The Jagged Orbit Page 6

  So the idea of calling in an independent expert to evaluate the trouble they were having with their internal comweb at the Etchmark Tower was in fact a damned good one. The investigation could convincingly be made to lead into a check on Holocosmic’s own circuitry; for what it was worth, PCC backing could probably be obtained, and …

  But it was a pipe-dream anyway, Flamen assured himself. Grant that it could be done—which was debatable, for what “outside expert” could be found to match Holocosmic’s own computers?—grant that he could prove his case, be awarded damages, survive the nine remaining months of his contract … so what? Where else was there for a spoolpigeon to go? He belonged to a dying species. People were too busy minding their own business to care about anyone else’s. They were turning inwards, to the ultimately private entertainment of subjective hallucinatory experience. They were each constructing a maxecurity tower, windowless, unbreachable.

  Maybe Prior wasn’t so wrong after all to have resorted to Lares & Penates Inc. In the face of this incomprehensibly complex modern world where the forces of economics and macroplanning reigned with the impersonal detachment of storm and drought, it might well be better for an individual to delude himself into believing that he could cope. Feigning confidence might indeed be superior to merely resigning oneself to one’s own inadequacy.

  What sort of a cult would L&P dream up for him? One like Prior’s, involving elaborate posturing and ceremonial? Flamen shook his head. Regardless of whether L&P were really a blank-targeted subsidiary of Conjuh Man, there was no doubt they were excellent pragmatic psychologists. For him, therefore, they’d likely suggest a complete contrast: something rather nasty, demanding that he chop the heads off chickens and smear his face with their blood. Doing duty to one’s Lar was supposed to externalize one’s inward characteristics, and for somebody who had originally established himself in his career by systematically slaughtering reputations there was bound to be an element of sacrifice. …

  The trank took hold. His mood lightened. But his irritation didn’t pass away completely. How much longer was he going to be kept out here in the clammy heat of midsummer? No doubt it was decently cool inside, but here he was suffering the output from the conditioners beneath the skimmer-park, and one could almost have taken the air in one’s hands and wrung it out like a washrag.

  Getting into the Ginsberg, apparently, was on a par with getting out of it. There was only one means of access to the interior from this parking lot, and that was guarded by horribly logical automatics. His brief and frustrating dialogue with them had convinced him that they must divide the human race into three categories: staff, patients and potential patients. Short of throwing a crazy-looking fit, he couldn’t see any alternative to staying put until this therapist—what was her name? Oh yes: Dr. Spoelstra—got to a comweb and talked to him.

  Grumpily, he went on waiting.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE ONE-GIRL UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT

  Arriving at the Ginsberg’s rapitrans terminal was like being one dose of a drug administered orally in capsule form. Rapitrans trains were segmented, tapeworm fashion, into compartments each seating one person; they could be separated, shuffled, connected and disconnected to follow—according to the operating authority’s publicity—just under ten million different routes, dictated by the electronically active tickets the travelers had to insert into a slot in the arm-rest of each seat. Once launched into the tunnels, they were hurtled along by forces as unquestionable as gravity. There were no windows to reveal whether there was another compartment ahead or behind, because at the speeds these things traveled some people suffered from horizontigo—the same as vertigo but at right angles—and the concomitant nausea made a filthy mess of the seating.

  Tickets for the rapitrans had come as part of the down payment on the contract Dan had signed with the Ginsberg’s management. Doubtless they wanted to ensure that the cost of skimmer rental—which was very steep these days—wasn’t added to the bill for incidental expenses. But after the next-to-last stop Lyla’s ride seemed to go on and on and on. Clinging for comfort to the recorder they employed to fix the cryptic oracles she uttered during trance, she wondered if she were really plunging alone into nowhere.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A MODEL CITIZEN AND A CLIENT GREATLY VALUED BY HIS AREA GOTTSCHALK

  Qty. 1 Mark XIX oversuit, insulated, with integral

  boots and gauntlets

  Qty. 1 Helmask with integral respirator and aeration pack

  Qty. 1 350-watt laser-gun with 50-shot accumulator rechargeable from domestic current

  Qty. 1 Projectile side-arm caliber 9 mm., automatic

  Qty. 3 Spare magazines for foregoing

  Qty. 6 Untimed self-fragmenting glass emetic gas-grenades

  Qty. 1 Baldric for grenades with attached pouch for magazines, etc.

  Qty. 1 Sheath-knife with 18-cm. blade

  Qty. 1 First-aid kit

  The children were away in boarding-school and Nora was out calling on a neighbor so Lionel Prior collected his equipment and went to join his citidef group for their afternoon exercise.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE ASSASSINATION OF THE MARAT/DE SADE BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM AT 2014

  At long last a human voice emerged from the speaker adjacent to the exit of the skimmer-park. The compatibility of the automatic voices was as good as any Flamen had ever heard, but his nervous sensitivity to subtleties of this order was among the talents which had kept him afloat, albeit precariously, in the world of vu-transmission long after his former rivals had capsized. In fact he had once broken open a major bribery scandal through recognizing that a custom-tailored automatic was answering calls for a man who ought not to have been able to afford such equipment.

  “Dr. Spoelstra here, Mr. Flamen—what can I do for you?”

  “You can let me see my wife,” Flamen snapped. Somewhat to his surprise, he realized as he uttered the words that he really did want to see Celia, very much indeed. Their marriage had worn threadbare long before her actual breakdown, but in spite of falling out of love with her he had gone on liking her as a person. She could never, for example, have become boring, even though towards the end the way she stimulated him had narrowed down to one single channel: a gift for making him angry.

  Better that, he told himself, than the kind of drab pretense at respectability which Lionel Prior and his wife Nora maintained. And—more cynically—if it turned out that he really had mortally offended Prior this morning, he wouldn’t want to be wholly without allies and confidants.

  “You should have warned us to expect you today,” Dr. Spoelstra responded equally curtly. “A comweb message has been sent to your home informing you of the good news that your wife has gone to green, as we put it—in other words, she’s been upgraded to the status enjoyed by patients approaching the temporary discharge point—and in consequence she’s been invited to be among the audience this afternoon at a performance by the well-known pythoness Miss Lyla Clay. I’m—”

  “So that takes precedence over seeing her own husband?”

  Stiffly: “There’s no compulsion about it, Mr, Flamen! I was merely about to say that I’m sure she would be disappointed to have to miss this unique occasion. However, if you insist …”

  “No, of course I don’t insist,” Flamen assured her hastily. Apart from other considerations, he couldn’t afford to; Celia was in the Ginsberg on a monthly contract which ceded his legal guardianship of her to Dr. Mogshack, and the swingeing penalty clause for premature discharge was matched by one for premature reclamation of responsibility.

  But something had gone click in his subconscious at the news he had just been given, and during the next few seconds an idea emerged that almost made him shake with excitement. A pythoness performing in a mental hospital …? There had been that last-century classic about the assassination of the Marquis de Sade as performed by … No, that couldn’t be right. But “by the inmates of the hospital at Charenton,” anyway.


  Hmmm …!

  It took him half a heartbeat to consider and discard the possibility of sending for extra cameras; the meterage he could collect with the equipment he always kept in the skimmer would probably do very well.

  He began to talk again, rapidly and persuasively, laying maximum stress on the degree of imaginative insight which must have gone into mounting such a significant project.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THOUGHT PASSING REPEATEDLY THROUGH THE MIND OF ARTHUR J. HODDINOTT, UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION SERVICE OFFICER, ON DUTY AT KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT WHEN MORTON LENIGO ARRIVED

  “So the computers must have said it was okay but can’t computers sometimes lose their marbles too?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  PROOF POSITIVE FOR THE ASSERTION THAT IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE FOR A GUTTER TO RUN AT PENTHOUSE LEVEL

  Lyla Clay emerged onto the rapitrans platform, trembling. The tunnels themselves were under low pressure—had to be, or air resistance would have rendered their designed operating speeds impossible. So there was just this one access door, and the space beyond it was constricted, the very roof seeming to lean on her head. She had seen pictures of the Ginsberg, and knew that perhaps as much as two hundred meters of concrete and steel might be directly between her and the open sky. She bit her lip. The talent which had made her a pythoness with a growing reputation had its drawbacks, and excessively vivid imagination was one of them. For an endless moment she pictured herself being trapped here. She couldn’t get back into the train compartment and hurtle away with it, for this was as far as her ticket carried her and the tickets for the homeward journey were in the pocket of Dan’s breeches. So too was the pass which would get them through the barrier blocking access to the elevator for the upper levels.

  Suppose his compartment had been misrouted? Once in a few million times that did happen, for all the reassuring propaganda to the contrary. He might have been sent to Far Rockaway or somewhere, and she’d have to stay here for hours and hours and …

  But the door sighed open again and there he was, only a few seconds behind her. With perfect aplomb he marched towards the elevator; glad that her yash concealed her expression of relief, Lyla followed, wondering what it would be like to be thirty instead of twenty. Would she too gain that extra confidence after fifty percent more aware existence?

  Waiting for their pass to be read by the scanners, she felt a desperate need to speak, and seized on the first words which sprang to mind.

  “I don’t like the atmosphere of this place,” she said.

  Dan glanced at her. “I’m not surprised. The air’s probably permeated with the skin-secretions of schizophrenics. I hate the stink of mental hospitals, and I’m not what you’d call a sensitive type. Just put up with it for a while, though, darl. All kinds of things may come of this. According to what Dr. Spoelstra told me, we’re setting a very important precedent this afternoon.”

  He chuckled. “Never had anyone so eager, know that? She was practically climbing down the comweb line to make sure she got you here today. I hate to think of all the other bookings we’re going to have to postpone to accommodate her repeat orders!”

  Other bookings? What other …? Oh. Of course. A typical Dan Kazer con job, no doubt involving the later faking of contracts including penalty clauses and kickbacks to the cooperative acquaintances he’d persuaded to invent bookings purely in order to cancel them. One could easily add fifty percent to the proceeds from an engagement by setting it up that way.

  She shrugged. It worked, and it was no more dishonest than half the “respectable” business deals put through in the course of an average year. Look what it had done for Mikki Baxendale, for example, four years ago when Dan was still macking for gutter poets instead of pythonesses.

  Impulsively she said, “Dan, you never did tell me—what separated you from Michaela?” And, as she recognized the emerging expression on his face, the mask of stony anger colder than arctic ice, she added hastily, “It’s my good luck, of course, but—well, I would like to know how I got it.”

  There was a pause. During it, the automatics conceded the validity of Dr. Spoelstra’s signature on their pass, and the barrier before the elevator car slid aside.

  Not moving to enter, Dan thought for a long moment, and finally spread his hands.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s not the sort of trick anyone will pull on me twice. There was another mackero after her—a poacher. Bought a few bugs, planted them, got the evidence, came around one day and said if I didn’t dissolve my contract with Mikki he’d sell me for a five-stretch because she was only fifteen.” Jaw-muscles lumping at the bitter recollection caused ripples in his dark beard, the artificial flock faithfully parodying the movement of the natural hairs. “He wasn’t interested in bedding her. He didn’t care for girls.”

  “And …” Lyla swallowed hard. “And could he have done what he threatened?”

  “Sure he could. But I’m not apologizing. By age fifteen Mikki knew more about that side of life than most people do by age fifty! The bastard’s still using some of the publicity material I compiled for her. You must have seen it—her brother at nine, her uncle at twelve? It’s all true.”

  “And that was okay, huh? But you at fifteen wasn’t?”

  Dan drew a deep breath, his face etched with a scowl like the traces of a heavy truck in soft ground. “Darl, if you can’t answer that, you’ll never get the measure of this planet of ours. Come on, they’re waiting for us upstairs.”

  “I guess it was naïve of me,” she agreed meekly, and complied.

  TWENTY-NINE

  IT IS ONE THING TO TALK GLIBLY ABOUT THE DETERMINISM OF HISTORY BUT ANOTHER THING ALTOGETHER TO FIND ONESELF CAUGHT UP IN HISTORIC FORCES LIKE A DEAD LEAF ON THE GALE

  As the sun tilted away from the zenith, so the sustaining anger leaked away from Pedro Diablo’s mind, and he was suddenly brought face to face with an appalling truth.

  It’s not hate. It’s terror.

  He looked at his own dark-skinned hand and watched it shaking, detachedly, because he could not really accept that a trembling due to fear had its origins in the mind that he Pedro Diablo was used to occupying. He was a maker of fear, not a victim of it.

  Here I am. How? Why?

  The reasons were as many-layered as a constructional sandwich of industrial plastics. Superficially one might say—but what was the good of superficialities? The Diablo reputation was founded on the ability to look far deeper into any given situation than most people could manage without a computer handy to consult. An atavistic talent, on a par with being able to multiply six-figure numbers in the head because it was too much trouble to go find the log-tables, but in a context like Blackbury very damned useful indeed.

  Out here, in the open so to speak …?

  He shook his head. It was no good trying to guess about his personal future. He could draw analogies with people in similar predicaments in the past—mainly in the far past—but nothing more. He could for example compare himself to a Jewish physicist thrown out of Nazi Germany, or one of the South African intellectuals deported during more recent crises by the Afrikaners, but it didn’t help. Until this very morning he had been a loyal, cooperative, and indeed an admired and respected proponent of the ideals which Blackbury stood for. To be kicked out on the say-so not of one of the resident knee geneticists but of some stinking foreign honky—that was just too much for his mind to digest.

  His hands folded into fists so abruptly there was a faint clapping sound. For an instant his mind had been dominated by lust for revenge. He was a master propagandist; his work at the insignificant Blackbury vustation had had repercussions far beyond the range of the antennae, being rebroadcast by half a score of black-owned, black-financed satellite relays. With his long-term intimate knowledge of the private lives of Mayor Black and his counterparts elsewhere, he could make the whole notion of Negro enclaves into a bad joke. It would take a week.

  But the desire was fading as rapidly as it h
ad come. To turn his coat was beyond his powers of adaptation. Right now he almost regretted having been so dogmatic with the Federal rep who had been compelled to carry him out of black jurisdiction. Better, surely, to have taken time to think things over, perhaps look for employment outside North America …

  Still, there it was. He had insisted on making it a matter of official record that the Blackbury-Washington contract be fulfilled, even though the very term made it certain that the contract must be an anachronism. This was still a honky country, but Washington had been a black-majority town for decades, and identifying it now with the Federal government was a mere symbol—the real seats of power were to be found in the dispersed centers set up during the war scare of the nineties, mostly in the Deep South where Mister Charley could be relied on to come running with gun in hand at the least threat of a knee revolt. Who should know that better than a man who’d exploited it often and often in his own programs?

  His mind teemed with new possibilities. It wouldn’t stop, and why should anyone expect it to? For ten years he’d fostered his talents; they couldn’t be switched off like a vuset. Perhaps the cruelest thing Mayor Black had done to him, apart from taking a honky’s say-so in deporting him, was depriving him of an outlet for his ideas. As though he were a time-traveler who’d spent years perfecting his Latin only to misfire and find the target city had been overrun by the Goths last week. …

  On the other hand—and he brightened a trifle at the realization—he had been spared what would have happened in the inverse situation. Suppose some dark-skinned misfit had been deposited at the outskirts of Blackbury: instant directives would have come down telling the local vu-station to get him on the beams right away, coax him into virulent denunciation of his former friends before his wrath had cooled. It was as much to guard against that risk as because he was genuinely afraid of the way he might be treated that he had insisted on full compliance with the Blackbury-Washington contract.