She had no long-range inter-system transmitter as Matson had had; she could not send out a macrowave signal which would be picked up by Al Dosker at the Sol system six months hence. In fact none of the two thousand police agents of Lies Incorporated did. But they had weapons. She was, she realized with dread and disbelief, automatically now in charge of those of the organization who survived; months ago Matson had set her up legally so that on his death she assumed his chair, and this was not private: this had been circulated, memo-wise, throughout the organization.
What could she tell the police agents who had gotten through—tell them, of course, that Matson was dead, but what would be of use to them? What, she asked herself, can we do?
Eighteen years, she thought; do we have to wait for the Omphalos, for Rachmael ben Applebaum to arrive and see? Because by then it won’t matter. For us, anyhow; nor for this generation.
Two men ran toward her and one bleated, “Moon and cow,” shrilly, his face contorted with fear.
“Jack Horner,” she said numbly. “I don’t know what to do,” she said to them. “Matson is dead and his big transmitter is destroyed. They were waiting for him; I led them right to him. I’m sorry.” She could not face the two field reps of the organization; she stared rigidly past them. “Even if we put our weapons into use,” she said, “they can take all of us out.”
“But we can do some damage,” one of the two police, middle-aged, with that fat sparetire at his middle, a tough old vet of the ’92 war, said.
His companion, clasping a valise, said, “Yes, we can try, Miss Holm. Send out that signal; you have it?”
“No,” she said, but she was lying and they knew it. “It’s hopeless,” she said. “Let’s try to pass as authentic emigrants. Let them draft us, put us into the barracks.”
The seasoned, hard-eyed, paunchy one said, “Miss Holm, when they get into the luggage, they’ll know.” To his companion he said, “Bring it out.”
Together, as she watched, the two experienced field reps of Lies Incorporated assembled a small intricate weapon of a type she had never seen before; evidently it was from their advanced weapons archives.
To her the younger man said quietly, “Send the signal. For a fight. As soon as our people come through; keep the signal going so they’ll pick it up as they emerge. We’ll fight at this spot, not later, not when they have us cut down into individuals, one here, one there.”
She. Touched. The. Signal-tab.
And then she said, quietly, “I’ll try to get a message-unit back to Terra via Telpor. Maybe in the confusion—” Because there was going to be a lot of confusion as the Lies Incorporated men emerged and immediately picked up the fracas-in-progress signal. “—maybe it’ll slip by.”
“It won’t,” the hard-eyed old tomcat of a fighter said to her. He glanced at his companion. “But if we focus on a transmission station maybe we can take and keep control long enough to run a vid track through. Pass it back through the Telpor gate. Even if all two thous of us were to—” He turned to Freya. “Can you direct the reps to make it to this point?”
“I have no more microwave patterns,” she said, this time truthfully. “Just those two.”
“Okay, Miss Holm.” The vet considered. “Vid transmissions through Telpor are accomplished over there.” He pointed and she saw an isolated multi-story structure, windowless, with a guarded entrance; in the gray sun of midday she caught a glint of metal, or armed sentries. “You have the code for back home you can transmit?”
“Yes,” she said. “One of fifty. Mat and I both had them; committed to memory. I could transmit it by aud in ten seconds.”
“I want,” the wary, half-crouching veteran policeman said, “a vid track of this.” He swung his hand at the landscape. “Something that can be spliced into the central coaxial cable and run on TV. Not just that we know but that they know.” They. The people back home—the innocents who lay beyond the one-way gate; forever, she thought, because eighteen years is, really, forever.
“What’s the code?” the younger field rep asked her.
Freya said, ” ‘Forgot to pack my Irish linen handkerchiefs. Please transmit via Telpor.’ ” She explained, “We, Mat and I, worked out all logical possibilities. This comes the closest. Sparta.”
“Yep,” the older vet said. “The warrior state. The troublemaker. Well, it is close geographically to Athens, although not quite close enough.” To his companion he said. “Can we get in there and transmit the aud signal?” He picked up the weapon which they had assembled.
“Sure,” his younger companion said, nodding.
The older man clicked the weapon on.
Freya saw, then, into the grave and screamed; she ran and as she ran, struggled to get away, she knew it for what it was: a refined form of nerve gas that—and then her coherent thoughts ceased and she simply ran.
The armed sentry-soldiers guarding the windowless building ran, too.
And, unaffected, their metabolisms insulated by pre-injective antidotal hormones, the two field reps of Lies Incorporated dogtrotted toward the windowless structure, and, as they trotted, brought out small, long-range laser pistols with telescopic sights.
That was her final view of them; at that point panic and flight swallowed her and it was only darkness. And a darkness into which people of all sorts—she glimpsed, felt, them dimly—ran along side in company with her; she was not alone: the future radiated.
Mat, she thought. You will not have your police state here at Whale’s Mouth, and I warned you; I told you. But, she thought, maybe now they won’t either. If that encoded message can be put through. If.
And if, on the Terran side, there is someone smart enough to know what to do with it.
8
In his ship near the orbit of Pluto, Al Dosker received, routinely, the message transmitted from Freya Holm at Whale’s Mouth to the New New York office of Lies Incorporated.
FORGOT TO PACK MY IRISH LINEN HANDKERCHIEFS.
PLEASE TRANSMIT VIA TELPOR. FREYA.
He walked to the rear of the ship, leisurely, because at this distance from the sun everything seemed entropic, slowed down; it was as if, out here, there was a slower beat of the sidereal clock.
Opening the code box he ran his finger down the Fs. Then found the key. He then took the message and fed it directly into the computer which held the spools that comprised the contents of the box.
Out came a paper ribbon with typed words. He read them.
MILITARY DICTATORSHIP. BARRACKS LIFE ON SPARTAN BASIS. PREPARATION FOR WAR AGAINST UNKNOWN FOE.
Dosker stood for a moment, then, taking the original encoded message, as handled by Vidphone Corporation, ran it through the computer once again. And, once again, he read the message in clear and once again it said what it had to say—could not be denied from saying. And there was no doubt, because Matson Glazer-Holliday himself had programmed the computer-box.
This, Dosker thought. Out of fifty possibilities ranging from the Elysium field to—hell.
Roughly, this lay halfway on the hell side. By a gross count often. It ranked about as bad as he had expected.
So, he thought, now we know.
We know . . . and we can’t validate it.
The scrap of ribbon, the encoded message, was, incredible as it seemed, completely, utterly worthless.
Because, he asked himself, whom do we take it to?
Their own organization, Lies Incorporated had been truncated by Mat’s action, by the sending of their best men to Whale’s Mouth; all which remained was the staff of bureaucrats in New New York—and himself.
And, of course, Rachmael ben Applebaum out in ‘tween space in the Omphalos. Busily learning Attic Greek.
Now, from the New New York office, a second message, encoded, arrived; this, too, he fed to the computer, more quickly, this time. It came out drearily and he read it with futile shame—shame because he had tried and failed to stop what Matson planned; he felt the moral weight on himself.
WE CANNOT HOLD OUT. VIVISECTION IN PROGRESS.
Can I help you? he wondered, suffering in his impotent rage. Goddam you, Matson, he thought, you had to do it; you were greedy. And you took two thousand men and Freya Holm with you, to be slaughtered over there where we can’t do anything because “we” consist of nothing.
However, he could perform one final act—his effort, not connected with the effort to save the multitude of Terran citizens who, within the following days, weeks, would be filing through Telpor gates to Whale’s Mouth, but to save someone who deserved a reprieve from a self-imposed burden: a burden which these two encoded messages via Telpor and the Vidphone Corp had rendered obsolete.