“You mean psychologically? No. She’s reckless; she’s full of hate; she doesn’t like us or want to cooperate. But not ill.”
“Try letting her go,” Lars said.
“Go? Go where?”
“Anywhere. Free her. Walk away from her. Leave her. You don’t understand, do you?” It was obvious; he was wasting his time. But he tried just a little further. The man he was addressing was not an idiot, not a fanatic. Geschenko was merely firmly gripped in the paws of his environment. “Do you know what a fugue is?” Lars asked.
“Yes. Flight,”
“Let her run until she’s run enough to—” He hesitated.
Mockingly, Geschenko said, with the wisdom of an age not confined to his own, not limited to the Soviet world of his here and now, “To what, Mr. Lars?”
He waited for an answer.
Lars said doggedly, “I want to sit down with her and as soon as possible begin the work she and I have to do. In spite of this. It shouldn’t be allowed to cause delay because that would encourage the tendencies in her that act toward dissolving the cooperative effort that we have to initiate. So get everyone else out and let me see my doctor.”
Dr. Todt said to Lars, “I’d like to do a multi-phasic on you now.”
Putting his hand on Todt’s shoulder Lars said, “She and I have to work. We’ll run the tests some other time. When I’m back in New York.”
” ‘De gustibus,’ ” tall, morose, thin-beaked Dr. Todt said fatalistically, ” ‘non disputandum est.’ I think you’re insane. They’ve got the formula for that poison held back so we can’t analyze it. Only God Himself knows what it did to you.”
“It didn’t kill me and we’re going to have to be content with that. Anyhow you keep your eyes open all the time, during our trance-states. And if you have any measuring devices you want to keep hooked up to me—”
“Oh yes. I’ll be running an EEG and an EKG continually. But just on you. Not her. They can assume responsibility for her; she’s not my patient.” Dr. Todt’s tone was envenomed. “You know what I think?”
Lars said, “You think I ought to go home.”
“The FBI can get you out of—”
“You have the Escalatium and the Conjorizine spansules?”
“Yes, and thank God you’re not going to inject. That’s the first rational decision you’ve made.” Todt handed him two small bulging envelopes.
“I don’t dare inject. They might potentiate that damn poison she gave me.” He considered himself warned. It would be a while before he took any more chances with even those drugs whose action he was familiar with. Or imagined he was familiar with.
Walking over to Lilo Topchev he stood confronting her; she returned his gaze with poise.
“Well,” he said, by way of an appeasing introduction, “I suppose you could have given me four of those instead of two. It could be worse.”
“Oh, hell,” she said tragically. “I give up. There’s no way out of this idiotic fusion of our minds, is there? I have to cease being an individual, what little they’ve left me. Wouldn’t you be surprised, Mr. Lars, if I put those satellites up there? Through a parapsychological talent no one knows about yet?” She smiled happily. The idea seemed to please her, even if it was a fantasy, patently not true. “Do I scare you by saying that?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll bet I could scare somebody by saying that. Gosh, if only I had access to the info-media, the way you have. Maybe you could say it for me; you could quote me.”
Lars said, “Let’s start.”
“If you work in unison with me,” Lilo Topchev said quietly, “I promise something will happen to you. Don’t go on. Please.”
“Now,” he said. “With Dr. Todt right here.”
“Dr. Dead.”
“Pardon?” He was taken aback.
“That’s right,” Dr. Todt said from behind him. “That’s what my name means in German. She’s perfectly right.”
“And I see that,” Lilo said, half to herself, in an almost singsong chant “I see death. If we go on.”
Dr. Todt held a cup of water toward Lars. “For your medication.”
In ritualistic fashion, as before each trance-state, Lars downed one Escalatium and one Conjorizine. Downed rather than injected. The method differed but the results, he hoped, would be the same.
Watching him narrowly, Dr. Todt said, “If Formophane, which is essential to her, is toxic to you, acts to suppress your sympathetic nervous-system, you might ask yourself this. ‘How does the structure of my parapsychological talent differ from hers?” Because this is a high order of evidence that it does. Does in fact radically.”
“You don’t think she and I can function together?”
“Probably not,” Dr. Todt said quietly.
“I guess we’ll know fairly soon,” Lars said.
Lilo Topchev, detaching herself from her place at the far wall, walked toward him and said, “Yes. I guess we will.”
Her eyes were bright.
18
When Surley Febbs reached Festung Washington, D.C. he was astonished to discover that, despite his to-the-last-letter perfect assemblage of identification, he could not get in.
Because of the hostile alien satellites in the sky new security measures, formalities and procedures had taken effect. Those who were already within stayed within. Surley G. Febbs, however, was outside.
And thus he remained.
Seated gloomily in a downtown park, gazing in morose frustration at a group of children playing, Febbs asked himself, Is this what I came here for? I mean, it’s a racket! They notify you you’re a concomody and then, when you show up, they ignore you.
It passed comprehension.
And those satellites, that’s just an excuse, he realized. The bastards just want to keep a monopoly on their power. Anyone with half an eye who has insight into these matters, who has given long study to the human mind and society as I have, can tell this at a glance.
What I need is a lawyer, he decided. Top legal talent, which I could hire if I wanted to.
Only he did not feel Like spending the money right now.
Go to the homeopapes, then? But their pages were full of screaming sensational scare headlines about the satellites. No mass sap cared about anything else, such as human values and what was being done to certain individual citizens. As usual, the ignorant average goof was completely taken in by the trash of the day. Not so Surley G. Febbs. But that still did not get him into the kremlin below Festung Washington, D.C.
An ancient, tottering apparition approached in what appeared to be the much-darned, patched and washed remnants of a military uniform of some sort. It made its way slowly to the bench on which Febbs sat, hesitated, and then creakily lowered itself.
“Afternoon,” the old man said in a rusty squeak. He sighed, coughed, rubbed his wet, liverish lips with the back of his hand.
“Mmmmmm,” Febbs grunted. He did not feel like talking, especially with this tattered scarecrow. Should be in a veterans’ home, he said to himself, bothering all the other jerries—the worn-out old folks who ought to have been dead a long time ago.
“Look at those kids.” The ancient war veteran gestured and despite himself Febbs looked. ” ‘Olly, olly, oxen free.’ Know what that’s a corruption of? ‘All the, all the, outs in free.’ ” The jerry chuckled. Febbs groaned. “That goes back before you were born. Games never change. Best game ever invented was Monopoly. Ever play that?”
“Mmmmmm,” Febbs said.
“I got a Monopoly board,” the old war vet said. “Not with me, but I know where I can lay my hands on it. At the clubhouse.” Again he pointed; his finger was like a winter tree-stalk. “Want to play?”
“No,” Febbs said clearly.
“Why not? It’s an adult game. I play all the time, like eight hours a day sometimes. I always buy the high-priced property at the end, like Park—”
Febbs said, “I’m a concomody.”
“What’s that?”
“A high official of Wes-bloc.”
“You a military man?”
“Hardly.” Military men! Fatbutts!
“Wes-bloc,” the old veteran said, “is run by military men.”
“Wes-bloc,” Febbs said, “is an economic, political gestalt the ultimate responsibility for the effective functioning of which rests on the shoulders of a heterogeneous Board composed of—”
“Now they’re playing Snum,” the old veteran said.
“What?”
“Snum. I remember that. Did you know what I was in the Big War?”
“Okay,” Febbs said, and decided it was time to move along. In his present mood—denied his legal right to sit on the UN-W Natsec Board—he was not disposed to hear a prolix account of this senile, feeble, tattered old relic’s onetime so-called “exploits.”
“I was main-man for a T.W.G. Maintenance, but I was in uniform. We were right at the line. Ever see a T.W.G. in action? One of the finest tactical weapons ever invented but always giving trouble in the power-feed assembly. One surge and the whole turret burned out—you probably remember. Or maybe that was before your time. Anyhow, we had to keep the feedback from—”