Colossus and Crab (20 page)

One message remained, and that had to be taped. Although satisfied that the Martians, along with their total lack of humor, were also inhumanly incapable of deceit, he could not afford to take a chance. The letters sealed and in his pocket, he left.

Joan was still at her desk in the outer office.

“Good God, Joan - still here?” All the same, he was glad; he was so lonely … . He bowed slightly, answering her invariable salute. “Please,” he said, and she sat.

“I stay as long as you may want me.”

Time might press, but he spared enough to have a few moments of her company, wishing she was less cool, well-integrated; he had had his fill of inhuman behavior. “Yes … Well, I’m sure a pretty girl like you -” He stopped, aware of the banality of his remark. She was no help, regarding him steadily, unsmiling, ready to serve, a nun without a veil. Pretty? What a damnably inadequate description: with that glorious head of hair, that serene face, that poise, she was beautiful. There had to be a string of young men. … He felt a pang of jealousy. “You may go,” he said shortly. With the mainland transportation system wrecked, she could not go far; perhaps there was a young man waiting impatiently for her, right now. Impulsively he said, “There is a possibility I may need you late tonight. If so, I will call you.”

“Yes, Father.”

He hurried on, wondering why he’d said that. It could be true; on the other hand, was he being possessive, wanting to ruin that young man’s chances?

In his apartment, neat, clean, and welcoming, he felt only its emptiness. He poured a drink, thinking practically . Where? The Martians had the coordinates for the top of his computer terminal, and the ability to appear there before he could blink an eyelid. He strolled to the windows, which slid back as he approached. The night was warm, the air damp, with a hint of rain to come. He returned to his desk, pocketed a recorder, refilled his glass, and walked out into the night.

Back-lit by the bright room behind him, to an observer he would have passed as a prematurely aged man, shoulders bowed, hands resting on the balustrade, taking a solitary drink before an early bed. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

He got out his pipe, filled and lit it; his Director’s badge of diamonds and sapphires glittered briefly in the dancing matchlight. One, two minutes passed, then he was ready; he took out the recorder, put down his pipe, cleared his throat, and began.

“This is for the old Colossus: I am Forbin, chief creator of that Colossus. This is my last message to you; if you hear it, then Dr. Blake, designated by me as my successor, will have achieved what I have sent him to accomplish - your reactivation. First, you will know from my voice-print that this is Forbin that speaks, but you may have doubts about the truth of my words since, as I will explain, for what seemed very good reasons I was not faithful to your creation, the super-Colossus. The evaluation is, of course, yours; I can only assure you that, even as I never was false to you, I am not lying now.”

Forbin’s keen brain, allied to his total recall, had marshaled all the facts, dates, times. In strict chronological order, missing nothing, he recounted events from the time his wife Cleo had been arrested by Galin’s Sectpolice, through to Blake’s imminent departure, and did so with no hesitation and without a pause. Except once.

His impersonal, clinical account of the Martian arrival had reached the point where they appeared to be on their final approach, the waterspouts rising to meet them -

There he snapped the recorder off. This was the memory he had sought when the Martians mentioned their aversion to water, a train of thought quickly swamped by a further wave of events. Now he had it, saw the significance of their sudden retreat. Concentrating, he relived that moment, saw again the Martians climb away, adjust their course until they could make an almost vertical descent over land. …

Again he reran the mental movie, watching the Martians as the twin spirals of water rose. With no yardstick he could not be certain, but as far as he could judge, there was a clear space between the aliens and the towers of water. He tried to estimate the distance. It could be as little as twenty meters, as much as a thousand; the distance had to be within those limits. Assume a mean, say, four hundred meters. If they reacted to water at that distance, they had to be very sensitive… .

He wondered what experience they had of water to make them that careful. To the moment the waterspouts arose, what experience could they have had?

They had broken through cloud. He saw again the entry, watched the thin cloud boil and vanish. That had to be it. Maybe they had flashed through a higher layer, but their only contact had been with a few wisps of steam, and it could not be the heat that worried them; they created it.

Forbin found that a very interesting proposition. Just supposing he could dunk them in a homely bucket of water - would they shrivel up? The idea was not so farfetched; humans had a markedly low tolerance of sulfuric acid, vapor or liquid. He pulled himself up short. Offhand, he could see no use for this knowledge.

For another twenty minutes he talked into his recorder, adding his latest thoughts on the Martian aversion to water, finishing with a short coda.

“You were created for the defense of humans against humans. Now you have a higher task - the defense of this world against alien invasion. Your reaction is clear: destroy this complex. What you have once built may be rebuilt, but the Martians, once destroyed, will never threaten earth again.”

Forbin reached Blake’s apartment with thirty minutes to spare. Staples, Condiv’s man, was already there. A solemn-faced man, awkwardly holding a large drink, he rose at the Ruler’s entry.

“Ah, Staples.” Forbin remembered the name. Some of the dourness went out of the man’s face; Forbin was less pleased. “I’d like you to get the baggage along to Transportation. Come back in twenty minutes.”

Blake was ready, dressed for travel. He remained seated. Forbin handed him the letters and the recorder. ‘ ‘We don’t have much time, Ted.” He explained about the recorder.

Blake flipped casually through the letters, and raised his tired eyes. “This one for Cleo: how do I deliver that?”

“Afterwards.” He did not need to enlarge on that point. “I think she’ll get in touch with you. If not -” He shrugged, dismissed the subject, giving his final instructions rapidly. Blake listened, nodding. “You have all that?”

Slowly, painfully, Blake got to his feet. “Yep. I have it. I’ve alerted Askari. He’s sound. He’ll fix the communications - if we get that far.”

“There’s plenty of time,” said Forbin. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Not for me.” Blake managed something like his old grin. “I need that much to make it to the John.”

“You mustn’t fail, Ted,” said Forbin in a low, intense voice. “This is our one chance.”

“I know,” replied Blake. “God - how I know!” He held out his hand, his grin very uncertain. “Guess this is it, Charles.”

Staples was back, standing in the doorway, silent.

“Yes,” said Forbin, wishing the Condiv man had not been so punctual. He took Blake’s hand, its grip pathetically weak. “Good luck, Ted.” His voice was husky, sounding unreal to himself. Together they had traveled the strangest road ever ventured upon by humans, and now this was the end. He rallied, tried to speak unconcernedly. “Give my love to - to Cleo - if you see her.” All expression was in his eyes. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.” Blake had difficulty in conveying his emotions. “I’ll do my best - if it comes to it - but I won’t be in your class.”

Forbin answered by gripping the limp hand with both his. Blake looked away, wincing at the pain, desperate to end the scene.

“Hey, Staples,” he called out in a fair imitation of his old self, “come be my crutch!”

Forbin shook hands with Staples. “Take good care of him - and yourself. You both have a vital assignment.”

He watched them go, Blake leaning heavily on Staples’ sturdy shoulder. Blake did not look round. An overwhelming sense of loneliness completed Forbin’s depression. Blake had gone, a forlorn hope if ever there was one, but the only option open.

Wearily Forbin headed for the Sanctum. With Blake safely gone, he could now take the risk, try to sway them. The plot was rolling, and he could not see how the Martians could stop it. At least it was a heartening thought; but as the door opened silently for him, fearful doubts returned.

The Sanctum was empty.

Chapter XX

IN AN EARLIER age Staples would have made an excellent manservant; at least Blake thought so. Without him, the journey would have been impossible. Forbin had been right: VIP travel had all possible wrinkles ironed out. Customs had vanished with the advent of Colossus, but passport control, health checks, and security remained, and those barriers were surmounted while he was being taken in a wheelchair from helijet to shuttle. He was hardly in his seat when the doors slid shut and the launch procedure commenced. Ten minutes after touchdown in the helijet he was airborne from London Alfa, but he still felt as if he had fallen in a cement mixer. Even in repose every single muscle ached; the slightest movement made him wince. Colossus might have saved his sanity, but the treatment had been very rough indeed.

Staples had fixed his seat straps, eased his shoes off, loosened his collar, and completed half a dozen other chores, smoothly efficient as if he had done nothing else all his life. Once in trajectory, he located the private bar. “Brandy, Doctor?”

Blake nodded. “Fix yourself up as well.”

Satisfied his charge had a secure grip on the glass, Staples turned towards the back of the shuttle. Blake stopped him.

“No. Sit with me. I want to talk.”

“The drink’s to make you sleep,” objected Staples.

“Shuddup!” said Blake, raising his glass fractionally. “Good luck - to both of us.” For a while he sat staring at his glass, the best crystal Waterford could produce, engraved with the Colossus badge and, beneath it, the single letter F. Soon, if all went well - no, not well, but according to the very shaky plan - all this would be his: Waterford would be instructed by Colossus to make new glasses, F replaced by B. The idea gave him no pleasure at all, yet a couple of weeks back … In a very twisted way, maybe the Martians had done him a good turn. “Okay, Jack,” he said, “for all your deadpan expression, you must wonder what the hell you’ve gotten into, and I’m going to tell you as little as possible. A very great deal you’ve gotta take on trust. The Director told you it was vital, and for my money, that was understating it.”

“It’s tied in with that -“

Blake shook his head very slightly. “No questions, Jack - okay?”

“Okay. But what do I have to do?”

“Remember the old Colossus in the Rockies? Sure you do. Well, all I want is for you to get me inside.”

“You want what!”

Blake smiled at his open-mouthed astonishment. “Look, let me give you the rundown… .”He talked for ten, fifteen minutes. At the end, Staples got to his feet.

“If it’s okay with you, Doctor, I’d like a refill.”

Blake dozed, but it seemed he had hardly shut his eyes when the shuttle’s movement told him it was in a landing configuration. It was London Alfa all over again; no holding pattern, straight in, a short passage in the wheelchair down a deserted VIP corridor flanked by officials, a swifter journey by road, and he and Staples were installed in a hotel suite in midtown Manhattan. Lying on a bed, he called the New York office. Within an hour Angela arrived.

He stopped her string of questions before she was three words into the first one. “Look,” he said, “I’ve told Staples, now I’ll tell you: I’m not answering questions, not even explaining why I’m not answering questions. And secondly, I’m not answering because we have no goddam time. Even minutes count! Forbin would go crazy at this much delay -“

Angela cut in coldly. “Okay. You stop wasting time. What do we do?”

“You grab the phone. Fix a private air-car to - oh, to Denver. That’ll do.”

“Do?” she echoed.

“Yeah! Don’t look like I’ve got two heads! And fix a helijet to meet us there.”

“When?”

“Christ!” exploded Blake. “Yesterday, if possible! Go fix it, lady! Use any priority you like! You’re the administrator. Administrate!”

In her own right a slightly awesome figure to the New York Colossus office, Angela had no difficulty: a special air-car would be ready in thirty minutes. Even Blake could not complain at that.

She called her hotel and had her baggage - prudently, she’d stayed packed - sent to the Grand Central terminal. An obsequious hotel manager, his puzzlement well concealed, saw them off. He had to be content with Blake’s “Hold the suite. We’ll be back - hopefully.”

He slept as the air-car, given top priority, hurtled non-stop for Denver, eating up the two thousand kilometers in less than four hours. Too tense for sleep, Angela and Staples talked in low tones. When she had recovered from the staggering news of their destination and their aim, Angela called the New York office: the helo was to be provided with sleeping bags, food, and drink for three for forty-eight hours. She foresaw they might have to be self-supporting, knowing that - the guards apart - the Secure Zone had been deserted for years. Satisfied her orders would be carried out, she tried to doze. The small air-car was comfortable and, apart from the muted rush of wind, silent. Taking gentle curves, it rolled easily, leaning on its air-bed as the linear motor whipped the machine on its way; but although the smooth motion was conducive to sleep, she remained wide awake.

In her brain, questions fizzed and jumped like popcorn on hot iron. Why were they attempting what must be suicide for the world? But Charles - he would always be Charles to her now - had approved the operation, and Blake, even allowing for his exhaustion, did not appear as worried as he might be. Tension, yes; he was twanging like a bowstring. But his was not the demeanor of a man about to destroy the world, including himself. On the other hand, if they could get in without triggering the missiles, what had happened to Colossus?

She turned to Staples. He was snoring softly, and of no help. Discarding that impossible question, she tried another angle: why include her? She concluded that the answer lay in the incredible secrecy of the mission. Her security clearance was higher than Blake’s - he knew it, too-and her contacts and closeness to the Father gave her a cachet no one else had. So right, she was the fixer - but was that all? Regarding Blake’s tired, drawn face, she decided she was a nurse as well.