Solar Lottery (12 page)

The theater was dark. Pellig blundered in confusion: a bad strategy, Davis realized The darkness wouldn’t affect the teeps, who depended not on sight but on telepathic contact. The operator’s mind was as obvious in darkness as in broad daylight; and the movements of the body were impeded.

The operator now realized his mistake and sought an exit. But already vague shapes were moving in on him. The questioning figures were only partly visible. Pellig hesitated, then dashed into a lavatory. A woman followed him to the door and halted briefly. In that interval Pellig burned his way through the wall of the lavatory with his thumb-gun and emerged in the alley behind the theater.

The body stood considering, trying to make up its mind. The vast shape of the Directorate building loomed ahead, a golden tower that caught the mid-day sunlight and sparkled it back. Pellig took a deep shuddering breath and started toward it at a relaxed trot …

And the red button twitched.

The body stumbled. The new operator, dazed with surprise, fought for control. The body smashed into a heap of garbage, struggled up, and then loped on. Nobody followed. There were no visible pursuers. The body reached a busy street, glanced around, and then hailed a robot-operated public taxi.

A moment later the cab roared off, in the direction of the Directorate tower. Other cars and people flitted past, as it
gained speed. In the back, Pellig relaxed against the soft seat cushions, face placid. This operator was learning confidence fast. He nonchalantly lit a cigarette and examined the passing streets. He cleaned his nails, reached down to touch a burned spot on his trouser leg, tried to interest the robot driver in conversation, then settled comfortably back.

Something strange was happening. Davis turned his eyes to the location schematics, which showed the space-relationship of the body to the Directorate offices.
The body had gone too far.
Incredibly, the teep network had failed to stop it.

Why?

Sweat stood out on Davis’ palms and armpits. A dazzling nausea licked through him. Maybe it was going to work. Maybe the body would actually get through.

Calmly, confidently, lounging in the back seat of the public taxi, Keith Pellig sped toward the Directorate offices, his thumb-gun resting loosely in his lap.

    Major Shaeffer stood in front of his desk and bellowed with fright.

“It’s not possible,” drummed the disorganized thoughts of the Corpsman nearest him. “It
isn’t, isn’t, isn’t possible.
”

“There must be a reason,” Shaeffer managed to think back.

“We lost him.” Incredulous, fearful, the thoughts dinned back and forth through the web-strands of the network.

“Shaeffer,
we lost him
! Walter Remington picked him up as he stepped off the ship. He had him. He caught the whole syndrome. The assassin’s thumb-gun, his fear, his strategy, his personality-characteristics. And then—”

“You let him get away.”

“Shaeffer,
he disappeared.
” A running stream of disbelief. “Suddenly he was gone. He vanished in thin air. I tell you, we
did not lose him.
At the second station he ceased to exist.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” There was numb misery in the man. “Remington passed him to Allison at the clothing store. The impressions came clear as glass; no doubt of it. The assassin began to run through the store. Allison kept lock easily; his thoughts stood out the way an assassin’s thoughts do, that highly-colored etched intentness.”

“He must have raised a shield.”

“There was no diminution. The entire personality was cut off instantly—not merely the thoughts.”

Shaeffer’s mind dived crazily. “It’s never happened to us before.” He cursed in a loud, wild voice that shook the objects on his desk. “And Wakeman’s on Luna. We can’t teep him; I’ll have to use the regular ipvic.”

“Tell him something’s terribly wrong. Tell him the assassin disappeared into thin air.”

Shaeffer hurried to the transmission room. As he was jerking the closed-circuit to the Lunar resort into life, a new flurry of excited thoughts chilled him.

“I’ve picked him up!” An eager Corpswoman, relayed by the network from one to another. “I’ve got him!”

“Where are you?” A variety of insistent demands came from up and down the network. There were quick, urgent calls as the frantic teeps collected for action. “Where is he?”

“Theater. Near the clothing store.” Rapid, disjointed instructions. “He’s heading into the men’s room. Only a few feet from me; shall I go in? I can easily—”

The thought broke off.

Shaeffer squalled a shattering blast of despair and rage down the network. “Go on!”

Silence, And then … the mind screamed.

Shaeffer clapped his hands futilely to his head and closed his eyes. Gradually the storm died down. All up and down the network the violence rolled and lapped. Mind after mind was smashed, short-circuited, blacked-out by the overload. Shattering
pain lashed through the entire web of telepaths, back to the original mind.

Three in a row.

“Where is he?” Shaeffer shouted. “What happened?”

The next station responded faintly. “She lost him. She’s dropped from the network. Dead, I think. Burned-out.” Bewilderment. “I’m in the area but I can’t catch the mind she was scanning. The mind she was scanning is gone!”

Shaeffer managed to raise Peter Wakeman on the ipvic vidscreen. “Peter,” he croaked aloud, “we’re beaten.”

“What do you mean? Cartwright isn’t even there!”

“We picked up the assassin and then lost him. We picked him up again later on, a few minutes later—in another location. Peter,
he got past three stations.
And he’s still moving. How he—”

“Listen to me,” Wakeman interrupted. “Once you get hold of his mind, stay with him. Close ranks; follow him until the next station takes over. Maybe you’re too far apart. Maybe—”

“I’ve got him,” a thought came to Shaeffer. “He’s near me. I’ll find him: he’s close by.”

The network yammered excitement and suspense.

“I’m getting something strange.” Doubt mixed with curiosity, and was followed by startled disbelief. “There must be more than one assassin. But that’s not possible.” Growing excitement. “I can actually see him. Pellig just got out of a cab—he’s walking along the street ahead of me. He’s going to enter the Directorate building by the main entrance; it’s all there in his mind. I’ll kill him. He’s stopping for a streetlight. Now he’s thinking of crossing the street and going—”

Nothing.

Shaeffer waited. And still nothing came. “Did you kill him?” he demanded. “Is he dead?”

“He’s gone!” The thought came, hysterical and giggling. “He’s standing in front of me and at the same time he’s gone.
He’s here and he isn’t here. Who are you? Who do you want to see? Mr. Cartwright isn’t here just now. What’s your name? Are you the same man I … or is there … that we haven’t out this is going out is
out
…”

The damaged teep dribbled off into infantile mutterings, and Shaeffer dropped him from the network. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible. Keith Pellig was still there, standing face to face with a Corpsman, in easy killing-distance—yet Keith Pellig had vanished from the face of the Earth!

    At the viewing screen rigged up for monitoring the progress of the assassin, Verrick turned to Eleanor Stevens. “We were wrong. It’s working better than we had calculated. Why?”

“Suppose you were talking to me,” Eleanor said tightly. “Carrying on a conversation. And I vanished completely. Instead of me a totally different person appeared.”

“A different person physically,” Verrick agreed. “Yes.”

“Not even a woman. A young man or an old man. Some utterly different
body
who continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.”

“I see,” Verrick said avidly.

“Teeps depend on telepathic rapport,” Eleanor explained. “Not visual image. Each person’s mind has a unique taste. The teep hands on by mental contact, and if that’s broken—” The girl’s face was stricken. “Reese, I think you’re driving them insane.”

Verrick got up and moved away from the screen. “You watch for a while.”

“No.” Eleanor shuddered. “I don’t want to see it.”

A buzzer sounded on Verrick’s desk. “List of flights out of Batavia,” a monitor told him. “Total count of time and destination for the last hour. Special emphasis on unique flights.”

“All right.” Verrick nodded vaguely, accepting the metal-foil
sheet and dropping it with the litter heaped on his desk. “God,” he said hoarsely to Eleanor. “It won’t be long.”

Calmly, his hands in his pockets, Keith Pellig was striding up the wide marble stairs, into the main entrance of the central Directorate building at Batavia, directly toward Leon Cartwright’s suite of inner offices.

Peter Wakeman had made a mistake.

He sat for a long time letting the realization of his mistake seep over him. With shaking fingers he got a fifth of Scotch from his luggage and poured himself a drink. There was a scum of dead dried-up protine in the glass. He threw the whole thing in a disposal slot and sat sipping from the awkward bottle. Then he got to his feet and entered the lift to the top floor of the resort.

Corpsmen, dressed in bright vacation colors, were relaxing and enjoying themselves around and in a vast tank of sparkling blue water. Above them a dome of transparent plastic kept the fresh spring-scented air in, and the bleak void of the Lunar landscape out. Laughter, the splash of lithe bodies, the flutter of color and texture and bare flesh, blurred past him as he crossed the deck.

Rita O’Neill had climbed from the water and was sunbathing drowsily a little way beyond the main group of people. Her sleek naked body gleamed moistly in the hot light that filtered down through the lens of the protective balloon. When she
saw Wakeman she sat up quickly, black hair cascading in a glittering tide of motion down her tanned shoulders and back.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

Wakeman threw himself down in a deck chair. A MacMillan approached him and he automatically took an old-fashioned from its tray. “I was talking with Shaeffer,” he said, “back at Batavia.”

Rita took a brush and began stroking out her heavy cloud of hair. A shower of sparkling drops steamed from the sun-baked deck around her. “What did he have to say?” she asked, as casually as she could. Her eyes were large and dark and serious.

Wakeman sipped his drink aimlessly and allowed the bright warmth of the overhead sun to lull him to half-slumber. Not far off, the crowd of frolicking bathers splashed and laughed and played games in the chlorine-impregnated water. A huge shimmering water-ball lifted itself up and hung like a living sphere before it plunged down in the grip of a flashing white-toothed Corpsman. Against her towel Rita’s body was a dazzling shape of brown and black, supple lines of flesh moulded firm and ripe in the vigor of youth.

“They can’t stop him,” Wakeman said. In his stomach the whiskey had formed a congealed lump that settled cold and hard into his loins. “He’ll be here, not long from now. I had it calculated wrong.”

Rita’s black eyes widened. She momentarily stopped brushing, then started again, slowly and methodically. She shook her hair back and climbed to her feet. “Does he know Leon is here?”

“Not yet. But it’s only a question of time.”

“And we can’t defend him here?”

“We can try. Maybe I can find out what went wrong. Maybe I can get more information on Keith Pellig.”

“Will you take Leon someplace else?”

“It’s not worth it. This is as good a place as any. At least there aren’t many minds to blur scanning here.” Wakeman got stiffly to his feet and pushed away his half-finished drink. He felt old; and his bones ached. “I’m going downstairs to go over the tapes we scanned on Herb Moore, particularly the ones we got the day he came to talk to Cartwright. Maybe I can put something together.”

Rita slipped on a robe and tied the sash around her slim waist. She dug her feet into ankle-length boots and fished together her brush and sun-glasses and lotion. “How much time do we have before he gets here?”

“We should start getting ready. Things are moving fast. Too fast for anyone’s good. It all seems to be … falling apart.”

“I hope you can do something.” Rita’s voice was calm, emotionless. “Leon’s resting. I made him lie down; the doctor gave him a shot of something to make him sleep.”

Wakeman lingered. “I did what I thought was right. I must have left something out. It’s clear we’re fighting something much more complex and cunning than we realized.”

“You should have let him run it,” Rita said. “You took the initiative out of his hands. You’re like Verrick and the rest of them. You never believed he could manage. You treated him like a child until he gave up and believed it himself.”

“I’ll stop Pellig,” Wakeman said quietly. “I’ll correct things. I’ll find out what it is and stop him someplace, before he gets to your uncle. It’s not Verrick who’s running things. Verrick could never work anything out this clever. It must be Moore.”

“It’s too bad,” Rita said, “that Moore isn’t on our side.”

“I’ll stop him,” Wakeman repeated. “Some way, somehow.”

“Between drinks, maybe.” Rita halted for a moment to tie the laces on her boots, and then she disappeared down a
descent ramp toward Cartwright’s private quarters. She didn’t look back.

    Keith Pellig climbed the wide marble stairs of the Directorate building with confidence. He walked swiftly, keeping up with the fast-moving crowd of classified bureaucrats pushing good-naturedly into the elevators and passages and offices. In the main lobby Pellig halted a moment to get his bearings.

With a thunderous din, alarm bells went off throughout the building.

The good-natured milling of officials and visitors abruptly ceased. Faces lost their friendly monotony; in an instant the easy-going crowd was transformed into a suspicious, fearful mass. From concealed speakers harsh mechanical voices dinned:

“Clear the building! Everyone must leave the building!” The voices shrilled in a deafening cacophony. “The assassin is in the building! Everyone must leave!”

Pellig lost himself in the swirling waves of men and women pouring around with ominous grimness. He edged, darted, pushed his way into the interior of the mass, toward the labyrinth of passages that led from the central lobby.

There was a scream. Someone had recognized him. There was rapid firing, a blackened, burned-out patch of charred bodies, as guns were fired in crazed panic. Pellig escaped and continued circling warily, keeping in constant motion.

“The assassin is in the main lobby!” the mechanical voices blared. “Concentrate on the main lobby!”

“There he is!” a man shouted. Others took up the roar. “That’s him, there!”

On the roof of the building the first wing of military transports was settling down. Green-clad soldiers poured out and began descending in lifts. Heavy weapons and equipment appeared, dragged to lifts or grappled over the side to the ground level.

At his screen, Reese Verrick pulled away briefly and said to Eleanor Stevens, “They’re moving in non-teeps. Does that mean—”

“It means the Corps has been knocked out,” Eleanor answered. “They’re through. Finished.”

“Then they’ll track Pellig visually. That’ll cut down the value of our machinery.”

“The assassin is in the lobby!” the mechanical voices roared above the din. Down corridors MacMillan heavy-duty weapons rolled, guns bristling like quills. Soldiers threw plastic cable spun from hand-projectors in an intricate web across the mouths of corridors. The milling, excited officials were herded toward the main entrance of the building. Outside, soldiers were setting up a ring of steel, a circle of men and guns. As the officials poured from the building they were examined visually one by one and then passed on.

But Pellig wasn’t coming out. He started back once—and at that moment the red button jumped, and Pellig changed his mind.

The next operator was eager and ready. He had everything worked out the moment he entered the synthetic body. Down a side corridor he sprinted, directly at a clumsy MacMillan gun trying to wedge itself in the passage. As the locks of the gun slid down, Pellig squeezed through. The locks slammed viciously after him and the passage was sealed off.

“The assassin has left the lobby!” the mechanical voices squalled. “Remove that MacMillan weapon!”

The gun was hastily collected and propelled protesting and whirring to a storage locker. Troops poured after Pellig as he raced down deserted office corridors, cleared of officials and workers, yellow-lit passages that echoed with distant clangs.

Pellig thumb-burned his way through a wall and into the main reception lounge. The lounge was empty and silent. It was filled with chairs, vid and aud tapes, lush carpets and walls—but no people.

At his screen, Benteley started with recognition. This was the lounge where he had waited to see Reese Verrick …

The synthetic body skimmed from office to office, a weaving, darting thing that burned a path ahead of it without visible emotion or expression. Once it raced through a room of still-working officials. Screaming men and women scrambled wildly for escape. Desks were hastily abandoned in the frantic rush to exits. Pellig ignored the terrified workers and skimmed on, his feet barely touched the floor. At a checkpoint he seemed almost to rise and hurtle through the air, a blank-faced moist-haired Mercury.

The last commercial office fell behind. Pellig emerged before the vast sealed tank that was the Quizmaster’s inner fortress. He recoiled as his thumb-gun showered harmlessly against the thick rexeroid surface. Pellig stumbled away, momentarily bewildered.

“The assassin is at the inner office!” mechanical voices dinned above and around him, up and down corridors, in rooms throughout the elaborate building. “Surround and destroy him!”

Pellig raced in an uncertain circle—and again the red button twitched.

The new operator staggered, crashed against a desk, pulled the synthetic body quickly to its feet, and then proceeded to systematically burn his way around the side of the rexeroid tank.

In his office, Verrick rubbed his hands with satisfaction. “Now it won’t be long. Is that Moore operating it?”

“No,” Eleanor said, examining the break-down of the indicator board. “It’s one of his staff.”

The synthetic body emitted a supersonic blast. A section of the rexeroid tank slid away, and the concealed passage lay open. The body hurried up the passage without hesitation.

Under its feet gas capsules popped and burst uselessly. The body did not breathe.

Verrick laughed like an excited child. “See? They can’t stop him. He’s
in.
” He leaped up and down and pounded his fists against his knees. “Now he’ll kill him. Now!”

But the rexeroid tank, the massive inner fortress with its armory of guns and ipvic equipment, was empty.

Verrick squealed a high-pitched frenzied curse. “He’s not there! He’s gone!” His massive face melted with disappointment. “They got the son of a bitch out!”

At his own screen, Herb Moore jerked controls with convulsive dismay. Lights, indicators, meters and dials, flowed wildly. Meanwhile, the Pellig body stood rooted to the spot, one foot into the deserted chamber. There was the heavy desk Cartwright should have been sitting at. All that was left were files, warning apparatus, equipment and machinery. But Cartwright wasn’t there.

“Keep him looking!” Verrick shouted. “Cartwright must be around someplace!”

The sound of Verrick’s voice grated in Moore’s aud phones. His mind worked rapidly. On the screen, his technician had started the body into uncertain activity. The schematic showed Pellig’s pin at the very core of the Directorate: the assassin had arrived but there was no quarry.

“It was a trap!” Verrick shouted in Moore’s ear. “A decoy! Now they’re going to destroy him!”

On all sides of the demolished fortress-cube, troops and weapons were in motion. Vast Directorate resources responding to Shaeffer’s hurried instructions.

“The assassin is at the inner cube!” mechanical speakers shrieked triumphantly. “Close in and kill him!”

“Get the assassin!”

“Shoot him down and grind him underfoot!”

Eleanor leaned close to Verrick’s hunched, massive shoulder. “They deliberately let him get in. Look—they’re coming for him.”

“Keep him moving!” Verrick shouted. “For God’s sake they’ll burn him to particles if he simply stands there!”

Down the wrecked corridor Pellig had cut, the snouts of guns poked inquisitively. Slow-rumbling equipment was solemnly organizing in a pattern of death, taking their time: there was no hurry.

Pellig floundered in confusion. He raced back down the passage and out of the cube, then sped from door to door like a trapped animal. Once he halted to burn down a MacMillan gun that had ventured too close and was clumsily taking aim. The gun dissolved and Pellig sprinted past its smoking ruin. But behind it the corridor was jammed with troops and weapons. He gave up and scurried back.

Herb Moore snapped an angry sentence to Verrick. “They took Cartwright out of Batavia.”

“Look for him.”

“He’s not there. It’s a waste of time.” Moore thought quickly. “Transfer me your analysis of ship-movements from Batavia. Especially in the last hour.”

“But—”

“We know he was there up to an hour ago. Hurry!”

The metalfoil rolled from its slot by Moore’s hand. He snatched it up and scanned the entries and analytical data. “He’s on Luna,” Moore said. “They took him off in their C-plus ship.”

“You don’t know,” Verrick retorted angrily. “He may be in a sub-surface shelter of some kind.”

Moore ignored him and slammed home a switch. Buttons leaped with excitement; Moore’s body sagged limply against its protective ring.

At his own screen Ted Benteley saw the Pellig body jump and stiffen. A tremor crossed its features, a subtle alteration of the vapid face. A new operator had entered it; above Benteley the red button had moved on.

The new operator wasted no time. He burned down a
handful of troops and then a section of wall. The steel and plastic fused together and bubbled away in molten fumes. Through the rent the synthetic body skimmed, a blank-faced projectile plunging in an arcing trajectory. A moment later it emerged from the building and, still gaining velocity, hurtled straight upward at the dull disc of the moon as it hung in the early-afternoon sky.

Below Pellig the Earth fell away. He was moving out into free space.

Benteley sat paralyzed at his screen. Suddenly everything made sense. As he watched the body race through darkening skies that lost their blue color and gained pinpoints of unwinking stars, he understood what had happened to him. It had been no dream. The body was a miniature ship, equipped in Moore’s reactor labs. And—he realized with a rush of admiration—the body needed no air. And it didn’t respond to extreme temperature. The body was capable of interplanetary flight.