They paused briefly. That was enough.
“I fought in the Big War,” the old man cackled, with pride. “You never saw combat but I did; I was main-man for a front-line T.W.G. Ever seen a T.W.G. recoil ’cause of an overload, when the input-line circuit-breaker fails, and the induction field shorts? Fortunately I was off a distance so I survived. Field hospital. I mean a ship. Red Cross. I was laid up months.”
“Gee,” one of the shavetails said, out of deference.
“Was that in the Callisto revolt six years ago?” the other asked.
The ancient cobwebbed shape swayed with brittle mirth. “It was sixty-three years ago. I been running a fixit shop since. Until I got to bleeding internally and had to quit except for small work. Apt appliances. I’m a first-rate swibble man: I can fix a swibble that otherwise—” He wheezed, unable to breathe momentarily.
“But sixty-three years ago!” the first shavetail said. He calculated. “Heck, that was during World War Two; that was 1940.” They then both stared at the old veteran.
The hunched, dim, stick-like figure croaked, “No, that was 2005. I remember because my medal says so.” Shakily, he groped at his tattered great-cloak. It seemed to disintegrate as he poked at it, turning further into dust. He showed them a small metal star pinned to his faded shirt.
Bending, the two young commissioned officers read the metal surface with its raised figures and letters.
“Hey, Ben. It does say 2005.”
“Yeah.” Both officers stared.
“But that’s next year.”
“Let me tell you about how we beat ’em in the ‘Big War,’ ” the old vet wheezed, tickled to have an audience. “It was a long war; sheoot, it seemed like it’d never end. But what can you do against T.G. warp? And that’s what they found out. Were they surprised!” He giggled, wiped then at the saliva that had sputtered from his sunken lips. “We finally came up with it; of course we had all those failures.” With disgust he hawked, spat onto the gravel. “Those weapons designers didn’t know a thing. Stupid bastards.”
“Who,” Ben said, “was the enemy?”
It took a long time before the old veteran could grasp the nature of the question and when he did his disgust was so profound as to be overwhelming. He tottered to his feet, moved shufflingly away from the two young officers. “Them. The slavers from Sirius!”
After a pause the other second lieutenant seated himself on the other side of the old war veteran and then, thoughtfully, he said to Ben, “I think—” He made a gesture.
“Yeah,” Ben said. To the old man he said, “Pop. Listen. We’re going below.”
“Below?” The old man cringed, confused and frightened.
“The kremlin” Ben said. “Subsurface. Where UN-W Natsec, the Board, is meeting. General Nitz. Do you know who General George Nitz is?”
Mumbling, the veteran pondered, tried to remember. “Well, he was way up there,” he said finally. “What year is this?” Ben said. The old man eyed him gleefully. “You can’t fool me. This is 2068. Or—” The momentarily bright eyes dimmed over, hesitantly. “No, it’s 2067; you were trying to catch me. But you didn’t, did you? Am I right? 2067?” He nudged the young second lieutenant.
To his fellow officer, Ben said, “I’ll stay here with him. You get a mil-car, official. We don’t want to lose him.”
“Right.” The officer rose, sprinted off in the direction of the kremlin’s surface-installations. And the funny thing was he kept thinking over and over again, inanely, as if it had any bearing: What the hell was a swibble?
23
On the subsurface level of Lanferman Associates, more or less directly beneath the mid-California town of San Jose, Pete Freid sat at his extensive work-bench, his machines and tools inert, silent, off.
Before him lay the October 2003 copy of the uncivilized comic book, The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan. At the moment, his lips moving, he examined the entertainment adventure, The Blue Cephalopod Man Meets the Fiendish Dirt-Thing That Bored to the Surface of Io After Two Billion Years Asleep in the Depths! He had reached the frame where the Blue Cephalopod Man, roused to consciousness by his sidekick’s frantic telepathic efforts, had managed to convert the radiation-detecting portable G-system into a Cathode-Magnetic Ionizing Bi-polar Emanator.
With this Emanator, the Blue Cephalopod Man threatened the Fiendish Dirt-Thing as it attempted to carry off Miss Whitecotton, the mammate girlfriend of the Blue Man. It had succeeded in unfastening Miss Whitecotton’s blouse so that one breast—and only one; that was International Law, the ruling applying severely to children’s reading material—was exposed to the flickering light of Io’s sky. It pulsed warmly, wiggled as Pete squeezed the wiggling-trigger. And the nipple dilated like a tiny pink lightbulb, upraised in 3-D and winking on and off, on and off… and would continue to do so until the five-year battery-plate contained within the back cover of the mag at last gave out.
Tinnily, in sequence, as Pete stroked the aud tab, the adversaries of the adventure spoke. He sighed. He had by now noted sixteen “weapons” from the pages so far inspected. And meanwhile, New Orleans, then Provo, and now, according to what had just come over the TV, Boise, Idaho was missing. Had disappeared behind the gray curtain, as the ‘casters and ‘papes were calling it.
The gray curtain of death.
The vidphone on his desk pinged. He reached up, snapped it on. Lars’ careworn face appeared on the screen.
“You’re back?” Peter asked.
“Yes. In my New York office.”
“Good,” said Pete. “Say, what line of work are you going to go into now that Mr. Lars, Incorporated, of New York and Paris is kaput?”
“Does it matter?” Lars asked. “In an hour I’m supposed to meet with the Board down below in the kremlin. They’re staying perpetually subsurface, in case the aliens turn their whatever-it-is on the capital. I’d advise you to stay underground, too; I hear the aliens’ machinery doesn’t penetrate subsurface.”
Pete nodded glumly. Like Lars, he felt somatically sick. “How’s Maren taking it?”
Lars, hesitating, said, “I—haven’t talked to Maren. The fact is, I brought Lilo Topchev back with me. She’s here now.”
“Put her on.”
“Why?”
“So I can get a look at her, that’s why.”
The sunny, uncomplicated face of a young girl, light-complexioned, with oddly astringent, watchful eyes and a tautly pursed mouth, appeared on the vid-screen. The girl looked scared and—tough. Wow, Pete thought. And you deliberately brought this lad back? Can you handle her? I doubt if I could, he decided. She looks difficult.
But that’s right, Pete remembered. You like difficult women. It’s part of your perverse make-up.
When Lars’ features reappeared Pete said, “Maren will disembowel you, you realize. No cover story is going to fool Maren, with or without that telepathic gadget she wears illegally.”
Lars said woodenly, “I don’t expect to fool Maren. But I frankly don’t care. I really think, Pete, that these creatures, whatever they are and wherever they came from, these satellite-builders, have us.”
Pete was silent. He did not see fit to argue; he agreed.
Lars said. “On the vidphone when I talked to Nitz he said something strange. Something about an old war veteran: I couldn’t make it out. It had to do with a weapon, though; he asked me if I had ever heard of a device called a T.W.G. I said no. Have you?”
“No,” Pete said. “There’s absolutely no such thing, weaponwise. KACH would have said.”
“Maybe not,” Lars said. “So long.” He broke the connection at his end; the screen splintered out.
24
Security, Lars discovered when he landed, had been even further augmented; it took over an hour for him to obtain clearance. In the end it required personal, face-to-face recognition of who he was and what he had come for on the part of a long-time, trusted Board assistant. And then he was on his way down, descending to join what might well turn out to be, he realized, the final convocation of UN-W Natsec at its intact fullness.
The last decisions were now being made.
In the middle of his discourse General Nitz took a moment, unexpectedly, to single out Lars and speak to him directly. “You missed a lot, due to your being away at Iceland. Not your fault. But something, as I indicated to you on the phone, has come up.” General Nitz nodded to a junior officer who at once snapped on an intrinsic, homeo-programmed, vid aud scanner with a thirty-inch screen, parked in one corner of the room, at the opposite corner from the instrument which linked the Board, when desired, with Marshal Paponovich and the SeRKeb in New Moscow.
The set warmed up.
An ancient man appeared on it. He was thin, wearing the patched remnants of some peculiar military uniform. Hesitantly he said, “…and then we clobbered them. They didn’t expect that; they were having it easy.”