She said nothing; she stared straight ahead. Within her purse an aud recorder captured all this, but heaven only knew for what.
Dosker said, “On the far side he, by deploying his veterans and the wep-equipment which they will assemble from components carried in their suitcases as ‘personal articles,’ will attempt a coup. Will halt emigration, make at once inoperative the Telpors, toss President Omar Jones—”
“So?” she said. “If I know this, why tell me?”
“Because,” Dosker said, “I am going to Horst Bertold two hours before six. I believe that is usually considered four o’clock.” His voice was icy, harsh. “I am an employee of Lies Incorporated but I did not join the organization to participate in a powerplay like this. On Terra, Matson G.-H. stands about where he ought to be: third in the pecking order. On Whale’s Mouth—”
“And you want me,” Freya said, “to do exactly what between now and four o’clock? Seven hours.”
“Inform Matson that when he and the two thousand LI field reps arrive at the retail outlets of THL they will not be teleported but will be arrested and undoubtedly painlessly murdered. In the German manner.”
“This,” she said, “is what you want? Matson dead and them, those—” She gestured, gripping, clawing the air. “Bertold and Ferry and von Einem to run the corporate Terran-Whale’s Mouth political-economic entity with no one to—”
“I don’t want him to try.”
“Listen,” Freya said bitingly. “The coup that Mat-son expects to carry out at Whale’s Mouth is based on his assumption that a home army of three hundred ignorant volunteers exists over there. I don’t think you have to worry; the problem is that Mat actually believes the lies he sees on TV; he’s actually incredibly primitive and naive. Do you think it’s a Promised Land over there, with a tiny volunteer army, waiting for someone to come along with real force, aided by modern wep-technology, such as Mat possesses, to harvest for the asking? If this were so, do you honestly believe Bertold and Ferry would not have done it already?”
Dosker, disconcerted, eyed her hesitantly.
“I think,” she said, “that Mat is making a mistake. Not because it’s immoral but because he’s going to discover that, once he’s over there, he and his two thousand veterans, he’ll be facing—” She broke off. “I don’t know. But he won’t succeed in any coup d’etat. Whoever runs Newcolonizedland will handle Mat; that’s what terrifies me. Sure, I’d like him to stop; I’d be glad to tell him that one of his top employees who knows all the inside details about the coup is going to, at four p.m., tip off the authorities. I’ll do everything in my power, Dosker, to get him to abandon the idea, to face the fact that he’s wandering idiotically into a terminal trap. My reasons and yours may not—”
“What do you think,” Dosker said, “is over there, Freya?”
“Death.”
“For—everybody?” He stared at her. “Forty million? Why?”
“The days,” she said, “of Gilbert and Sullivan and Jerome Kern are over. We’re on a planet of seven billion. Whale’s Mouth could do the job, but slowly, and there’s a more efficient way, and every one of those in key posts in the UN, put in by Herr Horst Bertold, knows that way.”
“No,” Dosker said, his face an ugly, putty-colored gray. “That went out in 1945.”
“Are you sure? Would you want to emigrate?”
He was silent. And then, stunning her, he said, “Yes.”
“What? Why?”
Dosker said, “I will emigrate. Tonight at six, New New York time. With laser pistol in my left hand, and I’ll kick them in the groin; I want to get at them, if that’s what they’re doing; I can’t wait.”
“You won’t be able to do a thing. As soon as you emerge—”
“With my bare hands. I’ll get one of them. Any one will do.”
“Start here. Start with Horst Bertold.”
He stared at her, then.
“We have the wep-techs,” Freya said, and then ceased speaking as the flapple door was opened by another—cheerful—attendant.
“Found the short, Al?” he asked.
“Yes,” Al Dosker said. He fooled, fumbled, under the dashboard, his face concealed. “Should be okay now. Recharge the meta-bat, stick it back in, and she can take off.”
The other attendant, satisfied, departed. Freya and Al Dosker were alone once more, briefly, with the flapple door hanging open.
“You—may be wrong,” Dosker said.
Freya said, “It’s got to be something like that. It can’t be three hundred assorted-shape volunteer army privates, because Ferry and Bertold or at least one of them would have moved in, and that’s the one fact we know: we know what they’re like. There just cannot, Dosker, be a power vacuum at Whale’s Mouth.”
“All ready to go, miss,” one of the other attendants called.
The flapple’s articulation-circuit asserted, “I feel a million times better; I’m now prepared to depart for your original destination, sir or madam, as soon as the superfluous individual has disemflappled.”
Dosker, trembling, said, “I—don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t go to Ferry or Bertold. Begin at that.”
He nodded. Evidently she had reached him; that part was over.
“Mat will need all the help he can get,” she said, “from six o’clock on. From the moment his first field rep hits Whale’s Mouth. Dosker, why don’t you go? Even if you’re a pilot, not a rep. Maybe you can help him.”
The flapple started its motor up irritably. “Please, sir or madam, if you will request—”
“Are you teleporting?” Dosker asked her. “With them?”
Freya said, “I’m scheduled to cross at five. To rent living quarters for Mat and me. I’ll be—remember this so you can find us—Mrs. Silvia Trent. And Mat will be Stuart Trent. Okay?”
“Okay,” Dosker mumbled, backed out, shut the flapple door.
The flapple began to ascend, at once.
And she relaxed. And spat out the capsule of Prussic acid, dropped it into the disposal chute of the flapple, then reset her “watch.”
What she had said to Dosker, god knew, was the truth. She knew it—knew it and could do nothing to dissuade Matson. On the far side professionals would be in wait, and even if they didn’t anticipate the coup, even if there had been no leak and they saw no connection between the two thousand male individuals scattered all over the world, applying at every Telpor outlet on Terra . . . even so, she knew they would be able to handle Mat. He was just not that big and they could handle him.
But he did not believe it. Because Mat saw the possibility of power; it was a gaff that had hooked deep in his side and the wound spilled with the blood of yearning. Suppose it was true; suppose only a three-hundred-man army existed. Suppose. The hope and possibility enflamed him.
And babies, she thought, as the flapple carried her toward the New New York offices of Lies Incorporated, are discovered under cabbages.
Sure, Mat; you keep on believing.
7
To the pleasant, rather overextensively bosomed young female receptionist Matson Glazer-Holliday said, “My name is Stuart Trent. My wife was teleported earlier today, so I’m anxious to slip in under the wire; I know you’re about to close your office.”
She glanced searchingly at him, at this bald-headed man with his prominent ridge-bones above his dark, almost pain-haunted eyes. “You’re certain, Mr. Trent, that you desire to—”
“My wife,” he repeated harshly. “She’s already over—she left at five.” He added, “I have two suitcases. A leady is bringing them.” And, into the office of Trails of Hoffman, strode the robot-like machine, bearing the two genuine cowhide bulging suitcases.
The consummately nubile receptionist said, “Please fill out these forms, Mr. Trent. I’ll make certain that the Telpor techs are ready to receive one more, because, as you say, we are about to close.” The entrance gate, in fact, was now locked.
He made out the forms, feeling only a coldness, an empty, mindless—fear. Lord, it really was fear! He actually, at this late moment, when Freya had already been teleported across to Whale’s Mouth, felt his autonomic nervous system secrete its hormones of cringing panic; he wanted to back out.
However, he managed to fill out the forms anyhow. Because, higher than the autonomic nervous system, was the frontal lobe’s awareness that the moment Freya crossed over, it was decided.
In fact, that was his reason for sending her in advance; he knew his own irresolution. He had made her the cat’s paw of that irresolution; by having her go he forced himself to complete this. And, he thought, for the best; we must find some way, in life, to overcome ourselves . . . we’re our own worst enemies.
“Your shots, Mr. Trent.” A THL nurse stood by with needles. “Will you please remove your outer garments?” The nurse pointed to a small and hygienic back chamber; he entered, began removing his clothing.