The Crack In Space (6 page)

‘You’re going to require help,’ Walt said to Engel. ‘If you’re going to stop Briskin now; this speech will put him across, and I don’t think even concerted transmissions from our satellite—as we discussed—will be sufficient. It’s just too damn clever a speech he’s making. Isn’t it, George?’

‘It certainly is,’ George said, eye fixed on the TV screen. ‘And getting better each second as he goes along. He’s barely getting started; it’s a genuine spellbinder. Whacking fine.’

His eye on the vidscreen, Walt continued, ‘You heard Briskin come out against us; you must have heard that part—everyone else in the country certainly did. Planet-wetting with Bruno Mini isn’t enough, he’s also got to take us on. Big plans for a Col, but evidently he and his advisors feel he can handle it. We’ll see. What do you plan to do, Engel? At this very crucial point?’

‘I’ve got plans, I’ve got plans,’ Engel assured him.

‘Still no-violence stuff?’

There was no audible answer, but Engel’s face contorted oddly.

‘Come up here to the Golden Door,’ Walt said, ‘and let’s talk. I think my brother and I can see our way clear to make a donation to CLEAN, say in the neighborhood of ten or eleven mil. Would that help? You ought to be able to buy what you need with money like that.’

Engel, white with shock, stammered, ‘S-sure, George or Walt, whichever you are.’

‘Get up here as soon as you can, then,’ Walt instructed him, and rang off. ‘I think he’ll do it for us,’ he said to his brother.

‘A gorp like that can’t handle anything,’ George said sourly.

‘Then for pop’s sake, what do we do?’ Walt demanded.

‘We do what we can. We help out Engel, we prompt him, shove him if necessary. But we don’t pin our hopes on him, at least not entirely. We go ahead with something on our own, just to be certain. And we have to be certain; this is too serious. That Col actually means to shut us down.’

Both their eyes, now, turned toward the TV screen, and both George and Walt sat back in their special wide couch to listen to the speech.

In the luxurious apartment which he maintained in Reno, Dr Lurton Sands sat raptly listening to the television set, the Col candidate James Briskin delivering his Chicago speech. He knew what it meant. There was only one place that Briskin could have happened across a ‘lush, virgin world’. Obviously Cally had been found.

Going to his desk drawer, Lurton Sands got out the small laser pistol which he kept there and thrust it into his coat pocket. I’m amazed he’d do it, Sands thought. Capitalize off my problems—evidently I misjudged him.

Now so many lives which I could have saved will be forfeited, Sands realized. Due to this. And Briskin is responsible  . . . he’s taken the healing power out of my hands, darkened the force working for the good of man.

At the vid-phone Sands dialed the local jet’ab company. ‘I want an ‘ab to Chicago. As soon as possible.’ He gave his address, then hurried from his apartment to the elevator. Those that are hounding Cally and me to our deaths, he thought, Myra and her detectives and the homeopapes  . . . now they’ve been joined by Jim Briskin. How could he align himself with them? Haven’t I made clear to everyone what I can do in the service of human need? Briskin must be aware; this can’t be merely ignorance on his part.

Frantically Sands thought. Could it possibly be that Briskin wants the sick to die? All those waiting for me, needing my help . . . help which no one else, after I’ve been pushed to my death, can possibly provide.

Touching the laser pistol in his pocket, Sands said aloud, glumly, ‘It certainly is easy to be mistaken about another person.’ They can take you in so easily, he thought. Deliberately mislead you. Yes, deliberately!

The jet’ab swept up to the curb and slid open its door.

SIX

When he had finished his speech Jim Briskin sat back and knew that this time he had done, at last, a damn good job. It had been the best speech of his political career, in some respects the only really decent one.

And now what? he asked himself. Sal is gone, and along with him Patricia. I’ve offended the powerful and immensely wealthy unicephalic brothers George Walt, not to mention Thisbe herself  . . . and Terran Development, which is no small potatoes, will be furious that its break-through has been made public. But none of this matters. Nor does the fact that I’m now committed to naming a well-known private operator as my Attorney General; even that isn’t important. My job was to make that speech as soon as Tito Cravelli brought me that information. And—that’s exactly what I did. To the letter. No matter what the consequences.

Coming up to him, Phil Danville slapped him warmly on the back. ‘A hell of a good fuss, Jim. You really outdid yourself.’

‘Thanks, Phil,’ Jim Briskin murmured. He felt tired. He nodded to the TV camera men and then, with Phil Danville, walked over to join the knot of party brass waiting at the rear of the studio.

‘I need a drink,’ Jim said to them as several of them extended their hands, wanting to shake with him. ‘After that.’ I wonder what the opposition will do now, he said to himself. What can Bill Schwarz say? Nothing, actually. I’ve taken the lid off the whole thing, and there’s no putting it back. Now that everyone knows there’s a place we can emigrate to, the rush will be on. By the multitudes. The warehouses will be emptied, thank god. As they should have been long ago.

I wish I had known about this, he thought abruptly, before I began publicly advocating Bruno Mini’s planet-wetting technique. I could have avoided that—and the break with Sal as well.

But anyhow, he said to himself, I’ll be elected.

Dorothy Gill said quietly to him, ‘Jim, I think you’re in.’

‘I know he is,’ Phil Danville agreed, grinning with pure delight. ‘How about it, Dotty? It’s not like it was a little while ago. How’d you get hold of that info about TD, Jim? It must have cost you  . . .’

‘It did,’ Jim Briskin said shortly. ‘It cost me too much. But I’d pay it two times over.’

‘Now for the drink,’ Phil said. ‘There’s a bar around the corner; I noticed it when we were coming in here. Let’s go.’ He started for the door and Jim Briskin followed, hands deep in his overcoat pockets.

The sidewalk, he discovered, was crowded with people, a mob which waved at him, cheered him; he waved back, noticing that many of them were Whites as well as Cols. A good sign, he reflected as his party moved step by step through the dense mass of people, uniformed Chicago city police clearing a path for them to the bar which Phil Danville had picked out.

From the crowd a red-headed girl, very small, wearing dazzling wubfur lounging pajamas, the kind fashionable with the girls on the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, came hurrying, gliding and ducking toward him breathlessly. ‘Mr Briskin  . . .’

He paused unwillingly, wondering who she was and what she wanted. One of Thisbe Olt’s girls, evidently. ‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled at her.

‘Mr Briskin,’ the little red-haired girl gasped, ‘there’s a rume going around the satellite—George Walt’s doing something with Verne Engel, the man from CLEAN.’ She caught hold of him anxiously by the arm, stopping him. ‘They’re going to assassinate you or something. Please be careful.’ Her face was stark with alarm.

‘What’s your name?’ Jim asked.

‘Sparky Rivers. I—work there, Mr Briskin.’

‘Thanks, Sparky,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember you. Maybe sometime I can give you a cabinet post.’ He continued to smile at her, but she did not smile back. ‘I’m just joking,’ he said. ‘Don’t be downcast.’

‘I think they’re going to kill you,’ Sparky said.

‘Maybe so.’ He shrugged. It was certainly possible. He leaned forward, briefly, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Take care of yourself, too,’ he said, and then walked on with Phil Danville and Dorothy Gill.

After a time Phil said, ‘What are you going to do, Jim?’

‘Nothing. What can I do? Wait, I guess. Get my drink.’

‘You’ll have to protect yourself,’ Dorothy Gill said. ‘If anything happens to you—what’ll we do then? The rest of us.’

Jim Briskin said, ‘Emigration will still exist, even without me. You can still wake the sleepers. As it says in Bach’s Cantata 140, "Wachet auf". Sleepers, awake. That’ll have to be your watchword, from now on.’

‘Here’s the bar,’ Phil Danville said. Ahead of them, a Chicago policeman held the door open for them, and they entered one at a time.

‘It was darn nice of that girl to warn me,’ Jim Briskin said.

A man’s voice, close to him, said, ‘Mr Briskin? I’m Lurton Sands, Jr. Perhaps you’ve been reading about me in the homeopapes, lately.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Jim said, surprised to see him; he held out his hand in greeting. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Dr Sands. I want to  . . .’

‘May I talk, please?’ Sands said. ‘I have something to say to you. Because of you, my life and the humanitarian work of two decades is wrecked. Don’t answer; I’m not going to get into an argument with you. I’m simply telling you, so you’ll understand why.’ Sands reached into his coat pocket. Now he held a laser pistol, pointed directly at Jim Briskin’s chest. ‘I don’t quite understand what it is about my dedication to the sick that offended you and made you turn against me, but everybody else has, so why not you? After all, Mr Briskin, what better life-task could you set yourself than wrecking mine?’ He squeezed the trigger of the pistol. The pistol did not fire, and Lurton Sands stared down at it in disbelief. ‘Myra, my wife.’ He sounded almost apologetic. ‘She removed the energy cartridge, obviously. Evidently, she thought I’d try to use it on her.’ He tossed the pistol away.

After a pause Jim Briskin said huskily, ‘Well, now what, Doctor?’

‘Nothing, Briskin. Nothing. If I had had more time I would have checked the gun out, but I had to hurry to get here before you left. That was quite a heroic speech you made; it’ll certainly give most people the impression that you’re seeking to alleviate man’s problems  . . . although of course you and I know better. By the way—you do realize you won’t be able to awaken all the bibs; you can’t fulfill that promise because some are dead. I’m responsible for that. Roughly four hundred of them.’

Jim Briskin stared at him.

‘That’s right,’ Sands said. ‘I’ve had access to Department of Special Public Welfare warehouses. Do you know what that means? Every organ I’ve taken has created a dead human—when the time comes for them to be revived, whenever that may be. But I suppose the trump has to be played sooner or later, doesn’t it?’

‘You’d do that?’ Jim Briskin said.

‘I did that,’ Sands corrected. ‘But remember this: I killed only potentially. Whereas, in exchange, I saved someone right now, someone conscious and alive in the present, someone completely dependent on my skill.’

Two Chicago policemen shoved their way up to him; Dr Sands jerked irritably away but they continued to hold onto him, pinning him between them.

Pale, Phil Danville said, ‘That—was almost it, Jim. Wasn’t it?’ He deliberately stepped between Jim Briskin and Dr Sands, shielding Briskin. ‘History revisited.’

‘Yes,’ Jim managed to say. He nodded, his mouth dry. Basically he felt resigned. If Lurton Sands did not manage to carry it off then, certainly someone else would, given time. It was just too easy. Weapons technology had improved too much in the last hundred years; everyone knew that, and now the assassin did not even have to be in his vicinity. Like an act of evil magic it could be done from a distance. And the instruments were cheap and available to virtually anyone—even, as history had shown, some ignorant, worthless smallfry, without friends, funds, or even a fanatical purpose, an overriding political cause.

This incident with Lurton Sands was a vile harbinger.

‘Well,’ Phil Danville said, and sighed, ‘I guess we have to go on. What do you want to drink?’

‘A Black Russian,’ Jim decided, after a pause. ‘Vodka and  . . .’

‘I know,’ Phil interrupted. His face still ragged with fear and gloom, he made his way unsteadily over to the bar to order.

To Dotty, Jim said, ‘Even if they get me, I’ve done my job. I keep telling myself that over and over again, anyhow. I broke the news about TD’s break-through and that’s enough.’

‘Do you actually mean that?’ she demanded. ‘You’re that fatalistic about it, about your chances?’ She stared unwinkingly up into his face.

‘Yes,’ he said, finally. And well he might be.

I have a feeling, he thought to himself, that this is not the time a Negro is going to make it to the presidency.

His contact within CLEAN came via an individual named Dave DeWinter. DeWinter had joined the movement at its inception and had reported to Tito Cravelli throughout. Now, hurriedly, DeWinter told his employer the most recent—and urgent—news.

‘They’ll try it late tonight. The man actually doing it is not a member. His name is Herb Lackmore or Luckmore, and with the equipment they’re providing him he doesn’t need to be an accurate shot.’ DeWinter added, ‘The equipment, what they call a boulder, was paid for by George Walt, those two mutants who own the Golden Door.’

Tito Cravelli said, ‘I see.’ There goes my post as Attorney General, he said to himself. ‘Where can I find this Lackmore right now?’

‘In his conapt in Oakland, California. Probably eating dinner; it’s about six, there.’

From the locked closet of his office, Tito Cravelli got a collapsible high-powered scope-sight laser rifle, he folded it up and stuffed it into his pocket, out of sight. Such a rifle was strictly illegal, but that hardly mattered right now; what Cravelli intended to do was against the law with any kind of weapon.

But it was already too late to get Lackmore or Luckmore or whatever his name was. By the time he reached the West Coast Lackmore would certainly be gone, on his way east to intercept Jim Briskin; their flights would cross, his and Lackmore’s. Better to locate Briskin and stick close to him, get Lackmore when he showed up. But Herb Lackmore would not have to show up, in the strict sense, not with the variety of weapon which the mutant brothers had provided him. He could be as far away as ten miles—and still reach Briskin.

George Walt will have to call him off, Cravelli decided. It’s the only sure way—and even that is merely relatively sure.

I’ll have to go to the satellite, he said to himself. Now, if I expect to accomplish anything at all. The mutants George Walt would not be expecting him; they had no knowledge of his ties with Jim Briskin—or so he hoped. And also, he had three individuals working for him on the satellite, three of the girls. That gave him three separate places to stay—or hide—while he was up there. Afterwards, after he took care of George Walt, it might well mean the difference in saving his life.

That, of course, would be if George Walt wouldn’t do business with him, if they chose to fight it out. In a fight, they would lose; Tito Cravelli was a crack shot. And in addition the initiative would be with him.

Where was the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite right now? Getting the evening homeopape, he turned to the entertainment page. If it was, say, over India, he had no chance; he would not be able to reach the brothers in time.

The Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, according to the time-schedule shown in the pape, was right now over Utah. By jet’ab he could reach it within three quarters of an hour.

That was soon enough.

‘Thanks a lot,’ he said to Dave DeWinter, who stood awkwardly in the middle of the office, wearing his splendid green and silver CLEAN uniform. ‘You trot on back to Engel I’ll keep in touch with you.’ He left the office on a dead run, then, racing down the stairs to the ground floor.

Presently, he was on his way to the satellite.

When the jet’ab had landed at the field, Cravelli hurried down the ramp, purchased a ticket from the nude, golden-haired attendant, and then rushed through gate five, searching for Francy’s door. 705, it was—or so he recalled, but under so much tension he felt rattled. With five thousand doors spread out in corridor after corridor—and all around him, on every side, the animated pics of the girls twisted and chirped, trying to snare his attention and entice him to the joys inside.

I’ll have to consult the satellite’s directory, he decided. That would waste precious time, but what alternative did he have? Feverishly, he loped down the corridor until he arrived at the immensely extensive, cross-indexed, illuminated directory board, with all its names winking on and off as rooms emptied and refilled, as customers hurried in and out.

It was 507, and it was empty of customers.

When he opened the door Francy said, ‘Hello!’ and sat up, then, blinking in surprise to see him. ‘Mr Cravelli,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Is everything all right?’ She slid from the bed, wearing a pale smock of some cheap thin material, and came hesitantly up to him, her body bare and smooth. ‘What can I do for you? Are you here for  . . .’

‘Not for pleasure,’ Tito Cravelli informed her. ‘Button up your damn smock and listen to me. Is there any way you can get George Walt up here?’

Fancy pondered. ‘They never visit a crib, normally. I  . . .’

‘Suppose there was trouble. A customer refusing to pay.’

‘No. A bouncer would show up then. But George Walt would come here if they thought the FBI or some other police agency had moved in here and was officially arresting us girls.’ She pointed to an obscure button on the wall. ‘For such an emergency. They have a regular neurosis about the police; they think it’s bound to come, sooner or later—they must have a guilty conscience about it. The button connects to that great big office of theirs.’

‘Ring the button,’ Cravelli said, and got out his laser rifle seating himself on Francy’s bed, he began to assemble it.

Minutes passed.

Standing uneasily at the door, listening, Francy said ‘What’s going to happen in here Mr Cravelli? I hope there’s no  . . .’

‘Be quiet,’ he said sharply.

The door of the room opened.

The mutants George Walt stood in the entrance, one hand on the knob, the other three gripping short lengths of metal piping.