Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (19 page)

"Yeah,
sure, you mean you really haven't read it? It was supposed to be just a story,
you know, but now with the Wildwood raid and the Canadian landing, and now the
blackout, everybody knows it was the real thing,
y'know
?
This is just the first wave, like it says, testing our defenses and getting
hypno
control over all the key people, softening us up for
for
the big wave. Why, they've been catching our
teevies
for years.
Probably even learned
how to unscramble our
topsec
sendouts
and everything, just like the book says."

"Does it tell how
they're going to invade?"

"Oh,
sure, right down to the button; only it doesn't say how long between the first
and second waves,
y'know
. That's
wha's
got my nymph so scared. Hasn't scared
me
much,
but that's
prob'ly
because I'm better adjusted, I'm
really a pretty well adjusted guy. Went to a good Playschool, you know, and I
can get along with everybody and I don't go
fightin
'
back and
gettin
' all twisted up inside. Even the
group-doc at works thinks I'm pretty well adjusted; just the same, though, I
wouldn't want any aliens
nervin
' me into a
twitcher
-coma, or using me for a food culture incubator, or
white-
mousing
me, or anything."

"Yeah, I know," Alexander said. "You
know a place I can get this book?"

"I'd let you have mine,
on'y
I let my nymph's girlfriend take it to show her daddy.
We
kinda
switch off sometimes, even if it
ain't
strictly legal until my
contract's
up, but sometimes even a well-adjusted guy like me gets all tied up and can't
loosen up, you know. I
ain't
scared at
all,
o'course
, but some of the
things that the aliens can do can really make you shaky. You don't think that
means I'm unstable, do you?"

"No,
your group-doc has just been slipping up, not helping relax you and get you
back into the swing," Alexander said comfortingly, remembering his BURINF
days.

"Yeah,
that's what I've been
tellin
' my nymph, the
group-docs
oughta
know what to tell us about the
aliens so we know what we
oughta
think; it's their
fault if we get
kinda
shaky and get screaming dreams
sometimes. But look, Jack, we're
gettin
' pretty near
my place, so if you
wanta
you can come up and meet my
nymph. I
ain't
got any old-fashioned blocks about
her, you know, and any friend of mine is a friend of hers."

"Thanks,
some other time." The car had been wheeling through the low, drab
buildings of north St. Louis. "Look, what did you say that book was
called?"

"Alien Invaders.
You
can get it anywhere. You sure you don't
wanta
come up
for one round anyway?"

"No
thanks," Alexander said, feeling a little sick, not so much with disgust
as with pity, "but give her my love."

"All
twenty-nine, and same to you."

Alexander
stepped onto the curb and waved, and walked quickly toward the man-strip as the
Hydro buzzed around the corner.

The
town was dead in early-morning stillness, and he headed for the downtown
section. The gulf before him had suddenly narrowed, and he thought he saw the
first step across.

A
pulpie
book
called
Alien Invaders.

It
was ingenious, and deadly, and it fitted, Alexander realized as he sipped
surro
-coffee in a stall in the deserted downtown area,
waiting for the city to come alive. He knew that BURINF would never have
countenanced a book like that. Actually, it could not have known of its
existence, or it would have been nailed before a dozen copies had been
circulated. No publisher in the country had dared try to launch a
science-fiction or fantasy book since the crash, under the tacit threat of
embargoes on paper and
typcmetal
, and of DEPCO
investigation and reassignment of Stability Ratings if that was not enough.

But
the channels of distribution were there, created by
BURINF,
and the psychological Achilles' heel of the society was there, too—the abiding,
hysterical, carefully nurtured fear of space and anything associated with
space.

Quite
abruptly, Alexander could see a pattern. Early, undetected landings . . .
contact, perhaps psychological control of key individuals
...
a concentrated study of the society and
psychology of the inhabitants . . . circulation of a book, fanciful enough in
nature until the things it predicted began happening . . . then landings that
were less secretive, designed to draw attention to feed the growing fear and
panic, in preparation for the final, massive blow.

He
dropped his coin in the slot and went out into the cool, gray early-morning
ugliness. In his head the syrupy tune-
lessness
of the
coffee-stall
vendo
music was still recycling,
monotonous, deliberately unresolved, always running itself back into the
beginning of a phrase. He walked faster, dredged up the theme from
Marche Slav
to drive the
vendo
-pop
from his mind,
blinked
a little as the sun hit him
through a break between two building cubes.

Near
the river front he found a street that looked likely, crowded with bars and
porno-
mag
stalls and drunks sleeping on doorsteps.
The first step would be easy: get a copy of the book. At least he thought it
would be easy until he tried it; then, quite suddenly, it wasn't so easy after
all.

The
first stand was completely out, sold out for a week. Another place the vendor
started to shake his
head,
then blinked at Alexander
suspiciously and claimed he'd never heard of the book. In a third the last copy
had gone the day before, and the distributor wouldn't be back for a week at
least. A fourth, fifth and sixth try were equally fruitless.

Back
on the street, Alexander looked around him at the sluggish hesitancy with which
the city was coming to fife. There was none of the downtown hustle of the early
job-rush. People seemed to be moving aimlessly, stopping to gaze in windows,
congregating in small groups on the street corners. It was something Alexander
had not seen since the early days of the crash, when the people, not yet
desperate enough for violence, had walked about stunned, realizing with painful
unwillingness that the little familiar formalities of dull, dreary work were
suddenly meaningless.

And
now, on this morning, he saw and
felt
the
same blunted apathy.

It
was wrong, somehow, in the same way the Wildwood raid had been wrong, in the
same way a pulp magazine called
Alien Invaders
was
wrong
...
all fitting, but not quite
fitting. DEPCO, he knew, should be clocking this rumbling volcano; they should
be furiously at work draining off the pressure before the action stage was
reached, before the explosion came. That was what DEPCO was organized to do,
had
to do to maintain the stability that had to be maintained.

But there was no evidence of DEPCO activity,
and Alexander, seeing the vacuous, frightened faces passing him, felt a
growing sense of alarm, as if all the twittering birds and monkeys in this
nightmare psycho-structured jungle had suddenly stilled at the soft low cough
of a stalking killer.

He found the place he was looking for, taking
a spinner across town to the crowded warehouse and trucking terminal. He saw
the lettering on the third floor window of a decrepit
plasti
-brick
building of the last century:
Magdisco
,
the local warehouse of the sprawling Magazine Distributing Company.
Since hardbound books were practically nonexistent any more, except for
collector's items and university archives, all books and magazines were
distributed by magazine wholesaling agencies, and
Magdisco
was the largest, and the one least critical of the material it handled.
Alexander crossed the street, assuming his
Qualchi
slouch, and went up die narrow flight of stairs.

The
operation from the warehouse was largely automatic, and the tiny, littered
office space was empty. The rest of the place seemed to be crammed to the
ceiling with bundles of remainders, nude glossies, and a huge stack of particularly
disgusting action sets that were obviously meant for the Playschool contraband
circuit. Alexander's eyes searched the piles for the title he was looking for,
but there was no evidence of it.

"Help
you?" A thin, putty-faced man with thick glasses appeared out of the file
room in the back. "I'm looking for a copy of
Alien Invaders."
The man lost interest. "Sorry, we don't
retail." "I was thinking of buying in quantity." "Got a
retailer's license and quota?"

Alexander
let his eyes shift to the stack of glossies in the corner. "This was . . .
uh . . . for private distribution."

"Look,
beat it, huh? I got an agreement with the retailers and racks. I don't sell to
private parties . . . and they buy up to quota. I'm happy, they're happy. Get
your copy at a rack; I'm not
cuttin
' my throat."
The man plunked down behind a desk and turned to the
talktyper
.

Obviously subtle questioning wouldn't help.
Alexander's ID card was actually ten years out of date, but it looked official
when he flashed it under the man's nose.

"Lieutenant
Alexander, Army CI. I'm checking up on
Alien Invaders.
I
want to know who wrote it, where he lives, what else he's written. And I want
all the copies of the book you have."

The man stopped typing in midsentence,
staring up in a-
larm
, because Alexander had slouched
into the place with the shifty, cautious manner of his Mexican cover identity.
Now suddenly he stiffened and barked out his orders in the voice of a very
tough and very impatient CI lieutenant.

The
man hardly looked at the card. "I
...
I
...
we don't have that information here, Lieutenant."

"You have it," Alexander said,
stepping past him to the files and yanking the first drawer open.

"Wait
a minute, wait a minute
...
Ill
look." The man fell over himself to get to the
files. "The fifing system is . . .
er
. . . kind
of complicated . . . special . . . with the company. . . ."

"You
use alphabetical chronological," Alexander said, "or else you'll have
misfiling charges to answer for."

"Maybe
it's in the other cabinet. I'll look in the other cabinet," the man
stammered. It might have been a stall, but the man seemed genuinely scared.

"You'd
better find it if you don't want to log some poly time," Alexander said.
"We might throw in a few questions about where you get the Playschool
contraband over there. That's you; that's not
Magdisco
."
Unregistered contraband and interfering with the Playschool conditioning
programs could mean
recoop
and very probably a new
identity in a labor battalion. The man fairly tore into the files while
Alexander ransacked his desk, pulled out a much-thumbed copy of
Playschool Champ,
a standard authorized porno that had been
written ten years ago when such things were sensational rather than commonplace
everyday fact. The writing, by one of the best BURINF copywriters, had been
inspired virtuosity, and the book, widely distributed, had entered into the
thinking of the public and paved the way for the family-disassociation theories
of the Playschools.

"There's nothing
here," the man said, dusty from the files.

"Let's have a copy of
the book," Alexander said.

"They're all sold out.
They've been sold out for months."

"You're
lying," Alexander said. "You wouldn't be out of anything that's
selling that fast." He saw the man look around wildly, ready to make a
break,
and he moved in fast, clamping a wristlock on him.