No one, he realized, could compete if he managed to move, in one sudden swoop, his entire entourage and weaponry across . . . using, ironically, von Einem’s own official retail stations themselves. He grinned at that; it amused him to think that THL would personally see to it that he and his veteran reps reached Newcolonizedland.
“And then in 2032,” Freya said, “when Rachmael ben Applebaum, probably an unwashed, bearded, mumbling hebephrenic schizophrenic by then, shows up in his great and good ship the Omphalos, he’ll discover it’s a hell, there, exactly as he anticipated . . . but it’ll be you who’ll be running it. And I’ll bet that will surprise him more than a little.”
Nettled, he said, “I can’t think about it any more. I’m going back to sleep.” He removed his robe and slippers, got wearily into the bed, aware of his years; he felt old. Wasn’t he too decrepit for something like this? Not getting into bed; lord, he wasn’t too old to clamber in beside Freya Holm, not yet, anyhow. But too old for what Freya had proposed—what she had correctly, possibly even telepathically, ascertained from his unconscious mind. Yes, it was actually true.
He had, from Rachmael’s initial vidphone call, at the back levels of his cognition-processes, pondered this, from the very beginning.
And this was his reason for assisting—or rather trying to assist—the morose, creditor-balloon-hounded Rachmael ben Applebaum.
He thought, according to published info there is a home army, so-called, at Whale’s Mouth, of three hundred volunteer citizens. For use as a sort of national guard in case of a riot. Three hundred! And none of them professionals, with experience. It was a pastoral land, the ads explained. A G. of E. lacking a snake; since there was a super-abundance of everything for everyone, what was an army needed for? What have-not existed to envy what have? And what reason to try, by force, to seize his holdings?
I’ll tell you, Matson Glazer-Holliday thought. The have-nots are here on this side. Myself and those who work for me; we’re gradually, over the years, being ground down and overpowered by the true titans, by the UN and THL and—
The haves are across twenty-four light-years in the Fomalhaut system, at its ninth planet.
Mr. ben Applebaum, he thought to himself as he lay supine, drew, from reflex, Freya Holm against him, you will have quite a surprise when you get to Whale’s Mouth.
It was a pity that he himself—and he intuited this with certitude—would not be alive at that date.
As to why not, however, his near-Psionic intuition told him nothing.
Beside him Freya moaned in her half-sleep, settled close to him, relaxed.
He, however, lay awake, staring into the nothingness. Deep in a new, hard thought. The like of which he had never experienced before.
6
The monitoring and recording-transmitting satellite, Prince Albert B-y, creaked out its first video signal, a transcript of the first video telescopic records which it had taken of the surface beneath it in over a decade. Portions of the long-inert network of minned parts failed; backup systems, however, took over, and some of these failed, too. But the signal, directed toward the Sol system twenty-four light-years away, was sent out.
And, on the surface of Fomalhaut IX, an eye winked. And from it a ground-to-air missile rose and in a period so slight that only the finest measuring devices could have detected a lapse-period at all, arrived at its target, the groaning carrot-shaped monitoring satellite which had, inoperative, silently existed—and hence harmlessly. Up to now.
The warhead of the missile detonated. And the Prince Albert B-y ceased to exist, soundlessly, because at its altitude there was no atmosphere to transmit the event in the dimension of noise.
And, at the same time on the surface below, a powerful transmitter accepted a tape run at enormous velocity; the signal, amplified by a row of cold, superbly built surge-gates, reached transmission level and was released; oddly, its frequency coincided with that of the signal just emitted by the now nonexistent satellite.
What would radiate from the two separate transmitters would blend in a cacophony of meaningless garble. Satisfied, the technicians operating the ground transmitter switched to more customary channels—and tasks.
The deliberately deranged combined signal sped across space toward the Sol system, beamed, in its mad confusion, at a planet which, when it received this, would possess nothing but a catfight of noise.
And the satellite, reduced to its molecular level by the warhead, would emit no more signals; its life was over.
The event, the first transmission by the satellite up unto the final scramble by the far more powerful surface transmitter, had consumed five minutes, including the flight—and demolition—of the missile: the missile and its priceless, elaborate, never-to-be-duplicated target.
—A target which, certain circles had long ago agreed in formal session, could be readily sacrificed, were the need to arise.
That need had arisen.
And the satellite was duly gone.
At the site of the missile-launching a helmeted soldier leisurely fitted a second g.-to-a. missile into the barn, attached both its anode and cathode terminals, made sure that the activating board was relocked—by the same key through which he had obtained official entry—and then he, too, returned to his customary chores.
Time lapse: perhaps six minutes in all.
And the planet, Fomalhaut IX, revolved on.
Deep in thought as she sat in the comfortable leather, padded seat of the luxury taxi flapple, Freya Holm was startled by the sudden mechanical voice of the vehicle’s articulation-circuit. “Sir or madam, I request your pardon, but a deterioration of my meta-battery forces me without choice to land for a quick-charge without delay.
Please give me oral permission as an acknowledgment of your willingness otherwise we will glide to destruct.”
Looking down she saw the high-rise spires of New New York, the ring of city outside the inner, old kremlin of New York itself. Late for work, she said to herself, damn it. But—the flapple was correct; if its meta-battery, its sole power supply, were failing, to get out of the sky and on the surface at a repair station was mandatory; a long powerless glide would mean death in the form of collision with one of the tall commercial buildings below. “Yes,” she agreed, resignedly, and groaned. And today was the day.
“Thank you, sir or madam.” With sputtering power the flapple spiraled down until at last, under adequate control, it coasted to a rather rough but at least not dangerous halt at one of New New York’s infinite flapple service stations.
A moment later uniformed service station men swarmed over the parked flapple, searching for—as one explained courteously to her—for the short which had depleted the meta-battery, good normally, the attendant told her cheerfully, for twenty years.
Opening the flapple door the attendant said, “May I check under the passenger’s console, please? The wiring there; those circuits take a lot of hard use—the insulation may be rubbed off.” He, a black man, seemed to her pleasant and alert and without hesitation she moved to the far side of the cab.
The attendant slid in, closed, then, the flapple door. “Moon and cow,” he said, the current—and highly temporary—ident-code phrase of members of the police organization Lies Incorporated.
Taken by surprise Freya murmured, “Jack Horner. Who are you? I never ran into you before.” He did not look like a field rep to her.
“A ‘tween space pilot. I’m Al Dosker; I know you—you’re Freya Holm.” He was not smiling now; he was quiet, serious, and, as he sat beside her, perfunctorily running his fingers over the wiring of the passenger’s control console he said, half chantingly, “I have no time, Freya, for small talk; I have five minutes at the most; I know where the short is because I sent this particular flapple taxi to pick you up. See?”
“I see,” she said, and, within her mouth, bit on a false tooth; the tooth split and she tasted the bitter outer-layer of a plastic pill: a container of Prussic acid, enough to kill her if this man proved to be from their antagonists. And, at her wrist, she wound her watch—actually winding a low-velocity homeostatic cyanide-tipped dart which she would control by the “watch” controls; it could either take out this man or, if others showed up, herself, in case of a failure of the oral poison. In any case she sat back rigid, waiting.
“You,” Dosker said, “are Matson’s mistress; you have access to him at any time; this I know—this is why I’ve approached you. Tonight, at six p.m. New New York time, Matson Glazer-Holliday will arrive at an outlet of Trails of Hoffman; carrying two heavy suitcases he will request permission to emigrate. He will pay his six poscreds, or seven, if his baggage is overweight, and then be teleported to Whale’s Mouth. And at the same time, at every Telpor outlet throughout Terra, a total aggregate of roughly two thousand of his toughest veteran field reps will do the same.”