The Perfect Host (6 page)

The red-headed youngster put down the book. “It’s true here, too,” he told his brother. “I mean, what I was saying about almost all of Wells’ best science fiction. In each case there’s a miracle—a Martian invasion in ‘War of the Worlds,’ a biochemical in ‘Food of the Gods,’ and a new gaseous isotope in ‘In the Days of the Comet.’ And it ultimately makes all of mankind work together.”

The brother was in college—had been for seven months—and was very wise. “That’s right. He knew it would take a miracle. I think he forgot that when he began to write sociological stuff. As Dr. Pierce remarked, he sold his birthright for a pot of message.”

“Excuse me,” said the dark man called Rod. He rose and went to the back of the café and the line of phone booths, while the girl with the tilted nose and the red sandals stared fondly after him. The Blonde arrived.

“Ah,” she mewed, “alone, I see. But of course.” She sat down.

“I’m with Rod,” said the girl with the sandals, adding primly, “He’s phoning.”

“Needed to talk to someone, no doubt,” said the Blonde.

“Probably,” said the other, smiling at her long fingers, “he needed to come back to earth.”

The Blonde barely winced. “Oh well. I suppose he must amuse himself between his serious moments. He’ll have one tomorrow night, you know. At the dance. Pity I won’t see you there. Unless, of course, you come with someone else—”

“He’s working tomorrow night!” blurted the girl with the sandals, off guard.

“You could call it that,” said the Blonde placidly.

“Look, sunshine,” said the other girl evenly, “why don’t you stop kidding yourself? Rod isn’t interested in you and your purely local color. He isn’t even what you want. If you’re looking for a soulmate, go find yourself a wolfhound.”

“Darling,” said the Blonde appreciatively, and with murder in her mascara. “You know, you might get him, at that.
If
you brush up on your cooking, and if he can keep his appetite by going blind—” She leaned forward suddenly. “Look there. Who
is
that floozy?”

They turned to the back of the café. The dark young man was holding both hands of a slender but curvesome girl with deep auburn hair. She was laughing coyly up at him.

“Fancy Pants,” breathed the girl with the red sandals. She turned to the Blonde. “I know whereof I speak. Her clothesline is right under my window, and—”

“The little stinker,” said the Blonde. She watched another pretty convulsion of merriment. “Clothesline, hm-m-m? Listen—I had a friend once who had a feud on with a biddy in the neighborhood. There something about a squirt gun and some ink—”

“Well, well,” said the girl in the sandals. She thought a moment, watching Rod and the redhead. “Where could I get a squirt gun?”

“My kid brother has a water pistol. I got it for him for his birthday. Can you meet me here at seven o’clock?”

“I certainly can. I’ll get the ink. Black ink.
India
ink!”

The Blonde rose. “Be sweet to him,” she said swiftly, “so he won’t guess who fixed Fancy Pants.”

“I will. But not too sweet. The heel. Darling, you’re wonderful—”

The Blonde winked and walked away. And at a nearby table, a gentleman who had been eavesdropping shamelessly stuffed a soft roll into an incipient roar of laughter, and then began to choke.

“Colonel Simmons,” said the annunciator.

“Well, for pete’s sake!” said Dr. Simmons. “Send him in. Send him right in! And—cancel that demonstration. No … don’t cancel it. Postpone it.”

“Until when, Doctor?”

“Until I get there.”

“But—it’s for the Army—”

“My brother’s the Army, too!” snapped the physicist and switched off.

A knock. “Come in. Leroy, you dog!”

“Well, Muscles.” The colonel half ran into the room, gripped the scientist by the upper arm, scanned his face up, back, and across. Their eyes were gray, the colonel’s gray and narrow, the doctor’s gray and wide. “It must’ve been—” they said in unison, and then laughed together.

“Eight years, anyway,” said the colonel.

“All of that. Gosh, gosh.” He shook his head. “You and your shiny buttons.”

There was a silence. “Hardly know where to begin, what to say, h-m-m?” grinned the colonel. “What’ve you been doing lately?”

“Oh … you know. Applied physics.”

“Hah!” snorted the colonel. “Question: Mr. Michaelangelo, what are you doing? Answer: Mixing pigments. Come on, now; what since you invented magnefilm?”

“Nothing much. Couple of things too unimportant to talk about, couple more too important to mention.”

“Your old garrulous self, I see. Come on, Muscles. Security regulations don’t apply here, and between us especially.”

That’s what you think
, thought Dr. Simmons. “Of course not,” he said. “What branch are you with now?”

“Publicly, the Air Corps,” said the colonel, indicating his wings. “Actually, I’m on the Board of Strategy. This won’t be the kind of war which can be fought with semipublic conferences and decisions after advisement in the General Staff. The Board operates practically underground, without any publicity, and without any delay.”

“Board of Strategy, eh? I’d heard only vaguely … and I’m in a position to hear plenty. Well now. When you say no delay, what do you mean?”

“I mean this,” said the colonel. He put his hands behind him on a high lab table and lifted himself up on it. He crossed his bright boots and swung them. “We have plans … look; you know how M-Day plans work, don’t you?”

“Certainly. The personnel of draft boards is all chosen, the questionnaires are printed and almost entirely distributed, the leases and domains of examination centers are arranged for, and so on and on. When mobilization is called, everything starts operating without a hitch. You hope,” he added with a grin. “Why?”

“The Board operates the same way,” said his brother. “But where Selective Service has only one big problem to arrange for in detail we have—” he shrugged. “Name your figure. We have planned what to do if, for example, Russia attacks us, if we attack Russia, if France attacks Brazil, or if Finland takes a swing at Iraq. What’s funny?”

“I was thinking of the legend about the emperor who tried to grant the reward asked for by a certain hero, who had stipulated simply that he be given some wheat, the amount to be determined by a hypothetical chessboard, putting one grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so on … anyway, it wound up with an amount equal to a couple of years’ world supply, and with the empire and all its resources in the hands of our hero. Your plans are like that. I mean, if one of the possibilities you mention should occur, but if you should lose the third battle instead of winning it as scheduled, why, you’ll have a whole new set of plans to make. And this applies to every one of your original master plans.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that each plan is as detailed as the M-Day deal. Lord, no. The plans are policies of action, rather than blueprints. They stay within the bounds of statistical probability, though we push those bounds outward as far as possible. I’ve mentioned possible enemies, and possible combatants aside from enemies. There are also plans covering combinations and permutations of alliance. Anything is possible after such precedent, for example, as the situation in the Second War, when our close ally Russia was at peace with our worst enemy.” He laughed. “If that happened in human instead of international terms, with my closest friend lunching daily with a man who was openly trying to kill me, we’d call it fantastic. Maybe it is,” he said cheerfully, “but it’s most engrossing.”

“You rather enjoy it, don’t you?”

“I have never had such fascinating work in all my life.”

“I didn’t mean strategy, soldier-boy. I meant war.”

“War? I s’pose it is. Now another thing the Board is doing … wait a minute. Muscles! You’re not still the dewy-eyed idealist you used to be—brotherhood of mankind, and all that, are you?

“I invented the sonic disruptor, didn’t I?”
You probably think that answers your question
, he thought bitterly.

“So you did. A very healthy development in you and in the noble art of warfare. Nicest little side arm in history. Busts a man all up inside without breaking the skin. So little mess.”

Healthy!
Dr. Simmons stared at his brother, who was looking into his cigarette case.
Healthy! And I developed the disruptor to focus ultrasonic vibrations under the skin, to homogenize cancerous tissue. I never dreamed they’d … ah, neither did Nobel
. “Go on about the Board,” he said.

“What was I … oh yes. Not only have we planned the obvious things—political situations, international crises, campaigns and alliances, but we are keeping a very close watch on technology. The War Department has, at long last, abandoned the policy of fighting this war with the last war’s weapons. Remember how Hitler astonished the world with the elementary stunt of organizing liaison between his tanks and his dive bombers? Remember the difficulties
they had in promoting the bazooka to replace the mortar in jungle warfare? And how the War Department refused to back the Wright Brothers? There’ll be no more of that.”

“You mean we’re preparing to use the latest in everything? Really use it?”

“That’s right. Atomic energy and jet propulsion we know about. Then there’s biological warfare, both disease and crop-hormone techniques. But it doesn’t stop there. As a matter of fact, those things, and other proven developments, account for only a small part of our plans. We have the go-ahead on supplies, weapons, equipment, and techniques which haven’t even been developed yet. Some haven’t even been invented yet!”

Dr. Simmons whistled, “Like what?”

The colonel smiled, rolled his eyes up thoughtfully. “Like impenetrable force fields, mass multipliers—that’s a cute hypothesis, Muscles. Increase the effective mass of a substance, and the results could be interesting. Particularly if it were radioactive. Antigravity. Telepath scrambles, which throw interrupting frequencies in and around thought waves, if thoughts
are
waves … we’ve considered practically every gadget and gimmick in every story and article in every science-fiction magazine published in the last thirty years, and have planned what to do in case it suddenly pops up.”

Ignoring all the utopian, philosophical, sociological stories, of course
, thought Dr. Simmons. He said, “So your visit here isn’t purely social?”

“Gosh no. I’m with the observation group which came here to see your Spy-Eye in action. What is it, anyhow? And how did it get the cute soapsuds name?”

Dr. Simmons smiled. “One of the armchair boys in the front office used to work in an advertising agency. The device is a ‘Self-Propelled Information Interceptor’—SPII—which, once it touched that huckster brain, became ‘Spy-Eye.’ As to just what it is, you’ll see that for yourself if you attend the demonstration, which starts as soon as we’ve finished talking.”

“You mean you postponed it until I was through with you?”

“That’s right.”
I thought you’d like that
, he thought, watching
the pleased grin on his brother’s face. “Tell me something, Leroy. All these plans … are we at war?”

“Are we … well, no. You know that.”

“But these preparations. All they lack is a timetable.” He squinted quizzically. “By golly, I believe you have that, too.”

“We have plenty,” the colonel sidestepped, winking.

“Choose sides yet? What’s the line-up?”

“I won’t tell you that. No, I’m not worried about security, it’s just that I might be wrong. Things move so fast these days. I’ll tell you one thing, though. We already have our neutral ground.”

“Oh yes, of course—like Switzerland and Sweden. I’ve always wondered what exact powers kept them neutral.”

“Well, if you’re going to fight a war, you’ve got to have some way to exchange prisoners and have meetings with various interested parties, and so on—”

“Yep. And it used to come in pretty handy for certain manufacturers.”

The colonel eyed him. “Are you sure you’re off that lion-and-lamb kick?”

Dr. Simmons grimaced. “I think the Spy-Eye can answer that adequately.”

The colonel slipped off his perch. “Yes, let’s get to it,” he said eagerly.

They went to the door. “By the way,” said Dr. Simmons, “just what have you picked out for your neutral ground?”

“Japan,” said the colonel.

“Nice of ’em to agree to anything so close to home.”

“Nice of ’em? Don’t be silly! It’s the only way they can be sure it won’t be fortified.”

“Oh,” said his brother. They went out.

The demonstration went off without a hitch, and afterward the six Army observers and the plant technicians repaired to the projection room for Dr. Simmons’ summation.

He talked steadily and tiredly, and his thoughts talked on at the same time. As he reeled off specifications and characteristics, his mind
rambled along, sometimes following the spoken thought, sometimes paralleling it, sometimes commenting acidly or humorously, always tiredly. It was a trapped thing, that talking mind, but it was articulate.

“… five-point-eight feet long over-all, an aerodynamic streamline, with its largest diameter only two-point-three-seven feet. Slide One, please. As you have seen, it has one propelling and three supporting jets. These three are coupled directly to the same outlet valve, which is controlled by an absolute altimeter. The whole is, of course, gyro-stabilized. It is capable of trans-sonic speeds, but can very nearly hover, subject only to a small nutation which can probably be designed out.”

It was going to be a mail rocket
, commented his thought.

“Its equipment includes the usual self-guiding devices, a coding flight-recorder, and radio receivers tuned to various pre-selected FM, AM, and radar channels. In regard to radar, should it pick up any radar impulses close enough or strong enough to suggest detection, it changes course and speed radically. Should they persist, the Spy-Eye releases ‘window’—aluminum-foil strips of various lengths—and returns to its starting point by preset and devious course.

“The spy device itself is relatively simple. It uses magnefilm, taking pictures of the source of any desired radio signal. When the signal is received, it locates the beam, aims the camera, and records the audio signal magnetically. Of course, the synchronization between the picture and the audio recording is perfect, because of the magnefilm.”