The Crack in Space (1966) Read online

  On Myra’s desk the vid-phone rang. Cursing in irritation, she turned down the sound of the television set and took the receiver from its support. ‘This is Mrs Sands,’ she said. ‘Could you please call back in a few moments, thank you? I’m extremely busy right now.’

  It was the dark-haired boy, Art Chaffy. ‘We were just wondering what you’d decided,’ he mumbled apologetically. But he did not ring off. ‘It means a lot to us, Mrs Sands.’

  ‘I know it does, Art,’ Myra Sands said, ‘but if you’ll just give me a few more minutes, possibly half an hour …’ She strained to hear what James Briskin was saying on the television ; almost, she could make out the low murmur of words. What was his new news? Where were they going to emigrate to? A virgin environment? Well, obviously; it would have to be. But precisely where is it? Myra wondered. Are you about to pull this virgin world out of your sleeve, Mr Briskin? Because if you are, I would like to see it done; that would be worth watching.

  ‘Okay,’ Art Chaffy said. ‘I’ll call you later, Mrs Sands. And I’m sorry to pester you.’ He rang off, then.

  ‘You ought to be listening to Briskin’s speech,’ Myra murmured aloud as she swung her chair back to face the television set; bending, she turned the audio knob and the sound of Briskin’s voice rose once more to clear audibility. You of all people, she said to herself.

  ‘… and according to reports reaching me,’ Briskin said slowly and gravely, ‘it has an atmosphere nearly identical to that of earth, and a similar mass as well.’

  Good grief, Myra Sands said to herself. If that’s the case then I’m out of a job. Her heart labored painfully. No one would need abort brokers any more. But frankly I’m just as glad, she decided. It’s a task I’d like to see end - forever.

  Hands pressed together tautly, she listened to the remainder of Jim Briskin’s momentous Chicago speech.

  My god, she thought. This is a piece of history being made, this discovery. If it’s true. If this isn’t just a campaign stunt.

  Somewhere inside her she knew that it was true. Because Jim Briskin was not the kind of person who would make this up.

  At the Oakland, California, branch of the U.S. Government Department of Special Public Welfare, Herbert Lackmore also sat listening to presidential candidate Jim Briskin’s Chicago speech, being carried on all channels of the TV as it was beamed from the R-L satellite above.

  He’ll be elected now, Lackmore realized. We’ll have a Col president at last, just what I was afraid of.

  And, if what he’s saying is so, this business about a new possibility of emigration to an untouched world with fauna and flora like Earth’s, it means the bibs will be awakened. In fact, he realized with a thrill of fright, it means there won’t be any more bibs. At all.

  That would mean that Herb Lackmore’s job would come to an end. And right away.

  Because of him, Lackmore said to himself, I’m going to be out of work; I’ll be in the same spot as all the Cols who come by here in a steady stream, day in day out - I’ll be like some nineteen-year-old Mexican or Puerto Rican or Negro kid, without prospects or hope. All I’ve established over the years - wiped out by this. Completely.

  With shaking fingers, Herb Lackmore opened the local phone book and turned the pages.

  It was time to get hold of - and join - the organization of Verne Engel’s which called itself CLEAN. Because CLEAN would not sit idly by and let this happen, not if CLEAN believed as Herb Lackmore did.

  Now was the time for CLEAN to do something. And not necessarily of a non-violent nature; it was too late for non-violence to work. Something more was required, now. Much more. The situation had taken a dreadful turn and it would have to be rectified, by direct and quick action.

  And if they won’t do it, Lackmore said to himself, I will. I’m not afraid to; I know it has to be done.

  On the TV screen Jim Briskin’s face was stem as he said, ‘… will provide a natural outlet for the biological pressures at work on everyone in our society. We will be free at last to …’

  ‘You know what this means?’ George of George Walt said to his brother Walt.

  ‘I know,’ Walt answered. ‘It means that nurf Sal Heim got nothing for us, nothing at all. You watch Briskin; I’m going to call Verne Engel and make some kind of arrangements. Him we can work with.’

  ‘Okay,’ George said, nodding their shared head. He kept his eye on the TV screen, while his brother dialed the vidphone.

  ‘All that gabble with Sal Heim,’ Walt grumbled, and then became silent as his brother stuck him with his elbow, signaling that he wanted to listen to the Chicago speech. ‘Sorry,’ Walt said, turning his eye to the vidscreen of the phone.

  At the door of their office Thisbe Olt appeared, wearing a fawnskin gown with alternating stripes of magnifying transparency. ‘Mr Heim is back,’ she informed them. ‘To see you. He looks - dejected.’

  ‘We’ve got no business to conduct with Sal Heim,’ George said, with anger.

  ‘Tell him to go back to Earth,’ Walt added. ‘And from now on the satellite is closed to him; he can’t visit any of our girls - at any price. Let him die a miserable, lingering death of frustration; it’ll serve him right.’

  George reminded him acidly, ‘Heim won’t need us any more, if Briskin is telling the truth.’

  ‘He is,’ Walt said. ‘He’s too simple a horse’s ass to lie; Briskin doesn’t have the ability.’ His call had been put through on the private circuit, now. On the vidscreen appeared the miniature image of one of Verne Engel’s gaudilyuniformed personal praetorian flunkies, the green and silver outfit of the CLEAN people. ‘Let me talk directly to Verne,’ Walt said, making use of their common mouth just as George was about to address a few more remarks to Thisbe. ‘Tell him this is Walt, on the satellite.’

  ‘Run along,’ George said to Thisbe. when Walt had finished. ‘We’re busy.’

  Thisbe eyed him momentarily and then shut the office door after her.

  On the screen Verne Engel’s pinched, wabble-like face materialized. ‘I see you - at least half of you - are following Briskin’s rabble-rousing,’ Engel said. ‘How did you decide which half was to call me and which half was to listen to the Col?’ Engel’s distorted features twisted in a leer of derision.

  ‘Watch it - that’s enough,’ George Walt retorted simultaneously.

  ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to offend you,’ Engel said, but his expression remained unchanged. ‘Well, what can I do for you? Please make it brief; I’d like to follow Briskin’s harangue too.’

  ‘You’re going to require help,’ Walt said to Engel. ‘If you’re going to stop Briskin now; this speech will put him across, and I don’t think even concerted transmissions from our satellite - as we discussed - will be sufficient. It’s just too damn clever a speech he’s making. Isn’t it, George?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ George said, eye fixed on the TV screen. ‘And getting better each second as he goes along. He’s barely getting started; it’s a genuine spellbinder. Whacking fine.’

  His eye on the vidscreen, Walt continued, ‘You heard Briskin come out against us; you must have heard that part - everyone else in the country certainly did. Planet-wetting with Bruno Mini isn’t enough, he’s also got to take us on. Big plans for a Col, but evidently he and his advisors feel he can handle it. We’ll see. What do you plan to do, Engel? At this very crucial point?’

  ‘I’ve got plans, I’ve got plans,’ Engel assured him.

  ‘Still no-violence stuff?’

  There was no audible answer, but Engel’s face contorted oddly.

  ‘Come up here to the Golden Door,’ Walt said, ‘and let’s talk. I think my brother and I can see our way clear to make a donation to CLEAN, say in the neighborhood of ten or eleven mil. Would that help? You ought to be able to buy what you need with money like that.’

  Engel, white with shock, stammered, ‘S-sure, George or Walt, whichever you are.’

  ‘Get up here as soon as you can, then,’ Walt instructed him,
and rang off. ‘I think he’ll do it for us,’ he said to his brother.

  ‘A gorp like that can’t handle anything,’ George said sourly.

  ‘Then for pop’s sake, what do we do?’ Walt demanded.

  ‘We do what we can. We help out Engel, we prompt him, shove him if necessary. But we don’t pin our hopes on him, at least not entirely. We go ahead with something on our own, just to be certain. And we have to be certain; this is too serious. That Col actually means to shut us down.’

  Both their eyes, now, turned toward the TV screen, and both George and Walt sat back in their special wide couch to listen to the speech.

  In the luxurious apartment which he maintained in Reno, Dr Lurton Sands sat raptly listening to the television set, the Col candidate James Briskin delivering his Chicago speech. He knew what it meant. There was only one place that Briskin could have happened across a ‘lush, virgin world’. Obviously Cally had been found.

  Going to his desk drawer, Lurton Sands got out the small laser pistol which he kept there and thrust it into his coat pocket. I’m amazed he’d do it, Sands thought. Capitalize off my problems - evidently I misjudged him.

  Now so many lives which I could have saved will be forfeited, Sands realized. Due to this. And Briskin is responsible … he’s taken the healing power out of my hands, darkened the force working for the good of man.

  At the vid-phone Sands dialed the local jet’ab company. ‘I want an ‘ab to Chicago. As soon as possible.’ He gave his address, then hurried from his apartment to the elevator. Those that are hounding Cally and me to our deaths, he thought, Myra and her detectives and the homeopapes … now they’ve been joined by Jim Briskin. How could he align himself with them? Haven’t I made clear to everyone what I can do in the service of human need? Briskin must be aware; this can’t be merely ignorance on his part.

  Frantically Sands thought. Could it possibly be that Briskin wants the sick to die? All those waiting for me, needing my help… help which no one else, after I’ve been pushed to my death, can possibly provide.

  Touching the laser pistol in his pocket, Sands said aloud, glumly, ‘It certainly is easy to be mistaken about another person.’ They can take you in so easily, he thought. Deliberately mislead you. Yes, deliberately!

  The jet’ab swept up to the curb and slid open its door.

  SIX

  When he had finished his speech Jim Briskin sat back and knew that this time he had done, at last, a damn good job. It had been the best speech of his political career, in some respects the only really decent one.

  And now what? he asked himself. Sal is gone, and along with him Patricia. I’ve offended the powerful and immensely wealthy unicephalic brothers George Walt, not to mention Thisbe herself … and Terran Development, which is no small potatoes, will be furious that its break-through has been made public. But none of this matters. Nor does the fact that I’m now committed to naming a well-known private operator as my Attorney General; even that isn’t important. My job was to make that speech as soon as Tito Cravelli brought me that information. And - that’s exactly what I did. To the letter. No matter what the consequences.

  Coming up to him, Phil Danville slapped him warmly on the back. ‘A hell of a good fuss, Jim. You really outdid yourself.’

  ‘Thanks, Phil,’ Jim Briskin murmured. He felt tired. He nodded to the TV camera men and then, with Phil Danville, walked over to join the knot of party brass waiting at the rear of the studio.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Jim said to them as several of them extended their hands, wanting to shake with him. ‘After that.’ I wonder what the opposition will do now, he said to himself. What can Bill Schwarz say? Nothing, actually. I’ve taken the lid off the whole thing, and there’s no putting it back. Now that everyone knows there’s a place we can emigrate to, the rush will be on. By the multitudes. The warehouses will be emptied, thank god. As they should have been long ago.

  I wish I had known about this, he thought abruptly, before I began publicly advocating Bruno Mini’s planet-wetting technique. I could have avoided that - and the break with Sal as well.

  But anyhow, he said to himself, I’ll be elected.

  Dorothy Gill said quietly to him, ‘Jim, I think you’re in.’

  ‘I know he is,’ Phil Danville agreed, grinning with pure delight. ‘How about it, Dotty? It’s not like it was a little while ago. How’d you get hold of that info about TD, Jim? It must have cost you …’

  ‘It did,’ Jim Briskin said shortly. ‘It cost me too much. But I’d pay it two times over.’

  ‘Now for the drink,’ Phil said. ‘There’s a bar around the corner; I noticed it when we were coming in here. Let’s go.’ He started for the door and Jim Briskin followed, hands deep in his overcoat pockets.

  The sidewalk, he discovered, was crowded with people, a mob which waved at him, cheered him; he waved back, noticing that many of them were Whites as well as Cols. A good sign, he reflected as his party moved step by step through the dense mass of people, uniformed Chicago city police clearing a path for them to the bar which Phil Danville had picked out.

  From the crowd a red-headed girl, very small, wearing dazzling wubfur lounging pajamas, the kind fashionable with the girls on the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, came hurrying, gliding and ducking toward him breathlessly. ‘Mr Briskin …’

  He paused unwillingly, wondering who she was and what she wanted. One of Thisbe Olt’s girls, evidently. ‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled at her.

  ‘Mr Briskin,’ the little red-haired girl gasped, ‘there’s a rume going around the satellite - George Walt’s doing something with Verne Engel, the man from CLEAN.’ She caught hold of him anxiously by the arm, stopping him. ‘They’re going to assassinate you or something. Please be careful.’ Her face was stark with alarm.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Sparky Rivers. I - work there, Mr Briskin.’

  ‘Thanks, Sparky,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember you. Maybe sometime I can give you a cabinet post.’ He continued to smile at her, but she did not smile back. ‘I’m just joking,’ he said. ‘Don’t be downcast.’

  ‘I think they’re going to kill you,’ Sparky said.

  ‘Maybe so.’ He shrugged. It was certainly possible. He leaned forward, briefly, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Take care of yourself, too,’ he said, and then walked on with Phil Danville and Dorothy Gill.

  After a time Phil said, ‘What are you going to do, Jim?’

  ‘Nothing. What can I do? Wait, I guess. Get my drink.’

  ‘You’ll have to protect yourself,’ Dorothy Gill said. ‘If anything happens to you - what’ll we do then? The rest of us.’

  Jim Briskin said, ‘Emigration will still exist, even without me. You can still wake the sleepers. As it says in Bach’s Cantata 140, “Wachet auf”. Sleepers, awake. That’ll have to be your watchword, from now on.’

  ‘Here’s the bar,’ Phil Danville said. Ahead of them, a Chicago policeman held the door open for them, and they entered one at a time.

  ‘It was darn nice of that girl to warn me,’ Jim Briskin said.

  A man’s voice, close to him, said, ‘Mr Briskin? I’m Lurton Sands, Jr. Perhaps you’ve been reading about me in the homeopapes, lately.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Jim said, surprised to see him; he held out his hand in greeting. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Dr Sands. I want to …’

  ‘May I talk, please?’ Sands said. ‘I have something to say to you. Because of you, my life and the humanitarian work of two decades is wrecked. Don’t answer; I’m not going to get into an argument with you. I’m simply telling you, so you’ll understand why.’ Sands reached into his coat pocket. Now he held a laser pistol, pointed directly at Jim Briskin’s chest. ‘I don’t quite understand what it is about my dedication to the sick that offended you and made you turn against me, but everybody else has, so why not you? After all, Mr Briskin, what better life-task could you set yourself than wrecking mine?’ He squeezed the trigger of the pisto
l. The pistol did not fire, and Lurton Sands stared down at it in disbelief. ‘Myra, my wife.’ He sounded almost apologetic. ‘She removed the energy cartridge, obviously. Evidently, she thought I’d try to use it on her.’ He tossed the pistol away.

  After a pause Jim Briskin said huskily, ‘Well, now what, Doctor?’

  ‘Nothing, Briskin. Nothing. If I had had more time I would have checked the gun out, but I had to hurry to get here before you left. That was quite a heroic speech you made; it’ll certainly give most people the impression that you’re seeking to alleviate man’s problems … although of course you and I know better. By the way - you do realize you won’t be able to awaken all the bibs; you can’t fulfill that promise because some are dead. I’m responsible for that. Roughly four hundred of them.’

  Jim Briskin stared at him.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sands said. ‘I’ve had access to Department of Special Public Welfare warehouses. Do you know what that means? Every organ I’ve taken has created a dead human - when the time comes for them to be revived, whenever that may be. But I suppose the trump has to be played sooner or later, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’d do that?’ Jim Briskin said.

  ‘I did that,’ Sands corrected. ‘But remember this: I killed only potentially. Whereas, in exchange, I saved someone right now, someone conscious and alive in the present, someone completely dependent on my skill.’

  Two Chicago policemen shoved their way up to him; Dr Sands jerked irritably away but they continued to hold onto him, pinning him between them.

  Pale, Phil Danville said, ‘That - was almost it, Jim. Wasn’t it?’ He deliberately stepped between Jim Briskin and Dr Sands, shielding Briskin. ‘History revisited.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jim managed to say. He nodded, his mouth dry. Basically he felt resigned. If Lurton Sands did not manage to carry it off then, certainly someone else would, given time. It was just too easy. Weapons technology had improved too much in the last hundred years; everyone knew that, and now the assassin did not even have to be in his vicinity. Like an act of evil magic it could be done from a distance. And the instruments were cheap and available to virtually anyone - even, as history had shown, some ignorant, worthless smallfry, without friends, funds, or even a fanatical purpose, an overriding political cause.