Our Friends From Frolix 8 Read online

  ‘Flores’,’ Nick said. ‘Their Alaskan baked salmon is a divine delight.’

  ‘Where did you get the pops,’ Barnes asked alertly to Nick, ‘to eat in places like Flores’? On your income as a tire regroover?’

  Nick said, ‘Kleo and I went there once. On our first anniversary. It took a week’s pay, including the tips, but it was worth it.’ He had never forgotten it; he never would.

  With a curt gesture, Barnes continued with his interrogation. ‘So smoldering resentments, which might never have risen to the level of acting out — these resentments became action when Earl Zeta presented you with a way of implementing your feelings by joining the movement. Had he not been an Under Man, your resentments might never have reached the surface.’

  ‘What are you trying to prove?’ Gram asked, annoyed.

  ‘That once we destroy the axle of the Under Men, once we get men like Cordon—’

  ‘We did,’ Gram pointed out. To Nick, he said, ‘Did you know that? That Cordon died of a long-term liver condition which was irreversible, and no transplant was available? You heard it on the radio? TV?’

  ‘I heard it,’ Nick said. ‘That he had been shot to death by an assassin sent to his cell.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Gram said. ‘He didn’t die in his cell, he died on the operating table of the prison hospital during an attempt to put an artificial organ in him. We did everything we could to save him.’

  No. Nick thought. No, you didn’t.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ Gram said, reading his mind. He turned toward Barnes. ‘There’s your statistic: the embodiment of natural man, of Old Men, and he doesn’t believe Cordon died naturally. Can we extrapolate from that that there will be a general planet-wide disbelief?’

  ‘Sure can,’ Barnes said.

  ‘Well, damn it,’ Gram said. ‘I don’t care what they believe; it’s all over for them. It’s just rats here and there in the gutter, waiting for us to zarlp them one by one. Wouldn’t you say that, Appleton? Joiners like you, you don’t anymore have a place to go and leaders to listen to.’ To Barnes he said, ‘So when Provoni lands, there won’t be anybody to greet him. No throngs of the faithful, they’ll have melted away, as Appleton here would do. Only he got caught so it’s southeast Utah for him or Luna, if he prefers. You prefer Luna, Mr. Appleton? Mr. 3XX24J?’

  Nick said, choosing his words carefully, ‘I’ve heard it said that whole families have gone intact to relocation camps. Is that true?’

  ‘You want to be with your wife and son? But they’re not charged.’ Barnes bared a notched fang, pursuing the idea to its conclusion. ‘We could charge them with—’

  ‘You’ll find a tract of Cordon’s in our apartment,’ Nick said. As soon as he said it he wished, God how he wished, he hadn’t said it. Why did I do that? he asked himself. But we should be together. And then he thought of little tough Charley, with her large black eyes and her pushed-in nose. Her hard, slim, breastless body… and always her cheery smile, like a character out of Dickens, he thought. A chimney sweep. A Soho thug. Conning her way out of trouble, talking someone into something. Anyhow talking. Always talking. And always with her special lit-up smile, as if the world were, a great furry dog which she longed to hug.

  Could I go with her? he wondered. Instead of Kleo and Bobby. Should I go with her? If it’s legally possible?

  ‘It’s not,’ Gram said from his bed of enormous size.

  ‘What’s not?’ Barnes demanded.

  Gram said leisurely, ‘He wants to go with that girl we found with him at the 16th Avenue printing plant. You remember her?’

  ‘The one you’re interested in,’ Barnes said.

  Hot fear trickled its way down Nick’s spine; his heart gave a deep shudder and a mighty heave, and, in his arms and legs, the blood circulation speeded rapidly up. Then it’s true about Gram, he thought. What people say about his wenching around. His marriage—

  ‘Is like yours,’ Gram finished for him.

  Presently, Nick said, ‘You’re right.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Feral and wild.’ But he didn’t have to say aloud, he realized. All he had to do was think of her, imagine her, relive in his mind the details of their short period together. And Gram would gather it up as fast as he thought it.

  ‘She could be trouble,’ Gram said. ‘And this Denny, her boyfriend, he sounds psychopathic or something. The whole interaction between them, if you’re remembering it right, it’s sick. She’s a sick girl.’

  ‘In a sane environment,’ Nick began, but Barnes cut him off.

  ‘May I go on with my questions?’

  ‘Sure,’ Gram said, moodily withdrawing; Nick saw the heavyset old man turn his attention inward, to his own thoughts.

  ‘If you were released,’ Barnes asked, ‘what would your reaction be, what would you do, if — and I say if — Thors Provoni returned? And with monstrous help? Help designed to enslave Earth for as long as—’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Gram groaned.

  ‘Yes, Council Chairman?’ Barnes asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gram groaned. He rolled over on his side, his gray hair spilling onto the whiteness of the pillows. Discoloring as if something that shunned the light had made its way among them, showing only its stringy pelt.

  ‘Would you react in one of the following ways?’ Barnes continued. ‘One. Would you be hysterically joyful, without reservation? Two. Would you be wildly pleased? Three. Would you not care? Four. Would it make you uneasy? Five. Would it cause you to join a PSS or military organization prepared to fight the unnatural invaders? Which of these choices, if any, would you choose?’

  Nick said, ‘Isn’t there something between “hysterically joyful without reservation” and “mildly pleased”?’

  ‘No,’ Barnes said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We want to know who our enemies are. If you were “hysterically joyful” you would act. To help them. But if you were only “mildly pleased” you’d probably do nothing. That’s what is being sorted out by the choices — would you act as an overt enemy of the establishment, and if so, in what direction and to what extent?’

  Gram, his voice muffled by his covers, muttered, ‘He doesn’t know. My God, he just became an Under Man this morning! How the hell would he know how he’d act?’

  ‘But,’ Barnes pointed out, ‘he’s had years to think about Provoni’s return. Don’t forget that. His reaction, whatever it is, is deeply grounded.’ To Nick he said, ‘Choose an answer.’

  After a pause, Nick said, ‘It depends on what you do with Charley.’

  ‘Try and extrapolate that,’ Gram said to Barnes and chuckled. ‘I can tell you what is going to be done to Charley. She’ll be brought here, safe from the demented psychopath, that Denny or Benny or whatever his name is. So you shook off the Purple Sea Cow, very good. But she may have been lying when she said no one else ever had… you didn’t think of that. She wound you around her little pseudopodium, didn’t she? All of a sudden you were saying to your wife, “If she goes, I go.” And your wife said, “Go.” Which you did. And all that without any warning. You brought Charlotte to your apartment, made up a lie as to how you got involved with her, and then Kleo found the Cordonite tract, and blam, that was it. Because it gave her what a wife likes best: a situation in which her husband has to choose between two evils, between two choices neither of which is palatable to him. Wives love that. When you’re in court, divorcing one, you get presented with a choice between going back to her or losing all your possessions, your property, stuff you’ve hung onto since high school. Yeah, wives really like that.’ He buried himself deeper into the pillows. ‘Interview’s over,’ he mumbled sleepily.

  ‘My conclusions,’ Barnes said.

  ‘Okay,’ Gram said muffledly.

  ‘This man, 3XX24J,’ Barnes said, indicating Nick, ‘thinks in a manner parallel to your own. His primary concern is for his own personal life, not for a cause. If he is assured of possession of the woma
n he wants – if and when he finally decides – then he will stand by inert when Provoni arrives.’

  ‘Which leads you to infer what?’ Gram mumbled.

  Barnes said briskly, ‘That we announce today, now, that all relocation camps, both in Utah and on Luna, are to be abolished, and the detainees will be returned to their homes and families, or whomever else they wish.’ Barnes’ voice was jagged with harshness. ‘We will, before Provoni arrives, give them what 3XX24J here wants – would settle for. Old Men live on a personal level; it is not the cause, the ideology, that motivates them. If they do enter a cause, it is to get back something in their personal lives, such as dignity or meaning. Like better housing, interracial marriage – you understand.’

  Shaking himself like a wet dog, Gram sat up in bed and stared at him, his mouth turned down, his eyes bulging… as if, Nick thought, he’s going to have a stroke.

  ‘Release them?’ Gram asked. ‘All of them? Like the ones we picked up today: hard core, even wearing uniforms of some kind of paramilitary type?’

  ‘Yes,’ Barnes said. ‘It’s a gamble but, on the basis of what citizen 3XX24J has said and thought, it’s obvious to me that he is not thinking, “Will Thors Provoni save Earth?” He is thinking, “I’d certainly like to see that tough little bitch again.”’

  ‘Old Men,’ Gram muttered. His face relaxed; now his flesh hung in wattles. ‘If we gave Appleton his choice between having Charlotte or seeing Provoni be successful, he’d actually choose the former…’ But then, all at once, his expression changed; it became furtive, cat-like. ‘But he can’t have Charlotte, I’m involved with her.’ To Nick he said, ‘You can’t have her, so go back to Kleo and Bobby.’ He grinned. ‘There, I’ve made the decision for you.’

  Clearly annoyed by the discussion, Barnes said to Nick, ‘What would your reaction as an Under Man be if all the relocation camps – let’s face it: the concentration camps – were abolished and everyone was sent home, presumably to his friends and family. How would you feel if this were done for you, you too?’

  Nick said, ‘I think it’s the most sensible, humane, rational decision a government could make. There would be a wave of relief and happiness that would cover the globe.’ He felt, somehow, that he had expressed himself badly, in clichés, but it was the best he could do. ‘Would you really do that?’ he asked Barnes incredulously. ‘I can’t believe it. The number of people in those camps run into millions. It would be one of the most humane decisions by any government in history; it would never be forgotten.’

  ‘You see?’ Barnes said to Gram. ‘Okay, 3XX24J; if this were done, how would you greet Provoni?’

  He saw the logic. ‘I—’ He hesitated. ‘Provoni went in search of help in destroying a tyranny. But if you release everyone, and presumably you would abolish the category of “Under Men”; there would be no more arrests—’

  ‘No more arrests,’ Barnes said. ‘Cordonite literature will be allowed to circulate freely.’

  Rousing himself, Gram rolled about in his bed, heaving and thrashing, managing at last a sitting position. ‘They’d take it as a sign of weakness.’ He waggled his finger at first Nick, then more ominously at Barnes. ‘They would assume we did it as a result of knowing ourselves to be defeated. Provoni would get the credit!’ He stared at Barnes in a mixture of emotions; his face flowed, mobile and agitated. ‘You know what they’d do? They’d then force us to’ – he glanced at Nick a little nervously – ‘to make the Civil Service exams on the level. In other words, we’d give up our absolute control over who comes into the governmental apparatus and who goes out.’

  ‘We need brain help,’ Barnes said, chewing on the flat end of his ballpoint pen.

  ‘You mean another double-dome superman like yourself?’ Gram spat out the words. ‘To overrule me? Why don’t we have a plenipotentiary meeting of the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety? At least that way we’ll have your kind and my kind equally represented.’

  Barnes said thoughtfully, ‘I would like to have Amos Ild brought in. To get his opinion. It would take twenty-four hours to assemble the Committee; we could have Ild here in half an hour – he’s in New Jersey working on the Big Ear, as you know.’

  ‘That fucking enemy of the Unusuals! Up yours, Barnes. Up yours all the way! I’ll never submit to the opinions of a head shaped like a pear with God knows what loose nuts and bolts floating around inside.’

  Barnes said, ‘Ild is the foremost intellectual on the planet today. We recognize him as that; obviously you do, too.’

  Dithering, Gram said, ‘He’s trying to make me obsolete. He’s trying to destroy the two-entity system that has made this world a paradise for—’

  ‘Then I’ll merely go ahead and have the camps opened,’ Barnes said. ‘With no concurring – or dissenting – opinions from anyone.’ He rose to his feet, put his pad of paper and pen away, picked up his briefcase.

  ‘Isn’t it true?’ Gram asked. ‘Isn’t he trying to undermine the Unusuals? Isn’t that the real purpose of the Big Ear?’

  ‘Amos Ild,’ Barnes said, ‘is one of the few New Men who has any concern for the Old. The Big Ear would give them parity powers, abilities equal to your own; it would draw them into the fabric of government. Citizen 3XX24J – his son could pass the ability test, the Special Achievement section, that got you into the government years ago. And look how high you’ve risen. Listen to me, Willis – the Old Men must be given back their franchise, but there’s no use doing it if they simply lack, goddam simply lack, the skills, knowledge, aptitudes, that we have. We’re not really falsifying the test results: all right, we do it now and then – we select, as Pikeman and Weiss did in Citizen 3XX24J’s case. That’s an evil, but not the evil. The evil lay in constructing a test which you and I could pass and he can’t. We’re not testing him by what he can do but by what we can do. So he gets questions involving Bernhad’s Theory of Acausality, which no Old Man can understand. We can’t give him a bigger cerebral cortex – we can’t give him a New Man brain… but we can provide him with extra talents that can compensate for it. As in your case. In all Unusual cases.’

  ‘You’re looking down at me,’ Gram said.

  Barnes, still on his feet, sighed. And sagged. ‘Well, I’ve said all I can say right now. It’s been a difficult day. I will not contact Amos Ild; I will simply go ahead and order the camps let open. Making it my own decision; mine alone.’

  ‘Find Amos Ild; bring in Amos Ild,’ Gram grated, and heaved about on the bed so that the floor under their feet vibrated.

  Looking at his watch, Barnes said, ‘Right. Within the next couple of days as a certainty. But it will take time to get him—’

  ‘You said “half an hour”,’ Gram said.

  Barnes reached for one of the fones on Gram’s desk. ‘May I?’

  ‘Sure,’ Gram said resignedly.

  While Barnes made his call, Nick stood deep in thought, gazing out the immense window of the combination bedroom-office at the city around him, the city which stretched for miles – hundreds of miles.

  ‘You are thinking,’ Gram said, ‘of ways of persuading me that you have a prior claim on that Charlotte girl.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You do,’ Gram said. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because I’m who I am and you’re who you are. A tire regroover. I’m passing a law against it, by the way. You’ll be out of a job come next Monday.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Nick said.

  ‘You always did feel guilty about it,’ Gram pointed out. ‘I pick up deep guilt from your mind. You worried about the people driving those squibs with the fake tread. Landing, Especially landing. That first bump.’

  ‘True,’ Nick said.

  Gram said, ‘Now you’re thinking about Charlotte again, and devising ways of hustling her off. And at the same time you’re asking yourself for the millionth time what you ethically should do… you can stop that and go back to Kleo and Bobby. And arrange for Bobby to take another—’

  ‘I’ll see her ag
ain,’ Nick said.

  SEVENTEEN

  The fathers, Thors Provoni thought. Yes, that’s what they are, our friends from Frolix 8. As if I managed to contact the Urvater, the primordial Father who built the eidos kosmos. They are upset and anxious because something is going wrong on our world; they care; they have empathy; they know how desperate our need is and how we feel; they know what we need.

  He wondered if all three of his messages had reached the 16th Avenue printing complex, where the Under Man radio and TV transmission and receiving facilities were housed. And if the establishment had intercepted them.

  And if they had intercepted them, what, he asked himself, would they do?

  A purge. Most likely. But not a certainty. Old Willis Gram – if he was still in power – was an astute man, and he knew whom to milk – and how – of valuable information. Being a telepath did that; Gram could pick the minds of anyone brought close to him. But it remained to be seen who was brought close to him. Radical militants, such as the executives of the McMally Corporation? The members of the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety? Police Director Lloyd Barnes? Probably Barnes, he was the smartest, and the most sane, of them all – at least among those at high level in the governmental apparatus. There were also independent research New Men scientists, such as the eerie Amos Ild. Ild! What if Gram consulted him? Ild would probably sketch out a shield that would protect Earth against everything. God help me, Provoni thought, if they’ve brought Ild – or Tom Rovere, for that matter, or Stanton Finch – into this. Fortunately the truly brilliant New Man gravitated toward abstract, academic studies: they became theoretical physicists, statisticians, and the like. Finch, for example, had, at the time Provoni left, been working on a system to duplicate the microsecond come third in the succession of creation of the universe; ultimately, under controlled conditions, he wished to work his way back to the first second and then, God forbid, push – in theory, in mathematical terms – the entropic flow back to the interval, called a valence-passage, before the first second.

  But all on paper.