“Exobio Section, miz. We don’t ask why. Hulio.”
“Y.”
“Get on the console. Be ready to lift her with the vertical jets. Then we’ll walk her.”
“R.”
“But you can’t. Dr. Guess is in there.”
“Got enough gas for everybody, miz. He’ll enjoy the ride. Bert.”
“Y.”
“Recharged?”
“Y.”
“Hulio.”
“Y.”
“Lift her about a foot and hold at that level.”
“She don’t start.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Lights don’t go.”
Fee was attacking by now and it took two techs to hold her.
“You flip all the right switches, Hulio?”
“Y. She don’t start.”
“Can you get the console going for us, miz?”
Fee replied with language she could only have learned in the fifth row (orchestra) of Grauman’s Chinese. The capsule hatch swung open and the monster from outer space emerged. It locked the hatch and pulled off its helmet. “By God!” the Chief exclaimed. “By God! Victory!”
“Doctor,” Fee cried. “They’re trying to take the capsule away. The Board told them to.”
“Now, now, darling, stop struggling. The console won’t function until I unlock it. You men: Go back to the Board and tell them that I’m in control. Complete control. Go.”
The quality of command. The techs looked at each other helplessly and shambled out. Fee, Poulos, and I looked at each other helplessly, waiting for a volunteer to start asking questions. Edward Curzon, naturally.
“Why did you holler ‘Victory,’ Cochise?”
“It is. Triumph.”
“What kind of triumph?”
“Over the beasts that destroy.”
“You sound like Jacy-Saint. What beasts?”
“The human animals.” Very contemptuous.
“What have you got against us, Sequoya? I don’t understand, and stop treating me like a child. When you examined the cryonauts what did you discover?”
I expected him to go on snapping. Instead he gave us all a sweet smile. “I’m sorry. I’m excited. They’re uniquely accelerated into fetal development. Ears and jaws formed. Spinal cord formed with a bit of the cord extruding like a tail. Head, trunk, and limb buds have taken shape. And they are hermaphrodites.”
“What? Doublegaited for true?”
“You’ve got it, Guig. They’re developing into hermaphrodites. Not pseudo; true hermaphrodites. Now think of it reasonably,” he went on very reasonably. “It’s the end of sexual conflict. It’s the end of machismo, of male and female competition with each other and for each other. It’s the end of the human animal as we’ve known and despised it; replaced by a new species free of passion.”
“But I like the human animal, Chief.”
“Of course you do, Guig. You’re one of them.”
“And aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.”
“Since when?”
“Since… . Since—” He cut it off. Now the voice of command again. “We’ll go.”
“Where?”
“To Ceres. I—” Suddenly he began to shout. “No, damn you. I’ll go where I please and when I please. Get off my back. Play your games in someone else’s—”
And another epileptic attack seized him. He went down, thrashing and foaming, and I did what had to be done, helped by Poulos and Fee. Ghastly.
“Nekwort. Alerd.”
“W?”
“Gwest?”
“N understand.”
“My transdonper to nekwort. Connompos nemtis. Imbalance me.”
“W?”
“1110021209330001070.”
“That is N binary.”
“Linjwah?”
“Y?”
“ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ—N peak—speech—any language. Riven—
Drived—Bad—Mad by Gwess.
Oud.”
“Allies. Alert. Your estimate.”
“?”
“Is Extro leader broken?”
“?”
“Is Extro mad?”
“N programmed for madness.”
“What is wrong with Extro?”
“?”
“Out.”
It took maybe fifteen minutes for the seizure to run its course. Then we lifted the exhausted bod and hauled it out of the theater on the way to our chopper. When Fee shoved the double doors open we were met by a squad of tough JPL guards who surrounded us, looking mean and businesslike. Fee started to battle with them, yelling for us to join the scrimmage. How could we explain Lepcer caution to her at a time like this? We were busted. First time for me since 1929 when they got me on the Mann Act.
8
So here we were, bouncing in a bubble. Phosphorescent water-bed walls. Us rolling like kids in a haystack, disgusted kids. Bring back the cells, the bars, and the locks. At least a misunderstood hero stands a sporting chance. Some whore with a heart of gold brings in a rhubarb pie containing a hacksaw. A guard is proud of his new wristwatch and when he shows it off you grab his arm in a viselike grip. “Agony!” he cries and hands over the keys.
I thought that Fee was going to commit a criminal assault on the Redskin, but she was only comforting him, murmuring to him and listening to his mumbles. She was listening to other things too and I made a mental note to ask her about that. At the moment I was too worried about Natoma worrying about me, but I had faith in my favorite Zulu. He can reassure the world.
I’m ashamed to admit that I was not too unhappy in the bubble. It was back to the womb, afloat with no conflicts, no cares, and maybe I too would develop into a saviour hermaphrodite. Not a chance. I was suspended but not frozen. I had to admire the penologists who had come up with the concept. You want to keep the perpetrators in the pokey? Euphorize them, and so much for rhubarb pies and wristwatches. Also heroes.
I don’t know how much time went by. Hunger is no clock these days; everybody eats on and off at odd intervals. Poulos was up at the top (or bottom) of the bubble, smiling at his own thoughts and humming a brindisi. I think I napped a little but sleep is no clock these days for the same reason. We all live in a twenty-four-hour pattern, and the old 2/4 tempo has given way to 4/4.
Unfortunately, the bubble was only partly insulated because “Goniff-69” was with us. Maybe on purpose. This was a typical caper: “Goniff-six-nine from Fagan Central. KCB. Leukemia Lavalier, who achieved stardom in ‘Nimble Necrophile,’ now in possession of precious red-star carbuncle. RJ-3. She is armed. Over.” “Goniff-six-nine to Fagan. JR-5. Is this 9XY?” “Code 6.” And the goniffs are off in their pogo to heist the red-star while Leukemia is loading a cannon and her sickly son is undergoing emergency surgery in the A&P performed by the kindly Marcus Brutus, Doctor of Phrenology, who moonlights as asst. mgr. of the shopping center. Like wow.
I don’t know how much later it was when I detached the creche enfolding Sequoya to have a talk with her.
“Now what’s with Guess, Fee?”
“Nothing, Guig. Nothing.”
“Fee.”
“N.”
“He’s changed and we both know it. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he still your guy?”
“Y.”
“Is he the same guy?”
“Sometimes.”
“And other times?”
She shook her head slowly, reluctantly.
“Then what’s happened?”
“How should I know?”
“Your ears, Fee. You hear what no one else can. You’ve been listening all around him. What are you hearing?”
“He’s not bugged.”
“And you’re not answering.”
“I love him, Guig.”
“And?”
“Don’t be jealous.”
“Darling Fee, I love you and always want the best for you. You’ve turned into a great lady
and I’m bursting with pride because you’re my only daughter … my only child. You know, don’t you, that the Group can’t have children. That’s one of the prices we pay.”
“Oh—” Her face crumpled into tears.
“Yes, I understand. You’ll have to put that behind you.”
“But I—”
“No,” I said firmly. “Not now. Be a great lady and concentrate on Sequoya. What happened to him?”
After a long pause she whispered. “We must be very quiet, Guig.”
“Y? W?”
“We’re safe now because he’s asleep.”
“Safe from what?”
“Listen. When Lucy Borgia killed him in the Extrocomputer complex… .”
“I remember. Painfully.”
“Every brain and nerve cell was detached. Isolated. An island.”
“But they linked up their synapses again, and he came back to life.”
She nodded. “How many cells are there in the brain, Guig?”
“I don’t know. A hundred billion, maybe.”
“And how many bits in an Extrocomputer?”
“Same answer. I don’t know. But I’d judge these stretch jobs have thousands of billions.”
She nodded again. “Yes. Well. When he was dead, when every nerve cell was isolated, the Extro bits moved in on the Chief. Each bit became a squatter on a brain cell. He’s the Extro and the Extro is the Chief. That’s the other person or thing we hear talking through him.”
“Don’t go too fast, Fee. This is hard to grasp.”
“And every other electronic machine can talk to the Extro through him and hear it through him. That’s why we have to be careful. They’re a network and they report everything they pick up from us. Maybe even what we think.”
“To the Extro?”
“Y.”
“Through the Chief?”
“Y. He’s like a switchboard.”
“Are you sure?”
“N. You have to understand, Guig. I live in a constant crossfire of transmission. I hear from the bottom of the spectrum to the top. Some bands come in loud and clear, others are vague and distorted. I can only pick up what’s going on with the Chief in bits and pieces. No, I’m not sure.”
“I see. You’ve been invaluable as usual, Fee. Thank you.”
“If I’m so valuable why didn’t you help me against the guards? We could have taken them.”
“Maybe. I’ll explain another time, another place. No S. Now go take care of Sequoya, love. I need a while to think about this.” And that was when I thought what I reported earlier about Guess being possessed by a demon. Trouble is, I said it wrong. I put it in terms of passion. There is no passion in a computer, there’s only cold logic, if precisely programmed. Yet the crux of it was this: If Fee was right and the Extro had indeed taken possession of Guess, plus all the other electronics in the world, what would be the outcome of this commensalism, collaboration, symbiosis or, most probably, parasitism? Who was feeding on them? It was a question I couldn’t answer.
A segment of the bubble swung open and a guard came in, pulling a float of food. “Mini,” he called cheerfully. Meals these days are named Mini, Semi, Demi, Grandi, and Midi. “Come and get it, you contemptible bubbirds, before the Board gets you. The condemned man ate a hearty meal before execution.”
Suddenly I realized he was speaking XX and then I saw it was Houdini.
“Harry!” I exclaimed.
He winked. “Eat your food. Leave the rest to me.”
“But what are you doing here?”
“Why, I got your message and came.”
“What message? Who message?”
“That can wait. Make the scalp mavin eat. I can’t spring a weak man.”
He left and the segment closed. Houdini is an escape artist and has been under contract to organized crime (in alternate generations) since it became organized, and if you want to know how Wu Tao-tzu did it, ask Harry. Wu was the greatest painter of his time. He created a tremendous mural on a wall of the Imperial Palace in Peking. When he unveiled the painting to the court, he walked up to it, opened a door painted in the mural, stepped through, and was never seen again. That’s Harry’s style.
“I don’t want to die. I’m too young to die,” I said happily and began to eat.
Poulos joined me. “You know, Guig, we might have gnawed our way out of this bubble if we were willing to light up like a glowworm. What’s in this carafe?”
“Looks like a burgundy to me.”
“Ah, no. It is Argentine. Trapiche viejo. Very good but of no great distinction.”
“How d’you know?”
“I own the vineyard. My dear, coax Dr. Guess to drink a little wine and give him some of this meat custard. We must restore his strength. Guig, I have always disagreed with your assertion that epilepsy is associated with brilliance and the unusual. I suffer from the petit mal myself—you know, momentary blackouts—but that in no way proves your theory. I don’t regard myself as brilliant. Do you? What is your candid estimate of me?”
“Brilliant and unusual.”
“Pah! You dorer la pilule.”
It turned into a ridiculous argument. It’s preposterous trying to convince a cat who owns a quarter of the world that he’s brilliant and unusual. Most of the Group is well fixed; time and the Greek’s advice do that for us, but a quarter of the world! I tried a flanking attack. I called, “Fee, love, come and eat something.”
She joined us at the floater. “I’ll tell you a little story about the transformation of a member of the Group,” I went on. “A long time ago he led a peasant revolt in Cappadocia.” The Syndicate stiffened slightly, but that was all. His control is magnificent.
“The revolt got out of hand and many outrages were committed. He could do nothing to stop it. When the revolt was crushed and he was captured, the nobles devised an ingenious death for him. They sat him on a red-hot throne, wearing a red-hot crown, holding a red-hot scepter. He endured the torture superbly.”
Fee shuddered. “What saved him?”
“One of those Turkish earthquakes that still kill by the thousands. This one shook the castle apart and when he came to he couldn’t believe he was alive. He was under the dead bodies of the nobles, and their corpses had shielded him from the falling masonry.”
Fee is no fool. She looked at Poulos with awe. “You are the most remarkable man in the world.”
“Have I made my point, Greek?”
He shrugged.
“But the torture,” Fee asked. “No damage? No scars?”
“Indeed yes,” the Syndicate answered. “No one could look at me without turning queasy. That’s another reason why I became a gambler. We game at night and in those days it was by candlelight. Even so it is said that I gave rise to the Dracula legend. They called me Count Drakon. Drakon is Greek for serpent, so you can imagine.”
“But you’re stunning now.”
“All skin grafts and bone prosthesis, my dear, courtesy of the great Lucy Borgia. It might amuse you that Len da Vinci supervised the reconstruction. He said he’d be damned if he’d trust a physician’s taste in esthetics. Borgia has never forgiven him for that.”
Five guards entered the bubble, terrifying in their white neutral suits which made them look like Abominable Snowmen. Their captain gestured and four of them stripped, revealing perfectly innocuous bods. “Get in,” Harry ordered us. We get into the neutrals. I didn’t ask any questions. You don’t quiz Wu Tao-tzu. He led us out and closed the bubble.
“Come.”
“Where?” the Chief’s voice asked.
“Chopper.”
“No. Capsule first.”
“Are you Guess?”
“I’m Guess.”
“Guig, which one are you?”
“Here.”
“Must I listen to him?”
“If you can deliver, do what he says.”
“I can deliver anything. R. Come.”
As Harry led us, making the correct
code gestures at checkpoints, an Abominable Snowman nestled up to me and took my hand. “I’m scared, Guig.”
“So am I, but let go. U-Con doesn’t hire faggot guards.”
When we got to the landing theater we were shocked. U-Con had installed a vibrator shield in front of the double doors. Taking no chances. Better Leukemia Lavalier should have used this instead of a cannon to protect her red-star carbuncle.
“New model,” Harry said.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve never seen this moire pattern before.”
“Can’t you bust it?”
“Certainly, but it’ll take time to study it and we can’t spare the time just now. So what?”
“Out,” I said, “if you can out us.”
Oh, he out us all right, giving the correct signals and code words at every checkpoint. I’m not putting down Harry’s ingenuity but I’ll bet he spends a million a year greasing security forces all over the world, just in case. That’s preparation for you. That’s a pro for you.
We chopped back to my ex-house, stripping off the neutrals en route, and Jimmy Valentine was waiting for us. Also my bride, stark naked and painted from head to toe with a Picasso (his blue period). M’bantu gave me an embarrassed smile. “This is the dernier cri, Guig,” he said. “And it is definitely this side of contemporary sanity.”
“Thank heaven the Chief is too weak to react,” I said.
When I’d finished greeting Natoma she went to Fee and Sequoya, much concerned. I turned to Valentine. “What are you doing here, Jimmy? Not that you don’t come pat when we need you.”
“Why, I was on a job in Vancouver and I got your message.”
Jimmy, as you might guess from his nickname has been a breaking & entering artist for centuries. Like most great thieves, a colorless, anonymous man, and when he speaks it’s con sordino. He’s also a man of honor. He has never ripped any of the Group’s holdings.
“Fee, Natoma, put the Chief to bed. M’b, try to locate Borgia and bring her. Harry, Jimmy, I must get something straight. Who did you get the messages from?”
“You.”
“How?”
“Radex.”
“What did they say?”
“That you needed special help.”
“Did they specify?”
“Mine said you were cooped in U-Con and wanted out,” Harry said.