Excerpt from “Maxwell at Night” program
Recorded at 1850 local time
The legend disappeared and we were looking at the face of the TV newscaster known as Robin Maxwell. I knew who the man was. Everybody in the Bureau did. Maxwell had been on the Bureau’s watch list for a long time because he seemed to have contacts in some dubious places.
It looked like he had found himself a new contact now. “The spooks are at it again,” he was telling his audience. “You know what they’ve got at the NBI now? They’ve squirreled away a Scarecrow submarine and a live Horch, would you believe it? Take a look.” The face disappeared and we saw a picture of the sub, with Beert standing on top of it. “They don’t want you to know about it, but hey, that’s what Maxwell’s for, telling you the things the big guys don’t want told …”
He kept on talking, but there wasn’t any point in listening anymore. The thing that mattered had been said, and said on broadcast television which the Scarecrows were no doubt monitoring. So the secret was out.
CHAPTER FIFTY
I never did get to my 1930. All Camp Smolley’s schedules were disrupted for sure, because inside of an hour there were a hundred reporters battering at the gates of Camp Smolley, demanding to know everything there was to know about this Scarecrow submarine and actual living Horch that we were hiding from them, and why hadn’t they been told about them before?
The reporters didn’t get in, of course. They didn’t even get any answers. What they got was Daisy Fennell, sent out to face them down and tell them that: a, there was no truth at all to the rumor; b, those alleged pictures were obviously morphed fakes; and c, if any of Maxwell’s story had been true, it would be an act of treason to the human race to report it, because the Scarecrows would hear. While inside the camp the deputy director was raging through the hallways, demanding that every living soul in the installation take a PET lie-detector test to find the criminal who had broken security.
Whether any of the reporters believed Fennell, I couldn’t guess. The funny thing was that part of what she said was true. The photos Maxwell showed weren’t photos, they were morphs, probably made from descriptions he got from someone who had seen Beert and the sub but hadn’t taken their pictures. Beert looked more like the hideous cartoon of a Horch the Scarecrows had showed us than his living self, and the alleged photo of the submarine got the handling machinery at its bow all wrong.
It made a nice little no-win situation for the Bureau; they could easily prove Maxwell’s pictures were fakes, but only by admitting that the sense of his story was true.
So the media carried Daisy Fennell’s denials, but that didn’t solve the problem. Wrong as it was in detail, Maxwell’s pictures clearly showed what the Scarecrows would instantly recognize as their missing sub.
The question on everybody’s mind was: what were they going to do about it?
As far as anybody could tell, nothing. At least, not right away. Pirraghiz reported no special traffic to or among the Scarecrow submarine fleet.
All the same, there was a lot of worrying going on around Camp Smelly. Even Hilda was snappish, and the deputy director was hemorrhaging wrath, blame and worry all over the installation. He had his own way of dealing with worry, and it took the form of starting a one hundred percent interrogation of everybody in sight, thirsty for the blood of the despicable traitor who had broken security. By “interrogation” I don’t just mean questioning; he had four PET-scan machines flown in from Arlington for lie-detector tests.
I didn’t expect much from that. Position emission tomography is pretty good at sorting out facts from fantasy, because those two files seem to be stored in different parts of the brain, but it takes three or four hours to test a single subject. Marcus had not only the couple hundred people at Camp Smolley to test but all the ones at Hampton Roads as well. The good part of that was that it kept him out of my hair.
And then even Hilda left me alone. When I finished my breakfast it was Dan M. who was waiting for me outside my room. “I’m your new shepherd, Dan,” he told me wryly. “Hope that’s all right with you. Hilda couldn’t put her dialysis off any longer, so she’s out of commission for the rest of the day.”
“Fine,” I said, more or less meaning it. I still wasn’t entirely easy in the company of this other myself, but as the day went on it got better. He wasn’t just someone to talk to, he was that nearly ideal person for a conversation who was nearly ideal because he had the advantage of thinking exactly the way I did. As we moved from one appointment to another we chatted about what was going on around us, and if nothing new came out of any of the chat, at least it was useful to be able to talk, but then the world obtruded itself on us.
We were just entering the chamber where the techs waited when every screen in the area turned itself on at once, and when we saw what was on all those screens it took our minds right off the planned questions.
The Scarecrows were talking to us again.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
At least the Scarecrows were no longer going to the trouble of faking the face of a human being to deliver their little homilies. The creature displayed on the screen was unquestionably a Dopey. He was squatting comfortably on a gold-colored cushion, his little hands busy in his belly bag. Behind his head was a pretty background landscape, distant hills and fleecy white clouds in a blue, blue and very Earthly sky. All faked, no doubt. The Dopey was doing his best to look amiable and trustworthy, not an easy job for a Dopey. When he spoke his voice had the cajoling quality of a late-night, golden-oldie disk jockey.
“You know who I am,” he said, the little cat eyes gleaming, his fan spread in glorious iridescence. “I have spoken to you before, bearing the generous messages of our Beloved Leaders, who know what is best for all of us and whose patience is great-but not without limit.”
His plume darkened and his voice became sorrowful. “But you are a willful species,” he scolded. “You have betrayed the trust of the Beloved Leaders. You have wickedly stolen a vehicle which is their property. You have begun the construction of armed spacecraft. And you have done even worse. You have brought to your planet a representative of the despicable Horch.
“The Beloved Leaders cannot permit this to go on.
“Therefore they command you to take two steps. Within the next four days you must broadcast an invitation for representatives of the Beloved Leaders to come to your planet. And, as a token of good faith, you must rid yourself of this evil monster, the Horch. Kill him. Do so in a public place. Broadcast his execution. And when he is dead amputate all of his limbs and head. Let it be seen that this is done, so there can be no question of the sort of trickery you have shown yourself capable of.”
He raised himself on his little legs and peered sternly into the camera. “Four days!” he said sternly. “If you have not complied by that time, at that hour you and your entire race will die.”
He stood silent for a moment, then sank back on his cushion. The colors of his peacock tail brightened into soft pastels and his tone became wheedling.
“You must understand,” he said, “that the Beloved Leaders seek no personal gain from you. It is for your own good-indeed, if you force them to put an end to your lives, even that is for your good, since it will speed your way to the Eschaton.
“The Beloved Leaders know that, in your present primitive state, this is frightening to you, for it is what you call ‘death.’ But death is only an incident. It will come sooner or later to each of you-the temporary death which all organisms experience. It is not to be feared. It is only the way which we must all pass, in order to reach that great eternity of the Eschaton.
“Yet the Beloved Leaders do not wish to take this step unless you force them to it. It would be tragic if your entire species went prematurely to the Eschaton. You are a young race. You have not attained full development. You cannot ever achieve that on your own. That can only happen to you under the wise and benevolent guidance of the Beloved Leaders. That generous proposal is still open to you, but you must act now. Destroy that vile Horch. Invite our people to come to you. Accept the great gift that is offered you.