regeneration—geriotic complications to be cleared up before the limb can replace itself … Anyway, I went home and freshened up, intending to come over here and see what mischief these two had accomplished at Madison’s. Just as I was starting out the front door, a couple of huge men smashed it in. I ran back through the house, but someone was there with a machine gun, shattering my windows.”