The Fellowship of the Hand (11 page)

“Had Ambrose ever mentioned Blunt in his letters?”

“No, and I really couldn’t tell Jason anything he wanted to know. I learned a great deal from him, though.”

“Which you passed along to Euler.”

“Yes.”

“How did he come into the picture?”

“The same as everyone else. He heard that Stanley might be involved in some plot, and found out that I was Stanley’s mistress. The difference was that I liked Euler. He convinced me that HAND was on the right side, and so I began to supply him with information.”

“Information you got from Blunt.”

“Correct.”

Axman shook his head. “And then you lured this Jazine into bed too? You really should have been a spy, a twenty-first-century Mata Hari!”

“There are some things that I do well,” she admitted.

“Would you care to demonstrate?”

But she only laughed. “It’s much too late for that. I am on Euler Frost’s side in this, Mr. Axman.”

“That could be the wrong side.”

“We’ll see.”

She rose and saw him out. “Thank you for the information anyway,” he said as the door closed behind him.

If he had gone there hoping to win an ally, he was disappointed. Euler Frost had beaten him again.

T
HE FLIGHT TO UTAH
with Carl Crader had been one of those necessary irritations with which one is often faced in the business world. To startle the enemy and show your hand to him was a risky business, but Blunt was used to taking risks. While still in his late twenties he’d bluffed a competitor out of an oil site in the Arctic Ocean by taking him for a submarine ride to inspect cold-weather drilling equipment. The man, convinced Blunt had unlimited resources, quickly backed away from the deal.

He’d tried something of the same technique with Carl Crader. No words he could speak would have impressed Crader nearly as much as the flight to the desert and a personally conducted tour of the underground city. The word would certainly get back to President McCurdy, and that was what Jason Blunt wanted.

In its early stages, Nova Industries had been entirely his idea. At that time there was no thought of building a new superstate out of the lessons of the past. The computer complex with its fabulous input and hundreds of highly skilled technologists was designed strictly as a business proposition. That was before the coming of Stanley Ambrose.

It was Ambrose who schemed and plotted, Ambrose who split the Nova employees into two factions, Ambrose who wanted an election. And once an election was agreed upon, it seemed only natural that it be conducted by computer.

Jason Blunt had no doubt as to the outcome of that secret election. Ambrose was in control from the beginning, and now he knew Ambrose would be traveling about the country notifying the others of the result. Blunt would be the last to know, and by then it would be too late to resist Stanley Ambrose’s plans for conquest.

“Why did you show him all that?” Masha asked on the flight back to their island after depositing Crader at the Dallas International Jetport.

“Because it pleased me to do so.”

“What about Ambrose and the others? Won’t they be angry?”

“Let them be! I built that complex out there, and I don’t intend to lose it to Ambrose because of some foolish election. He can do what he wants, but now Crader knows its location. If Ambrose tried to seize control of the government, McCurdy could destroy the whole thing with a few well-placed hydrobombs.”

“It’s dangerous, Jason.”

“These days life is dangerous.”

“Why not let Ambrose have it? There’s still our island, and the drilling operations. You don’t need computers for any of that.”

“Masha, Masha …” He rumpled her hair as he would a child’s. “You are so much a woman in some things, and yet still a youngster in others. Don’t you see, life today
is
computers! There’s nowhere we could go on earth to escape the influence of the machines. Back on the island? In case you’ve forgotten, we have computerized drilling machinery, a computerized security system, even computerized climate control, thanks to the federal government. When you get out of bed in the morning and find your breakfast prepared, that’s done by computer too!”

“But none of these depend upon those things back in Utah. That’s my point, Jason—let Stanley Ambrose have the underground city!”

“I’ll see it destroyed first.”

Below, like a jewel of green in the blue of the Gulf, their island appeared. The rocketcopter dipped toward it, avoiding a flight of gulls that spiraled up from the water. In another moment they were on the ground.

Jason Blunt entered the big house and went immediately to the video where a printout of the afternoon news awaited him. Scanning the headlines and seeing nothing but the usual presidential campaign news, he transferred his attention to the message center. There were stock quotations and oil futures, along with a drilling report from a new island off South Africa that looked promising. But the thing that caught his eye was a one-sentence unsigned messagegram.

“Sunsite pioneers seek meeting at earliest convenience.”

Sunsite.

It was from Milly Norris, and something had happened. She’d never contacted him by messagegram before, directly to his home. He ripped the plastic from the machine and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he walked down the long hall to the solarium where Masha waited.

She was stretched on the floor, nude in the glow of afternoon sunlight, waiting to make love. It had become a ritual on days when he was home, harking back somehow to those early days of honeymooning aboard the
Strombol,
when everything was sunshine and sensuality.

“I must go away,” he said quietly.

“Again, darling? But you’ve
been
away.”

“It’s business. There was a messagegram waiting for me.”

“Business with Stanley Ambrose?”

“No. Oil business.”

“Must you leave right now?”

He stared down at the curve of her thighs. “Yes.”

“Oh, very well!” she sighed, rising slowly to her feet. She hugged him to her and gave him a long, deep kiss. “Hurry back!”

“I will,” he promised.

He’d always hated Sunsite. There was something about the stolid framework of the town that reminded him once more of computer circuits. At least the old cities had a wonderfully unplanned look about them, a hodgepodge of streets and alleyways that he still found charming. There was nothing charming about Sunsite, not even the quaint old church in the town square.

Now, an hour after sundown, Milly Norris was waiting for him in the square by the church, watching a hologram band concert on one of the coin machines. She looked up as he approached and said, “Imagine people going to the parks to hear real bands, Jason! Why don’t they do it anymore?”

“Musicians are too expensive, like everything else.”

“I suppose so.”

“I got your message. Why so urgent?”

She snapped off the hologram and the image faded from around them. There was only the park once more, a bit drab despite the festive neon trim to the trees. “Something happened. I thought you should know about it.”

“What?”

“A man named Earl Jazine came to see me. He’s with the Computer Investigation Bureau.”

“I know them,” he said. “Jazine’s boss called on me.”

“They know about using the FRIDAY-404 for the secret election. They know that you and Stanley were the candidates.”

“What else do they know?”

“That was about all, but Jazine sure asked a lot of questions.”

“About Ambrose?”

“Certainly. I showed him the letters and holograms, and he made photocopies of them.”

“Do the Computer Cops have any idea where Ambrose is?”

She shook her head. “No. But they’re looking for him.”

“So Jazine went away unhappy?”

“He was kidnapped.”

Jason Blunt felt a tingle of fear. “Kidnapped? From where?”

“Well, from my bed, if you must know. He was just climbing in when these masked men with stunners burst into the apartment.”

“God, you’ll sleep with anybody!” He considered the possibilities of her story. It could be a lie, but there seemed no reason for her to make it up. “Who were the men?”

“I told you they were masked! They took Jazine away and that’s the last I saw of him.”

“How’d they know he was here?”

“Now how in hell should I know that? Do you think I told them?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Sometimes I wonder just whose side you’re really on, Milly.”

“Is there another side besides yours?”

“Yes. There’s always Stanley Ambrose.”

She sighed in the darkness. “I told you I haven’t seen him in six years.”

“But I’ve seen him, Milly. He mentions you sometimes.” He hesitated and then added, “Is it possible that five years on another planet could have deranged him somehow, lightened his brain cells?”

“I know a man who was on Venus ten years and he seems perfectly all right.”

“Who’s that?”

She looked away. “No one you know.”

“Someone else you’re sleeping with?”

Her eyes flashed, catching the neon reflection from the trees. “That’s none of your damned business.”

He thought, perversely, of Masha on the floor of the solarium, bathed in the afternoon sunlight. “Are we going up to your place?” he asked.

“The bed might be occupied.”

“Stop it!”

“Go home and fuck one of your oil wells!”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I have no hold on you, no right to question your private life.”

“Damn right!”

“Want to watch another band concert?”

“No.” Softly. He wondered if she was crying, but in the dark he couldn’t be sure.

“What, then?”

“Let’s go back.”

“To the apartment?”

“Yes.”

They boarded a moving sidewalk and rode to her street. Standing beside her, Jason Blunt tried to puzzle out the meaning of it all. If someone had truly kidnapped Jazine, the CIB man, who had it been? Ambrose, perhaps? Or even that antimachine group, HAND? Maybe they were still around, as Carl Crader had implied.

Suddenly he reached a decision. “It could be dangerous back at your apartment. It was dangerous for Jazine last night.”

“Where, then?”

“My rocketcopter is parked at the town airstrip. It has a bed.”

“I don’t do it in rocketcopters.”

“You should try sometime.”

“Goodnight, Jason. Take care.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“What you said is true. The apartment isn’t safe.”

“A motel, perhaps?”

“There are no motels in Sunsite. Everyone lives here, and nobody visits.”

“You’ve had quite a few visitors lately.”

“Not overnight.”

They’d reached the sidewalk terminus, and she stepped off to enter her apartment. “I’ll leave you here,” he said. Already there was a gnawing fear deep in his stomach.

“Good-bye, then.”

There was no kiss, no embrace. He stepped onto the opposite sidewalk and was borne away.

All the way back to the rocketcopter he half expected to encounter Stanley Ambrose, a shadowy figure who would inform him quite clearly that he had lost the election.

O
N THE SATURDAY OF
Graham Axman’s daring escape, Milly Norris had read about it in the nightly telenewspaper. She’d called Frost on the vision-phone at once.

“Euler, how are you?”

“Fine. Good to see you.”

“Is this circuit safe?”

His familiar grin came back at her from the screen. “It is if anything is. I debugged it myself. If anyone tried a tap or a cut-through, the picture would scramble.”

“I just read about Axman.”

“Yeah. Really something, huh?”

“Were you there?”

“More or less. It was fun.”

“Euler, I summoned Jason and told him about Jazine, just as you suggested. But I’m afraid he’s stopped trusting me. He wouldn’t come back to the apartment.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Can I come there, where you are?”

“Sure. I want you to meet Axman, anyway. Better give us a few days, though. He needs some conditioning to recover himself. Prison hit him hard.”

“I’ll be there Wednesday.”

“Fine,” he said, and the screen went blank.

She leaned back in the chair and thought about Euler Frost. There had been many men in her life, even before Stanley. At the age of nineteen she’d fallen in with a band of Trekers, the remains of an old television fan club active in the late twentieth century. In their own way, the Trekers were much like the flippies of South New York, who painted their bodies and indulged in harmless orgies. A year with them, passed around among a circle of willing males, had been more than enough for Milly. After that she moved west to Sunsite, a quiet little town where everything was programmed—even, she sometimes thought, the sex.

She’d met Stanley Ambrose while he was teaching at the local university, after the death of his wife. The affair had been convenient for them both, and she’d never dreamed that it would lead to the present complications. First there’d been Jason Blunt, wealthy and willing, who’d come for information and stayed for a bit of loving. That had been shortly after Stanley returned to earth from his government service on Venus. Since she knew nothing about Stanley’s present activities, she’d been a bit surprised when Jason kept up the relationship, even confiding bits and pieces of information about his business relationship with Stanley.

It had been that relationship which most interested Euler Frost when he appeared on the scene. And it was Euler who most interested her. He was younger than Jason, and handsomer in a rough-hewn way. If he lacked the money to lavish expensive diamonds on her, he was still a man to be trusted. She told him about Stanley, and more—she told him about Blunt and his questions. She told him of Blunt’s computerized dreams, and of the great underground city in the desert.

And when Earl Jazine appeared at her office that afternoon, her first thought was to warn Euler. He’d taken it from there, with the kidnapping and all that came after. He’d even suggested that she summon Jason to give him a full report. Euler was nothing if not devious.