‘I hope he does,’ Elka said. ‘I want to hear him talk.’
‘He’ll be on the air,’ Nick said. He was positive of it. ‘We’ll see everything, hear everything. But not as arranged by the networks.’
‘Isn’t there a law against cutting into TV transmissions?’ Elka said. ‘I mean, didn’t he break the law when he cut off all the other TV stations and telecast from his ship?’
“Oh, God,’ Charley said, giggling, her hand over her eyes. ‘Don’t mind me, but it’s too funny. Provoni returns after ten years with a monster from another star system to save us, and he’s arrested for tampering with people’s TV reception. That’s how they can get rid of him; that makes him a wanted felon!’
It is now, Nick thought, less than an hour and a half.
And all this time, he realized, as the Gray Dinosaur approaches Earth, they’re lobbing missiles at it. They’ve stopped mentioning it to the public: they know the missiles aren’t doing any good. But there’s a mathematical chance that a missile will somehow penetrate the ship’s shield, no matter what kind it is, that the creature ‘in which the ship is wrapped’ will become tired or in some way inoperative – perhaps only for an instant, but in that instant even a small missile could probably completely knock out Dinosaur.
At least the government is trying, he said to himself grimly. As well they damn sure ought to be.
‘Turn the TV back on,’ Charley said.
Ed Woodman did so.
On the screen an old inter-stellar ship, its retrojets sputtering, was lowering itself in the dead center of Times Square. An antiquated ship, pitted, corroded, with jagged metal pieces brustiling: the remains of once-functioning sensory apparatus.
‘He fooled them!’ Ed Woodman said. ‘He’s an hour and a half early! Do they have their laser cannon ready to fire? God, he’s got their timing off! They bought the thirty-two hour story absolutely.’
Police ‘copters and squibs hurried away like dancing gnats, avoiding the blast of the retrojets. On the ground, PSS occifers and soldiers scurried away, scrambling for cover.
‘The laser beam,’ Ed Woodman said in a monotone, his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Where is it?’
‘You want it to show up?’ Elka demanded.
‘They’ll get it going sooner or later,’ Ed said. ‘Let the test come now. Jesus, the poor bastards; they must be scurrying around the roof of the Shafter Building like ants.’
From the roof of the Shafter Building, a red beam of force bored straight at the now parked ship. Over the TV they could hear its furious whine as it wound up, higher and higher in intensity. It must be almost on full now, Nick thought. And – the ship remained intact.
Something huge and ugly materialized about the ship and he knew what it was. They were seeing the alien being. Like a snail, he thought. It rippled slightly, extended two pseudopodia, oozed more directly into the path of the laser beam… as the beam bored at it, it became larger and more palpable. It’s feeding on the beam, he realized. The longer they keep the beam on it the stronger it will become.
The TV newscaster, for one time in his life disconcerted, blurted out, ‘It seems to thrive on the laser beam.’
His companion put in, ‘A creature from another star system, impossible to believe, but there it is. It must weigh thousands of tons; it’s engulfed the ship—’
The hatch of the ship slid aside.
Thors Provoni, wearing a gray underwear-like garment, emerged, helmetless, weaponless.
The laser beam, redirected by the technicians operating it, moved until it focused on Provoni.
Nothing happened. Provoni remained unaffected.
Nick, peering, saw a web-like tent structure imposed over Provoni. From the alien. The laser people were out of luck.
‘It wasn’t a bluff’ Elka said quietly. ‘He did bring back a creature with him.’
‘And it has great power,’ Ed said huskily. ‘Do you realize the strength of that laser beam? Calculated in ergs—’
To Nick, Charley said, ‘What are they going to do now? Now that the laser beam didn’t work?’
In mid-sentence the newscaster was abruptly cut off. There, standing beside his ship, Thors Provoni lifted a microphone to his lips. ‘Hello,’ he said, and his voice issued from the TV set; Provoni did not trust the networks, obviously: once again he had taken over the many channels, but this time their audio portion only. The video image still emanated from network cameras.
Nick said, ‘Hello, Provoni. It’s been a long trip.’
TWENTY-THREE
‘His name,’ Provoni said into his microphone, ‘is Morgo Rahn Wilc. I want to talk to you about him in detail. First this. He is ancient. He is telepathic. He is my friend.’
Nick walked away from the TV set, went into the bathroom and got some pills down from the cabinet; he chose a pair of phenmetrazine hydrochloride tablets, swallowed them, then added one twenty-five milligram tablet of chlordiazepoxide hydrochloride. His hands, he discovered, were shaking; he had trouble holding the glass of water and then he had trouble getting the pills down.
At the door of the bathroom Charley appeared. ‘I need something. What do you recommend?’
‘Phenmetrazine and chlordiazepoxide,’ he said. ‘Fifty milligrams of the former; twenty-five of the latter.’
‘That’s swellers and shrinkers together,’ she said.
‘But a good combination; the chlordiazepoxide intensifies the capacity of the cerebral cortex, while the phenmetrazine stimulates the thalamus, giving a general overall brain-metabolism boost.’
Nodding, she took the pills which he recommended.
Shaking his head, Ed Woodman entered the bathroom, took several pills from the rows of bottles. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘They just can’t kill him; he just won’t die. And that thing eats energy; they’re just pumping it full of juice every passing second, the stupid bastards. He’ll be the size of Brooklyn in another half hour; it’s like pumping up an infinitely large balloon with no popping point.’
On the TV, Thors Provoni was saying, ‘—I never saw his world. He met me in deep space; he was on patrol and picked up automatic radio signals my ship was emanating. There, in deep space, he rebuilt my ship, consulting telepathically with his brothers on Frolix 8, and was given permission to accompany me back here. He is only one of many. I think he can do what we must do. If he can’t, there are a hundred more like him waiting one light year away. In ships capable of passing through by hyperspace. So, if necessary, they could be here in a very short time.’
‘Now there he’s bluffing.’ Ed Woodman said. ‘If they can travel through hyperspace, Provoni and this thing would have done so; as it is, they came through regular space, but using a supra-C drive, of course.’
‘But,’ Nick said, ‘he used his ship, the Gray Dinosaur. Their ships might be built for hyperspace; Dinosaur isn’t.’
‘Then you believe him?’ Elka asked.
‘Yes,’ Nick said.
‘I believe him,’ Ed Woodman said, ‘but he is a showman. This business of appearing eight hours before expected – it threw everybody off, and was undoubtedly deliberate. And he has been standing there letting them laser him with billions of volts of power. And his “friend”, Morgo something; he’s got him out and visible, to impress us.’ He added acidly, ‘And I am impressed.’
Charley went to the living room window, opened it, leaned out and yelled, ‘Hey, you all gonna eat up Nu Yohk? Don’ you all do that, y’hear?’ She closed the window, her face expressionless.
‘That ought to throw them off,’ Nick said.
‘New York is my home town,’ Charley said. Abruptly, she pressed her fingers against her forehead. ‘I felt something. Like a – a sweep, a probe. Passing through me and leaving.’
Acutely, in an instant of instinctive insight, Nick said, ‘He’s looking for New Men.’
‘Oh, God,’ Elka moaned. ‘I just felt it, just for an instant. He is looking for New Men. What’s he going to do with them? Snuff them?
Do they deserve that? They never snuffed us.’
‘Denny,’ Charley said. ‘And me, very nearly; they almost took a shot at me in the Federal Building. And they sent assassins to snuff Nick. If you – what’s the word? – extrapolate from that—’
‘It’s a high average,’ Nick said. And Cordon, he said to himself. Shot, probably. We’ll never really know – just that he’s dead. Does Provoni know yet? he wondered. God help us, he may go berserk.
Over the TV audio circuit, Provoni said, ‘Monitoring Earth’s transmissions, we learned of Eric Cordon’s death.’ His massive face retracted, as if retreating into itself with pain. ‘Within an hour, we will know the circumstances – the actual ones, not those transmitted over the media – and we will—He paused. Nick thought, He’s conferring with the alien. ‘We will—’ Again he paused. ‘Time will tell,’ he said at last, cryptically, his great head bent downward, his eyes shut; a convulsive shudder passed across his features, as if he were trying with difficulty, great difficulty, to regain control of himself.
‘Willis Gram,’ Nick said. ‘That’s who did it. That’s where the order came from. Provoni knows that; he knows where to look. That snuffing is going to color everything that happens from now on, everything Provoni does, says; what his friend does. It dooms the ruling circles; I think Provoni is the kind of man who—’
‘You don’t know what effect the alien may have had on him,’ Ed pointed out. ‘It may moderate Provoni’s bitterness and hatred.’ To Elka, he said, ‘When it probed your mind, did it seem – cruel? Hostile? Destructive?’
She pondered, then glanced at Charley. Charley shook her head no. ‘I don’t think so,’ Elka said. ‘It was just – so strange. And it was looking for something it didn’t find in me. So it went on. It only took a fraction of a second.’
‘Can you imagine that thing,’ Nick said, ‘probing minds by the hundreds? Maybe thousands. All at once.’
Ed said quietly, ‘Maybe millions.’
‘In that short time?’ Nick asked.
Charley, irritably, said, ‘I feel lousy. I feel like my period is coming on. I’m going to lie down.’ She disappeared into the bedroom; the door shut after her.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Lincoln,’ Ed Woodman said, ‘I just don’t have time right now to listen to the notes you’ve made for your Gettysburg address.’ His face was harsh and sardonic, and he had flushed a dark, furious red.
Nick said, ‘She’s afraid; that’s why she’s gone in there. It’s too much for her. Isn’t it too much for you, really? Aren’t you taking it in intellectually, but emotionally it really isn’t registering? I see the screen; I know what I’m seeing, but’ – he gestured – ‘only the frontal lobe of my brain comprehends what I see. And hear.’ He walked to the bedroom door, opened it slightly. She lay on the bed, at an odd angle, her face turned to one side, eyes wide open. Nick shut the door after him, came over slowly, seated himself on the edge of the bed.
‘I know what it’s going to do,’ she said.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded expressionlessly. ‘It’s going to replace portions of their minds and then withdraw, leaving nothing. A vacuum. They’ll be living hollow shells. Like a lobotomy. Do you remember that from school, reading about the insane psychiatric practices of the 20th century? Debrained, that’s what they, the doctors, made people. That thing will remove the Nodes of Roger and more – it won’t stop with just making them like us. It hasn’t affected Provoni; he’s convinced it.’
‘How do you know that?’ Nick asked.
‘Well, it’s not a long story. Two years ago I forged a set of G-2 completed tests – showing satisfactory results. So for a time I had access to government records, and one time just for the hell of it I asked for info on Provoni, the so-called “Provoni file”, and I sneaked it home, under my coat – it was mostly microfilm. And I sat up all night reading it.’ She explained, ‘I read very slowly.’
‘And he’s like that? Vengeful?’
‘He’s obsessed. He’s what Cordon wasn’t; Cordon was a rational man, a rational political figure, who happened to be living in a society where no dissent is allowed. In another society he would have been a major statesman. But Provoni—’
‘Ten years may have changed him,’ Nick pointed out. ‘Alone most of that time… there must have been a good deal of introspection and self-analysis during those years.’
‘Couldn’t you hear it today? Just now?’
‘No,’ he said, truthfully.
‘I got fired from the job and fined p350, and that gave me a criminal record which I’ve added to.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Denny, too. He fell a few times.’ She lifted her head. ‘Go back and watch the TV. Please. If you don’t, I’ll go in there and I really can’t, so you go, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said. He left the bedroom, turned his attention to the TV set.
Is she right? he asked himself. About Provoni, what sort of man he is? That’s not what we’ve heard… heard from the Under Man presses. If she felt that way, how could she be a Cordonite, distributing and selling his pamphlets? But they were Cordon’s pamphlets, he reflected. Maybe she liked him enough to overcome her distrust of Provoni.
In the name of God, he thought, I hope she’s wrong about what they intend to do to the New Men – lobotomize them, all of them, ten million! Including the Unusuals. Like Willis Gram.
Something swept into his mind, a wind like that of hell. He clapped his hands to his forehead, bent over in – pain? Not pain; more a sort of strange sense, that of peering down into a great, dark pit and then, very slowly, beginning to tumble slow-motion into it.
The feeling abruptly departed.
‘I just got scanned,’ he said shakily.
‘How’d it feel?’ Elka asked.
Nick said, ‘He showed me the universe empty of stars. I never want to see it again as long as I live.’
Ed Woodman said, ‘Listen. On the tenth floor of this building a low-order New Man lives… apartment BB293-KC. I’m going down there.’ He headed for the door. ‘Anyone want to come? Maybe just you, Nick.’
‘I’ll come,’ Nick said. He followed after Ed Woodman, caught up with him in the silent, carpeted hall.
‘He’s probing,’ Ed said as they reached the elevator and pressed the button. He indicated all the apartment doors, the rows and rows of them that filled this one building. ‘Behind every one of those doors he’s probing. God knows what it’s like for some of them; that’s why I want to see this New Man… Marshall, I think his name is. G-5, he told me once. So you can see he’s small fry; that’s why he’s in a building filled mostly with Old Men.’
The elevator came; they entered and descended.
‘Listen, Appleton,’ Ed said. ‘I’m afraid. I got probed, too, but I didn’t say anything. He’s looking for something and he didn’t find it in the four of us, but elsewhere he may find it. And I want to know what he does when he finds it.’ The elevator stopped; they stepped into the hall. ‘This way,’ Woodman said, striding rapidly along; Nick hurried to keep up with him. ‘BB293KC. I’m going down there.’ He headed for the door, came to it, halted; Nick caught up with him.
Ed Woodman knocked.
No answer.
He turned the knob. The door opened. Carefully, Ed Woodman pushed the door aside, stood, then moved out of Nick’s way.
On the floor, crosslegged, sat a slender man with a small black board, dressed in expensive hashair robes.
‘Mr. Marshall?’ Ed Woodman said softly.
The slender, dark man lifted his inflated, balloon-like head; he regarded them, smiling. But he did not speak.
‘What are you playing with, Mr. Marshall?’ Ed Woodman asked, bending down. He turned to Nick. ‘An electric mixer. He’s making the blades turn.’ He straightened up. ‘G-5. Approximately eight times our mental abilities. Anyway, he’s not suffering.’
Going over, Nick said, ‘Can you talk, Mr. Marshall? Can you say anything to us? How do you feel?’
/> Marshall began to cry.
‘You see,’ Ed said, ‘he has emotions, feelings, even thoughts. But he can’t express them. I’ve seen people in hospitals after a stroke, when they can’t talk, can’t communicate in any way, and they cry like that. If we leave him alone he’ll be all right.’
Together, Nick and Ed left the apartment; the door shut after them. ‘I need some more pills,’ Nick said. ‘Can you suggest anything helpful, really helpful, at this point?’
‘Desipramine hcl,’ Ed said. ‘I’ll give you some of mine, I noticed you don’t have any.’
They made their way to the elevator and pressed the up button.
‘We better not tell them,’ Ed said, as they ascended.
‘They’ll know soon anyhow,’ Nick said. ‘Everyone will know it. If it’s happening everywhere.’
‘We’re close to Times Square,’ Ed said. ‘He may be probing in concentric rings; Marshall got it now, but New Men in Jersey may not get it until tomorrow.’ The elevator halted. ‘Or the next week. It may take months, and by that time Amos Ild – it would have to be Ild – can think of something to do.’
‘You want him to?’ Nick asked, as they stepped from the elevator.
The light in Ed Woodman’s eyes flickered. ‘That’s—’
‘That’s hard for you to decide,’ Nick said, finishing Ed’s halting statement.
‘What about you?’
Nick said, ‘I couldn’t be more pleased.’
Together, they walked back to their apartment Neither man spoke: a wall had settled into place between them. There simply was nothing to talk about And both men knew it.
TWENTY-FOUR
“They’ll have to be cared for,’ Elka Woodman said. She had wormed the account of Mr. Marshall’s condition out of the two of them. ‘But there are billions of us; we can do it. Centers, like playareas, could be set up for them. And dorms. And meals.’
Charley sat on the couch, silently pulling the stitches out of a skirt. She wore a petulant, disapproving look; Nick did not know why, and at the moment he did not care.