The Unteleported Man Read online

  There, he called the Vidphone Corporation, its cen­tral offices in Detroit, open on a twenty-four-hour-a-day basis.

  "Give me your archives," he instructed the robot switchboard.

  Presently a human, wizened but efficient-looking, gnome-like official in a gray jacket, like a bookkeeper, appeared. "Yeah?"

  "I'm inquiring," Rachmael said, "as to the Prince Albert B-y mon-sat put in orb around Fomalhaut seven­teen years ago. I'd like you to check as to whether it's still in orb and if it is, how it can be activated so — "

  The signal went dead. At the other end the Vidphone Corporation official had hung up. He waited. The Vid­phone switchboard did not come onto the wire, nor did the regular, local robot.

  I'll be darned, Rachmael thought. Shaken, he left the phonebooth.

  He continued on aboard the runnel until at last he reached a second public phonebooth.

  Entering he this time dialed Matson Glazer-Holliday's satellite. Presently he had the owner of Lies Incorporated again facing him from the screen.

  Carefully, Rachmael said, "Sorry to bother you. But I've been running info spools on the original unmanned monitors of the Fomalhaut system."

  "Learn anything?"

  "I asked," Rachmael said, "the Vidphone Corpora­tion of Wes-Dem if its Prince Albert B-y — "

  "And they said?"

  Rachmael said, "They immediately cut the con."

  "It," Matson said, "is still up. Still in orb."

  "And sending out signals?"

  "Not for fifteen years. At hyper-see it takes its signals one week to cross the twenty-four light-year gap to the Sol system. Rather shorter than it would require for the Omphalos toreach the Fomalhaut system."

  "Is there any way to once more activate the satel­lite?"

  "Vidphone Corp could contact it direct, through a Telpor," Matson said. "If they wanted to."

  "Do they?"

  After a pause Matson said, "Did they cut you off just now?"

  Pondering, Rachmael said, "Can someone else give the impulse to the satellite?"

  "No. Only the Vidphone Corp knows the sequence which would cause it to respond."

  "Is this what you wanted me to find out?" Rachmael asked.

  Smiling, Matson Glazer-Holliday said, "Goodbye, Mr. ben Applebaum. And good luck, as you continue your research." He then hung up, and once more Rach­mael faced a dead screen.

  At his villa, Matson turned away from the vidset to Freya Holm, who perched on the couch, legs tucked un­der her, wearing a high-fashion transparent spidersilk blue blouse and meter-reader's pants. "He found it," Matson said. "Right away. That about the P.A. B-y sat." Pacing, Matson scowled. "All right." He had decided. "Our rep, under the cover-name Bergen Phillips, will be sent to Whale's Mouth six hours from now. By way of the THL outlet at Paris. As soon as he's at Whale's Mouth he'll transmit to us, through the Telpor, an encoded document describing the true conditions." But probably THL's people would have nabbed "Bergen Phillips" by then, and, through techniques well-known in the trade, have learned all that the Lies Incorporated veteran knew; they would then send a faked encoded message, assuring Matson that all was well — and he would never know, on receipt of such a message, whether it truly emanated from "Bergen Phillips" or from THL. However —

  Freya saw it, too. "Have this rep, once he's across, give the activating sequence to the P.A. B-y sat. So it'll start transmitting data to the Sol system direct, once again."

  "If,"Matson said, "If it still will function after fif­teen years. And if the Vidphone Corp does not coun­termand the instruct the moment data starts to flow in." However, he could tap the Vidphone Corp's lines and pick up even that initial meager data. What he might ob­tain before the flow ceased coming in might be a graphic pan-shot of Whale's Mouth — and then so what if the sat was shut off once more.

  As naturally it would be, since THL controlled the Vidphone Corp.

  "Just one good vid shot," Matson said. "And we'll know."

  "Know what?" She reached to set down her drink glass on the nearby antique genuine glass-topped coffee table.

  Matson said, "I'll tell you that, dear, when I see the shot." He went to the comboard, sent out the already implemented request for the field rep who was to cross over to Whale's Mouth to be brought to his satellite. These instructs had to be given orally and not over lines; to line it was to howl it broadcast.

  In fact perhaps he had already communicated too much to Rachmael. But — in such a business one took risks. And he could assume that Rachmael's callback had emanated from a public booth; the man, although an amateur, was at least cautious. And these days such caution was not paranoid; it was practical.

  On the TV screen in 3-D color with olfactory track the round, jovial features of President Omar Jones of Newcolonizedland said, "You folks there on good old overcrowded Terra" — and, behind him, faded in a scene of miles of open veldt-like park — "you amaze us. We hear you're going to send a ship here, by hyper-see, and it'll arrive in... let's see." He pretended to be con­templating.

  Before the set (not quite paid for) Jack McElhatten, a hard-working, easy-going, good-natured guy, said to his wife, "Chrissakes, look at that open land." It reminded him of his sweet, fragile childhood, of years ago and now gone, the Oregon Trail part of Wyoming west of Cheyenne. And the desire, the yearning, grew in him. "We have to emigrate," he said to Ruth then. "We owe it to our kids. They can grow up as — "

  "Shh," Ruth said.

  On the screen President Omar Jones of Newcolon­izedland said, "In just about eighteen years, folks, that ship will arrive this way and park down. So here's what we've done; we've set aside November 24, 2032, as Fly­ing Dutchman Day. The day that ship reaches us." He chuckled. "I'll be, um, ninety-four and, sorry to say, probably not here to participate in Flying Dutchman Day. But maybe posterity, including some of you young folks — "

  "You hear that?" McElhatten said to his wife, in­credulous. "Some nut is going to go the old way. Eighteen years in 'tween space! When all you have to do — "

  "BE QUIET," Ruth said, furiously, trying to listen.

  " — be here to greet this Mr. Applebaum," President Omar Jones intoned in clowning solemnity. "Banners, vox-pop streamers... we should have a population of between, well, say, one billion, then, but still plenty of land. We can take up to two billion, you know, and still leave plenty of room. So come on and join us; cross over and be here to celebrate Flying Dutchman Day, folks." He waved, and, it seemed to Jack McElhatten, this man at Whale's Mouth was waving directly to him. And, within him, the yearning grew.

  The frontier, he thought. Their neighbors in the tiny cramped conapt with which they shared a bathroom... or had, up until last month, at which point the Pattersons had emigrated to Whale's Mouth. The vid-sig let­ters from Jerome Patterson; god, they had raved about conditions across on the other side. If anything, the info spots — ads, to be exact — had understated the beauty of the real-sit over there. The beauty — and the opportu­nity.

  "We need men," President Omar Jones was declar­ing. "Good strong men who can do any kind of work. Are you that man? Able, willing, with get-up-and-go, over eighteen years of age? Willing to start a new life, using your mind and your hands, the skills God gave you? Think about it. What are you doing with those hands, those skills, right now?"

  Doing quality-control on an autofac line, McElhatten thought to himself bitterly; a job which a pigeon could do better; fact was, a pigeon did do so, to check his work.

  "Can you imagine," he said to his wife, "holding down a job where a pigeon has a better eye than you for mis-tolerances?" And that was exactly his situation; he ejected parts which were not properly aligned, and, when he missed, the pigeon noted the miss, the defective part allowed to pass: it picked out the misaligned part, pecked a reject-button which kicked the part from the moving belt. And, as they quit and emigrated, the quality control men at Krino Associates were, one by one, replaced by pigeons.

  He stayed on now, really, only be
cause the union to which he belonged was strong enough to insist that his seniority made it mandatory for Krino to keep him on. But once he quit, once he left —

  "Then," he said to Ruth, "the pigeon moves in. Okay, let it; we're going across to Whale's Mouth, and from then on I won't be competing with birds." Com­peting, he thought, and losing. Offering my employers the poorer showing. "And Krino will be glad," he said, with misery.

  "I just wish," Ruth said, "that you had a particular job lined up over there at Newcolonizedland. I mean, they talk about 'all the jobs,' but you can't take 'all the jobs.' What one job are you — " She hesitated. "Skilled for?" After all, he had worked for Krino Associates for ten years.

  "I'm going to farm."

  She stared at him.

  "They'll give us twenty acres. We'll buy sheep here, those black-faced ones. Suffolk. Take six across, five ewes and a ram, put up fences, build ourselves a house out of prefab sections — " He knew he could do it. Others had, as they had described — not in impersonal ads — but in letters vid-signaled back and then tran­scribed by the Vidphone Corporation and posted on the bulletin board of the conapt building.

  "But if we don't like it," Ruth murmured apprehen­sively, "we won't be able to come back; I mean, that seems so strange. Those teleportation machines... working one way only."

  "The extra-galactic nebulae," he said patiently. "The recession of matter outward; the universe is exploding, growing; the Telpor relates your molecules as energy configurations in this outflow — "

  "I don't understand," Ruth said. "But I do know this," she said, and, from her purse, brought a leaflet.

  Studying the leaflet, McElhatten scowled. "Cranks. This is hate literature, Ruth. Don't accept it." He began to crumple it up.

  "They don't call themselves by a hating name. 'Friends of a United People.' They're a small group of worried, dedicated people, opposed to — "

  "I know what they're opposed to," McElhatten said. Several of them worked at Krino Associates. "They say we Terrans should stay within the Sol system. Stick together. Listen." He crumpled up the leaflet. "The history of man has been one vast migration. This to Whale's Mouth; it's the greatest yet — twenty-four light-years! We ought to be proud." But naturally there'd be a few idiots and cranks opposing history.

  Yes, it was history and he wanted to be part of it. First it had been New England, then Australia, Alaska, and then the try — and failure — on Luna, then on Mars and Venus, and now — success. At last. And if he waited too long he would be too old and there would be too many expatriates so free land would no longer be avail­able; the government at Newcolonizedland might with­draw its land offer any time, because after all, every day people streamed over. The Telpor offices were swamped.

  "You want me to go?" he asked Ruth. "Go first — and send a message back, once I have the land and am ready to begin building? And then you and the kids can come?"

  Nervously, she said, "I hate to be parted from you."

  "Make up your mind."

  "I guess," she said, "we should go together. If we go at all. But these — letters. They're just impulses onto energy lines."

  "Like telephone or vidphone or telegraph or TV mes­sages. Has been for one hundred years."

  "If only real letters came back."

  "You have," he said, derisively, "a superstitious fear."

  "Maybe so," Ruth admitted. But it was a real fear nonetheless. A deep and abiding fear of a one-way trip from which they could never return, except, she thought, eighteen years from now, when that ship reaches the Fomalhaut system.

  She picked up the evening 'pape, examined the article, jeering in tone, about this ship, the Omphalos. Capable of transporting five hundred, but this time carrying one sole man: the ship's owner. And, the article said, he was fleeing to escape his creditors; that was his motive.

  But, she thought, he can come back from Whale's Mouth.

  She envied — without understanding why — that man. Rachmael ben Applebaum, the 'pape said. If we could cross over now with you, she thought, if we asked —

  Her husband said quietly, "If you won't go, Ruth, I'm going alone. I'm not going to sit there day after day at that quality-control station, feeling that pigeon breathing down the back of my neck."

  She sighed. And wandered into the common kitchen which they shared with their righthand neighbors, the Shorts, to see if there was anything left of their monthly ration of what the bill of lading called cof-bz. Synthetic coffee beans.

  There was not. So, instead, she morosely fixed herself a cup of synthetic tea. Meanwhile, the Shorts — who were noisy — came and went, in and out of the kitchen. And, in her living room, her husband sat before the TV set, an enraptured child, listening to, following with devout and absorbed full attention the nightly report from Whale's Mouth. Watching the new, the next, world.

  I guess, she thought, he's right.

  But something deep and instinctive within her still objected. And she wondered queerly why. And she thought, then, once more of Rachmael ben Applebaum, who, the 'pape said, was attempting the eighteen-year trip without deep-sleep equipment; he had tried and failed to obtain it, the 'pape said gleefully; the guy was so marginal an operator, such a fly-by-nighter, that he had no credit, pos or otherwise. The poor man, she thought. Conscious and alone for eighteen whole years; couldn't the company that makes those deep-sleep units donate the equipment he needs?

  The TV set in the living room declared, "Remember, folks, it's Old Mother Hubbard there on Terra, and the Old Woman who lived in a shoe; you've got so many children, folks, and just what do you plan to do?"

  Emigrate, Ruth decided, without enthusiasm. Appar­ently.

  And — soon.

  5

  Against Rachmael ben Applebaum's tiny flapple the great hull of his one asset of economic value — and that attached through the courts — bumped in the darkness, and at once automatic mechanisms came into operation. A hatch whined open; inner locks shut and then retired as air passed into vacuum and replaced it, and, on his console, a green light lit. A good one.

  He could safely pass from his meager rented flapple into the Omphalos, as it hung in powerless orbit around Mars at .003 astronomical units.

  Directly he had crossed through the lock-series — without use of a pressure suit or oxygen gear — Al Dosker said to him, eying him and with laser pistol in hand, "I thought it might be a simulacrum, supplied by THL. But the EEG and EKG machines say you're not." He held out his hand; and Rachmael shook. "So you're making the trip anyhow, without the deep-sleep components. And you think, after eighteen years, you'll be sane? I wouldn't be." His dark, sharp-cut face was filled with compassion. "Can't you induce some fray to come along? One other person, and what a difference, especially if she's — "

  "And quarrel," Rachmael said, "and wind up with one corpse. I'm taking an enormous edu-tape library; by the time I reach Fomalhaut I'll be speaking Attic Greek, Latin, Russian, Italian — I'll be reading alchem­ical texts from the Middle Ages and Chinese classics in the original from the sixth century." He smiled, but it was an empty, frozen smile; he was not fooling Dosker, who knew what it was like to try an inter-system run without deep-sleep. Because Dosker had made the three-year-trip to Proxima. And, on the journey back, had insisted, from his experience, on deep-sleep.

  "What gets me," Rachmael said, "is that THL has gotten to the blackmarket. That they're even able to dry up illegal supplies of minned parts." But — the chance had been missed in the restaurant; the components had been within reach, five thousand poscreds' worth. And — that was that.

  "You know," Dosker said slowly, "that one of Lies Incorporated's experienced field reps is crossing, using a regular Telpor terminal, like the average fella. So we may be contacting the Omphalos within the next week; you may be able to turn back; we may save you the eighteen years going, and, or have you forgotten, the eighteen years returning?"

  "I'm not sure," Rachmael said, "if I make it I'll come back." He was not fooling
himself; after the trip to Fomalhaut he might be physically unable to start back — whatever conditions obtained at Whale's Mouth he might stay there because he had to. The body had its limits. So did the mind.

  Anyhow they now had more to go on. Not only the failure of the old time capsule ever to reach the Sol system — and conveniently forgotten by the media — but the Vidphone Corporation of Wes-Dem's absolute refusal, under direct, legal request by Matson Glazer-Holliday, to reactivate its Prince Albert B-y satellite orbiting Fomalhaut. This one fact alone, Rachmael re­flected, should have frightened the rational citizen. But —

  The people did not know. The media had not re­ported it.

  Matson, however, had leaked the info to the small, militant, anti-emigration org, the Friends of a United People. Mostly they were old-fashioned, elderly and fearful, whose distrust of emigration by means of Telpor was based on neurotic reasons. But — they did print pamphlets. And Vidphone Corp's refusal had duly been noted immediately in one of their Terra-wide broad-sheets.

  But how many persons had seen it — that Rachmael did not know. He had the intuition, however, that very few people had. And — emigration continued.

  As Matson said, the footprints leading into the predator's lair continued to increase in number. And still none led out.

  Dosker said, "All right, I am now officially, formally surrendering the Omphalos back to you. She appears to check out through every system, so you should have nothing to fear." His dark eyes glinted. "I tell you what, ben Applebaum. During your eighteen years of null-deep-sleep you can amuse yourself as I've been, during the last week." He reached to a table, picked up a leather-backed book. "You can," he said quietly, "keep a diary."

  "Of what?"

  "Of a mind," Dosker said, "deteriorating. It'll be of psychiatric interest." Now he did not seem to be joking.

  "So even you," Rachmael said, "consider me — "