On the small screen Rachmael ben Applebaum slowly closed the book, stood uncertainly, and then said to the creature facing him, “So that’s how I’m going to get knocked off. Like that. Just like that.”
“More or less,” the eye-eater answered, carelessly.
“It’s a good job,” Jaimé Weiss commented with approval.
“Yes.” Lupov nodded. “It will probably function satisfactorily with this ben Applebaum person, anyhow.” But the girl, he thought. Miss Holm . . . so far it had failed with her. So far. But that did not indicate for a certainty that it would continue to fail. She had put up a protracted expert struggle—but of course she was a pro. And ben Applebaum was not. Like the pilot Dosker, Miss Holm knew her business; it would not be easy—was not at this moment easy, in fact—to recon her mentality by means of a variety of (as she had asserted in the pseudo-spurious text) “damned gadgets you use to keep people thinking along the exact lines you want.”
A good description of our instrumentalities, Lupov reflected. This Weiss person has ability. His composition, this initial variant of the so-called Dr. Bloode Text—masterful. A powerful weapon in this final vast conflict.
Of most interest would be a later response to one of the versions of the text. The reaction by Theodoric Ferry.
It was this that both Jaimé Weiss and Dr. Lupov looked toward.
And—it would not be long, now. Theodoric Ferry would soon be located where the text could be presented to him. At this moment, Ferry loitered on Terra. But—
At six-thirty, three hours from now, Ferry would make a secret trip to Newcolonizedland, one of many; like Sepp von Einem, he crossed back and forth at will.
This time, however, he would make a one-way crossing.
Theodoric Ferry would never return to Terra.
At least not sane.
14
In the darkness of gathering fright Freya Holm wandered, trying to escape insight, the awareness of absolute nonbeing which the intricate weapon manned by the two veteran police of Lies Incorporated had thrust onto her—how long ago? She could not tell; her time sense, in the face of the field emanating from the weapon, had like so much else that constituted objective reality totally vanished.
At her waist a delicate detection meter clicked on, registered a measured passage of high-frequency current; she halted, and the gravity of this new configuration slapped her into abrupt alertness. The meter had been built to record one sole sub-variety of electrical activity. The flux emanating from—
A functioning Telpor station.
She peered. And, gathering in the dense haze that occluded her sight, she made out what normally would have passed for—and beyond any doubt had been designed deliberately to pass for—a mediocre construct: a peripatetic bathroom. It appeared to have landed nearby, undoubtedly to give aid and comfort to some passerby; its gay, bright neon sign winked on and off invitingly, displaying the relief-providing slogan:
UNCLE JOHN’S LI’L HUT-SUT
An ordinary sight. And yet, according to the meter at her belt, not a peripatetic bathroom at all but one end of a von Einem entity, set down here at Newcolonizedland and working away full blast; the recorded line-surge appeared to be maximum, not minimum. The station could not be more fully in operation.
Warily, she made her way toward it. Heavy gray haze, a diffuse mass of drifting airborne debris, surrounded her as she entered Uncle John’s Li’l Hut-Sut station, passed down the quaintly archaic wrought-iron staircase and into the cool, dimly lit chamber marked LADIES.
“Five cents, please,” a mechanical voice said pleasantly.
In a reflexive gesture she handed the nonexistent attendant a dime; her change rolled down a slot to her and she pocketed it with absolutely no interest. Because, ahead of her, two bald women sat in adjoining stalls, conversing in deep, guttural German.
She drew her sidearm and said to them as she pointed the pistol at them, “Hände hock, bitte.”
Instantly one of the two figures yanked at the handle nearest her—or more accurately his—right hand; a roar of rushing water thundered up and lashed at Freya in a sonic torrent which shook her and caused her vision to blur, to become disfigured; the two shapes wavered and blended, and she found it virtually impossible to keep her weapon pointed at them.
“Fräulein,” a masculine voice said tautly, “gib uns augenblicklich dein—”
She fired.
One of the twin indistinct shapes atomized silently. But the alternate Telpor technician hopped, floundered, to one side; he sprang to his feet and bolted off. She followed him with the barrel of her gun, fired once more—and missed. The last shot I’m entitled to, she thought to herself wanly. I missed my chance; I missed getting both of them. And now it’s me.
A current of hot, lashing air burst at her from the automatic wet-hands dryer; she ducked, half-blinded, attempted to fire her small weapon once more—and then, from behind her, something of steel, something not alive but alert and active, closed around her middle. She gasped in fear as it swept her from her feet; twisting, she managed a meager glimpse of it: grotesquely, it was the vanity-table assembly—or rather a homotropic device cammed as a vanity table. Its legs, six of them, had fitted one into the next, like old-fashioned curtain rods; the joint appendage had extended itself expertly, groped until it encountered her, and then, without the need or assistance of life, had embraced her in a grip of crushing death.
The remaining Telpor technician ceased to duck and weave; he drew himself upright, irritably tossed aside the female garments which he had worn, walked a few steps toward her to watch her destruction. Face twitching eagerly, he surveyed the rapid closure of the vanity-table defense system, oh-ing with satisfaction, his thin, pinched face marred with sadistic delight—pleasure at a well-functioning instrument of murder.
“Please,” she gasped, as the appendage drew her back toward the crypto-vanity table, which now displayed a wide maw in which to engulf her; within it she would be converted to ergs: energy to power the assembly for future use.
“Es tut mir furchtbar leid,” the Telpor technician said, licking his mildly hairy lips with near-erotic delight, “aber—”
“Can’t you do anything for me?” she managed to say, or rather made an attempt to say; no breath remained in her, now, by which to speak. The end, she realized, was close by; it would not be long.
“So schön, dock,” the German intoned, his eyes fixed on her; crooning to himself, he approached closer and closer, swaying in a hypnotic dance of physiological sympathy—physical but not emotional correspondence, his body—but not his mentality—responding to what was rapidly happening to her as the tapered extension of
the vanity table drew her back to engulf her.
No one, she realized. Nothing. Rachmael, she thought; why is it that—and then her thoughts dimmed. Over. Done. She shut her eyes, and, with her fingers, groped for the destruct-trigger which would set off a high-yield charge implanted subdermally; better to die by means of a merciful Lies Incorporated Selbstmort instrument placed within her body for her protection than by the cruel THL thing devouring her piecemeal . . . as the final remnant of awareness departed from her, she touched the trigger—
“Oh no, miss,” a reprimanding voice said, from a distance away. “Not in the presence of a guided tour.” Sounds, the near-presence of people—she opened her eyes, saw descending the stairs of the women’s room a gang of miscellaneous persons: men and women and children, all dressed well, all solemnly scrutinizing her and the remaining Telpor technician, the vanity table with its metal arm engaged in dragging her to her death . . . my god, she realized. I’ve seen this on TV, on transmissions from Whale’s Mouth!
It can’t be, Freya Holm said to herself. This is part of the ersatz reality superimposed for our benefit. Years of this hoax—still? This is impossible!
Yet—here it was, before her eyes. Not on TV but in actuality.
The tour guide, with armband, in carefully pressed suit, continued to eye her reprovingly. Being killed before the eyes of a guided tour; it’s wrong, she realized. True; she agreed. You’re absolutely correct. Thinking that, she found herself sobbing hysterically; unable to cease she shut her eyes, took a deep, unsteady breath.
“I am required to inform you, miss,” the guide stated, his voice now wooden and correct, “that you are under arrest. For causing a disturbance interfering with the orderly unfolding of an official, licensed White House tour. I am also required to inform you that you are in custody as of this moment, without written notice, and you are to be held without bail until a
Colony Municipal Court can, at a later date, deal with you.” He eyed the Telpor technician coldly and with massive suspicion. “Sir, you appear to be involved in this matter to some extent.”
“In no way whatsoever,” the Telpor technician said at once.