The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (79 page)

“I concede that your methods must be the most modern in the world,” Tiborough said. “It's not your methods as much as the results of those methods that are at issue here. We…”

He broke off at a disturbance by the door. An Army colonel was talking to the guard there. He wore Special Services fourragere—Pentagon.

Wallace noted with an odd feeling of disquiet that the man was armed—a .45 at the hip. The weapon was out of place on him, as though he had added it suddenly on an overpowering need … emergency.

More guards were coming up outside the door now—Marines and Army. They carried rifles.

The colonel said something sharp to the guard, turned away from him and entered the committee room. All the cameras were tracking him now. He ignored them, crossed swiftly to Tiborough and spoke to him.

The senator shot a startled glance at Custer, accepted a sheaf of papers the colonel thrust at him. He forced his attention off Custer, studied the papers, leafing through them. Presently, he looked up, stared at Custer.

A hush fell over the room.

“I find myself at a loss, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “I have here a copy of a report … it's from the Special Services branch of the Army … through the Pentagon, you understand. It was just handed to me by, ah … the colonel here.”

He looked up at the colonel who was standing, one hand resting lightly on the holstered .45. Tiborough looked back at Custer and it was obvious the senator was trying to marshall his thoughts.

“It is,” Tiborough said, “that is … this report supposedly … and I have every confidence it is what it is represented to be … here in my hands … they say that … uh, within the last, uh, few days they have, uh, investigated a certain device … weapon they call it, that you are attempting to patent. They report…” He glanced at the papers, back to Custer, who was staring at him steadily. “… this, uh, weapon, is a thing that … it is extremely dangerous.”

“It is,” Custer said.

“I … ah, see.” Tiborough cleared his throat, glanced up at the colonel who was staring fixedly at Custer. The senator brought his attention back to Custer.

“Do you in fact have such a weapon with you, Mr. Custer?” Tiborough asked.

“I have brought it as an exhibit, sir.”

“Exhibit?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wallace rubbed his lips, found them dry. He wet them with his tongue, wished for the water glass, but it was beyond Custer.
Christ! That stupid cowpuncher!
He wondered if he dared whisper to Custer. Would the senators and that Pentagon lackey interpret such an action as meaning he was part of Custer's crazy antics?

“Are you threatening this committee with your weapon, Mr. Custer?” Tiborough asked. “If you are, I may say special precautions have been taken … extra guards in this room and we … that is, we will not allow ourselves to worry too much about any action you may take, but ordinary precautions are in force.”

Wallace could no longer sit quietly. He tugged Custer's sleeve, got an abrupt shake of the head. He leaned close, whispered: “We could ask for a recess, Bill. Maybe we…”

“Don't interrupt me,” Custer said. He looked at Tiborough. “Senator, I would not threaten you or any other man. Threats in the way you mean them are a thing we no longer can indulge in.”

“You … I believe you said this device is an exhibit,” Tiborough said. He cast a worried frown at the report in his hands. “I fail … it does not appear germane.”

Senator Plowers cleared his throat. “Mr. Chairman,” he said.

“The chair recognizes the senator from Nebraska,” Tiborough said, and the relief in his voice was obvious. He wanted time to think.

“Mr. Custer,” Plowers said, “I have not seen the report, the report my distinguished colleague alludes to; however, if I may … is it your wish to use this committee as some kind of publicity device?”

“By no means, Senator,” Custer said. “I don't wish to profit by my presence here … not at all.”

Tiborough had apparently come to a decision. He leaned back, whispered to the colonel, who nodded and returned to the outer hall.

“You strike me as an eminently reasonable man, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “If I may…”

“May I,” Senator Plowers said. “May I, just permit me to conclude this one point. May we have the Special Services report in the record?”

“Certainly,” Tiborough said. “But what I was about to suggest…”

“May I,” Plowers said. “May I, would you permit me, please, Mr. Chairman, to make this point clear for the record?”

Tiborough scowled, but the heavy dignity of the Senate overcame his irritation. “Please continue, Senator, I had thought you were finished.”

“I respect … there is no doubt in my mind of Mr. Custer's truthfulness,” Plowers said. His face eased into a grin that made him look grandfatherly, a kindly elder statesman. “I would like, therefore, to have him explain how this … ah, weapon, can be an exhibit in the matter before our committee.”

Wallace glanced at Custer, saw the hard set of the man's jaw, realized the cattleman had gotten to Plowers somehow. This was a set piece.

Tiborough was glancing at the other senators, weighing the advisability of high-handed dismissal … perhaps a star chamber session. No … they were all too curious about Custer's device, his purpose here.

The thoughts were plain on the senator's face.

“Very well,” Tiborough said. He nodded to Custer. “You may proceed, Mr. Custer.”

“During last winter's slack season,” Custer said, “two of my men and I worked on a project we've had in the works for three years—to develop a sustained-emission laser device.”

Custer opened his briefcase, slid out a fat aluminium tube mounted on a pistol grip with a conventional appearing trigger.

“This is quite harmless,” he said. “I didn't bring the power pack.”

“That is … this is your weapon?” Tiborough asked.

“Calling this a weapon is misleading,” Custer said. “The term limits and oversimplifies. This is also a brush-cutter, a substitute for a logger's saw and axe, a diamond cutter, a milling machine … and a weapon. It is also a turning point in history.”

“Come now, isn't that a bit pretentious?” Tiborough asked.

“We tend to think of history as something old and slow,” Custer said. “But history is, as a matter of fact, extremely rapid and immediate. A President is assassinated, a bomb explodes over a city, a dam breaks, a revolutionary device is announced.”

“Lasers have been known for quite a few years,” Tiborough said. He looked at the papers the colonel had given him. “The principle dates from 1956 or thereabouts.”

“I don't wish it to appear that I'm taking credit for inventing this device,” Custer said. “Nor am I claiming sole credit for developing the sustained-emission laser. I was merely one of a team. But I do hold the device here in my hand, gentlemen.”

“Exhibit, Mr. Custer,” Plowers reminded him. “How is this an exhibit?”

“May I explain first how it works?” Custer asked. “That will make the rest of my statement much easier.”

Tiborough looked at Plowers, back to Custer. “If you will tie this all together, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “I want to … the bearing of this device on our—we are hearing a particular bill in this room.”

“Certainly, Senator,” Custer said. He looked at his device. “A ninety-volt radio battery drives this particular model. We have some that require less voltage, some that use more. We aimed for a construction with simple parts. Our crystals are common quartz. We shattered them by bringing them to a boil in water and then plunging them into ice water … repeatedly. We chose twenty pieces of very close to the same size—about one gram, slightly more than fifteen grains each.”

Custer unscrewed the back of the tube, slid out a round length of plastic trailing lengths of red, green, brown, blue and yellow wire.

Wallace noticed how the cameras of the TV men centered on the object in Custer's hands. Even the senators were leaning forward, staring.

We're gadget-crazy people,
Wallace thought.

“The crystals were dipped in thinned household cement and then into iron filings,” Custer said. “We made a little jig out of a fly-tying vice and opened a passage in the filings at opposite ends of the crystals. We then made some common celluloid—nitro-cellulose, acetic acid, gelatin and alcohol—all very common products, and formed it in a length of garden hose just long enough to take the crystals end to end. The crystals were inserted in the hose, the celluloid poured over them and the whole thing was seated in a magnetic waveguide while the celluloid was cooling. This centered and aligned the crystals. The waveguide was constructed from wire salvaged from an old TV set and built following the directions in the Radio Amateur's Handbook.”

Custer re-inserted the length of plastic into the tube, adjusted the wires. There was an unearthly silence in the room with only the cameras whirring. It was as though everyone were holding his breath.

“A laser requires a resonant cavity, but that's complicated,” Custer said. “Instead, we wound two layers of fine copper wire around our tube, immersed it in the celluloid solution to coat it and then filed one end flat. This end took a piece of mirror cut to fit. We then pressed a number eight embroidery needle at right angles into the mirror end of the tube until it touched the side of the number one crystal.”

Custer cleared his throat.

Two of the senators leaned back. Plowers coughed. Tiborough glanced at the banks of TV cameras and there was a questioning look in his eyes.

“We then determined the master frequency of our crystal series,” Custer said. “We used a test signal and oscilloscope, but any radio amateur could do it without the oscilloscope. We constructed an oscillator of that master frequency, attached it at the needle and a bare spot scraped in the opposite edge of the waveguide.”

“And this … ah … worked?” Tiborough asked.

“No.” Custer shook his head. “When we fed power through a voltage multiplier into the system we produced an estimated four hundred joules emission and melted half the tube. So we started all over again.”

“You are going to tie this in?” Tiborough asked. He frowned at the papers in his hands, glanced toward the door where the colonel had gone.

“I am, sir, believe me,” Custer said.

“Very well, then,” Tiborough said.

“So we started all over,” Custer said. “But for the second celluloid dip we added bismuth—a saturate solution, actually. It stayed gummy and we had to paint over it with a sealing coat of the straight celluloid. We then coupled this bismuth layer through a pulse circuit so that it was bathed in a counter wave—180 degrees out of phase with the master frequency. We had, in effect, immersed the unit in a thermoelectric cooler that exactly countered the heat production. A thin beam issued from the un-mirrored end when we powered it. We have yet to find something that thin beam cannot cut.”

“Diamond?” Tiborough asked.

“Powered by less than two hundred volts, this device could cut our planet in half like a ripe tomato,” Custer said. “One man could destroy an aerial armada with it, knock down ICBMs before they touched atmosphere, sink a fleet, pulverize a city. I'm afraid, sir, that I haven't mentally catalogued all the violent implications of this device. The mind tends to boggle at the enormous power focused in…”

“Shut down those TV cameras!”

It was Tiborough shouting, leaping to his feet and making a sweeping gesture to include the banks of cameras. The abrupt violence of his voice and gesture fell on the room like an explosion. “Guards!” he called. “You there at the door. Cordon off that door and don't let anyone out who heard this fool!” He whirled back to face Custer. “You irresponsible idiot!”

“I'm afraid, Senator,” Custer said, “that you're locking the barn door many weeks too late.”

For a long minute of silence Tiborough glared at Custer. Then: “You did this deliberately, eh?”

III

“Senator, if I'd waited any longer, there might have been no hope for us at all.”

Tiborough sat back into his chair, still keeping his attention fastened on Custer. Plowers and Johnston on his right had their heads close together whispering fiercely. The other senators were dividing their attention between Custer and Tiborough, their eyes wide and with no attempt to conceal their astonishment.

Wallace, growing conscious of the implications in what Custer had said, tried to wet his lips with his tongue.
Christ!
he thought.
This stupid cowpoke has sold us all down the river!

Tiborough signaled an aide, spoke briefly with him, beckoned the colonel from the door. There was a buzzing of excited conversation in the room. Several of the press and TV crew were huddled near the windows on Custer's left, arguing. One of their number—a florid-faced man with gray hair and horn-rimmed glasses, started across the room toward Tiborough, was stopped by a committee aide. They began a low-voiced argument with violent gestures.

A loud curse sounded from the door. Poxman, the syndicated columnist, was trying to push past the guards there.

“Poxman!” Tiborough called. The columnist turned. “My orders are that no one leaves,” Tiborough said. “You are not an exception.” He turned back to face Custer.

The room had fallen into a semblance of quiet, although there still were pockets of muttering and there was the sound of running feet and a hurrying about in the hall outside.

“Two channels went out of here live,” Tiborough said. “Nothing much we can do about them, although we will trace down as many of their viewers as we can. Every bit of film in this room and every sound tape will be confiscated, however.” His voice rose as protests sounded from the press section. “Our national security is at stake. The President has been notified. Such measures as are necessary will be taken.”