The Zap Gun (21 page)

Lars, walking over, interrupted him, abruptly. "Are you operating on intrinsic?"

The ancient, dim eyes confronted him. But there was no answer; the sunken mouth did not stir, now.

"Come on," Lars said. "Which is it, intrinsic or remote? Are you homeostatic or are you a receptor for instructions coming from an outside point? Frankly, I'd guess you're fully intrinsic. Programmed in advance." To Lilo and Dr. Todt he said, "That explains what you call its 'senility.' The repetition of certain stereotyped semantic units over and over again."

Ricardo Hastings mumbled wetly, "Boy, how we clobbered them. They didn't expect it; thought we were washed up. Our weapons fashion designers, they hadn't come through. The aliens thought they could just walk right in and take over, but we showed them. Too bad you people don't remember; it was before your time." He—or it—chuckled, sightlessly staring at the floor, its mouth twitching in a grimace of delight.

"I don't," Lars said, pausing, "buy the idea of the time-travel weapon anyhow."

"We got the whole mess of them," Ricardo Hastings mumbled. "We warped their goddam satellites entirely out of this time-vector, a billion years into the future, and they're still there. Heh-heh." His eyes, momentarily, lit with a spark of life. "Orbiting a planet that's uninhabited except by maybe spiders and protozoa. Too bad for them. We caught their ships of the line, too; with the T.W.G. we sent them into the remote past; they're set to invade Earth around the time of the trilobite. They can win that easy. Beat the trilobites, club them into submission." Triumphantly, the old veteran snorted.

At two-thirty, after a wait which Lars would not have undergone again at any price, the carbon-dating of the tissue taken from the old man's body was brought in by a hospital attendant.

"What does it show?" Lilo asked, standing up stiffly, her eyes fixed on his face, trying to apprehend his reaction, to share it with him.

Lars handed her the single sheet. "Read it yourself."

Faintly she said, "You tell me."

"The microscopic analysis showed it to be indubitably human, not syntho—that is, android—tissue. The carbon-17-B dating procedures, applied to the tissue-sample, indicate that the sample is one hundred and ten years to one hundred and fifteen years old. And possibly—but not probably—even older." Lilo said, "You were wrong."

Nodding, Lars said, "Yes." To himself, Ricardo Hastings chuckled.

On this score, Lars Powderdry said to himself, I have failed as completely as, formerly, I let them down authentic, in time of need, weapons-wise. There has never been one point at which I have really served them, except of course in the old situation, the benign game which Peep-East and Wes-bloc played all those years, the Era of Plowsharing in which we duped the multitude, the pursaps everywhere, for their own good, at the expense of their own proclivities.

I did bring Lilo to Washington, though, he thought. Maybe that should be entered in the record-books as an achievement. But—what has that accomplished, besides the hideous suicide of Maren Faine, who had every reason for living on, enjoying a full and happy life?

To Dr. Todt, Lars said, "My Escalatium and my Conjorizine, please. Twice the customary dose." To Lilo he said, "And that East German firm's product that you have a monopoly on. I want you to double your intake of it at this time. It's the only way I can think of to increase our sensitivity and I want us to be as sensitive as our systems can withstand. Because we'll probably only make one real try."

"I'll agree to that," Lilo said somberly.

The door shut after Todt and the hospital staff-members. He and Lilo, with Ricardo Hastings, were sealed off.

"This may," he said to Lilo, "kill either or both of us, or impair us permanently. Liver-toxicity or brain—"

"Shut up!" Lilo said. And, with a cup of water, downed her tablets.

He did the same.

They sat facing each other for a moment, ignoring the mumbling, slavering old man between them.

"Will you ever recover," Lilo asked presently, "from her death?"

"No. Never."

"You blame me? No, you blame yourself."

"I blame her," Lars said. "For owning that miserable, lousy little Beretta in the first place; no one should carry a weapon like that or even own it; we're not living in a jungle."

He ceased. The medication was taking effect; it paralyzed, like an enormous overdose of phenothiazine, his jaws and he shut his eyes, suffering. The dose, much too much, was carrying him off and he could no longer see, experience the presence of, Lilo Topchev. Too bad, he thought. And it was regret, and pain, that he experienced, rather than fear, as the cloud condensed around him, the familiar descent—or was it ascent?—now heightened, magnified out of all reasonable proportion, by the deliberate over-supply of the two drugs.

I hope, he hoped, that she isn't going to be required to endure this, too; I hope it is easier on her—knowing that would make it easier on me.

"We really blasted them," Ricardo Hastings mumbled, chuckling, wheezing, dribbling.

"Did we?" Lars managed to say.

"Yes, Mr. Lars," Ricardo Hastings said. And the garrulous, trivial mumble, somehow, seemed cleared, became lucid. "But not with any so-called 'Time Warpage Generator.' That is a fabrication—in the bad sense. I mean a cover-story." The old man chuckled, but this time harshly. Differently.

Lars, with extreme difficulty, said, "Who are you?"

"I am an ambulatory toy," the old man answered.

"Toy!"

"Yes, Mr. Lars. Originally an ingredient of a war-game invented by Klug Enterprises. Sketch me, Mr. Lars. Your compatriot, Miss Topchev, is no doubt sketching, but merely repeating, without realizing it, the worthless visual-presentation formerly produced... and ignored by everyone but you. She is drawing me. You were absolutely right."

"But you're old."

"A simple technical solution presented itself to Mr. Klug. He foresaw the possibility—in fact the inevitability—of an application of the new dating-test by carbon-17-B. So my constituents are modifications of organic matter slightly in excess of one hundred years vintage. If that expression doesn't disgust you."

"It doesn't disgust me," Lars said, or thought. He could no longer tell if he were actually speaking aloud. "I just plain don't believe it," he said.

"Then," Hastings said, "consider this possibility. I am an android, as you suspected, but built over a century ago."

"In 1898?" Lars asked with bottomless scorn. "By a buggywhip concern in Nebraska?" He laughed, or tried to, anyhow. "Give me another one. Another theory that fits what you know and I know to be the facts."

"This time would you like to try the truth, Mr. Lars? Hear it openly, with nothing held back? Do you feel capable? Honestly? You're sure?"

After a pause Lars said, "Yes."

The soft, whispering voice, perhaps composed of nothing more in this deep-trance relationship than a thought, informed him, "Mr. Lars, I am Vincent Klug."

"The small-time operator. The marginal, null-credit, kicked-around toy man himself," Lars said.

"That's right. Not an android but a man like yourself, only old, very old. At the end of my days. Not as you've met me and seen me subsurface, at Lanferman Associates." The voice was weary, toneless. "I have lived a long time and seen a good deal. I saw the Big War, as I said. As I told everyone and anyone who would listen to me as I sat on the park bench. I knew eventually the proper person would come along, and he did. They got me inside."

"And you were main-man in the war?"

"No. Not for that or any weapon. A time-warpage instrument exists—will exist—but it will not factor in the Big War against the Sirius slavers. That part I made up. Sixty-four years from now, in 2068, I will make use of it to return.

"You don't understand. I can come back here from 2068; I've done so. Here I am. But I can't bring anything. Weapon, artifact, news, idea, the most minuscule technological pursap entertainment novelty—anything." The voice was savage, roused to bitterness. "Go ahead! Telepathically pry at me, tinker with my memory and knowledge of the next six decades. Obtain the specs for the Time Warpage Generator. And take it to Pete Freid at Lanferman Associates in California; get a rush-order on it, have a prototype made right up and used on the aliens. Go ahead! You know what'll happen? It will cancel me out, Mr. Lars." The voice cut at him, deafening him, cruel. Corrupted by vindictiveness and the futility of the situation. "And when it cancels me out, by instigating an alternate time-path, it will cancel the weapon out, too. And an oscillation, with me caught in it, will be erected in perpetuity."

Lars was silent. He did not dispute; it seemed evident and he accepted it.

"Time-travel," said the ancient, decayed Klug of sixty-four years from now, "is one of the most rigidly limited mechanisms arrived at by the institutional research system. Do you want to know exactly how limited I am, Mr. Lars, at this moment in time, which is for me over sixty years in the past? I can see ahead and I can't tell anything—I can't inform you; I can't be an oracle. Nothing! All I can do, and this is very little, but it may be enough—I know, as a matter of fact, whether it'll be enough, but I can't even risk telling you this—is call your attention to some object, artifact or aspect of your present environment. You see? It must already exist. Its presence must not in any way be dependent on my return here from your future."

"Hmm," Lars said.

" 'Hmm.' " Vincent Klug sneered, mocking him.

"Well," Lars said, "What can I say? It's been said; you just now went through it, stage by stage."

"Ask me something."

"Why?"

"Just ask! I came back for a reason; isn't that obvious? God, I'm tied in knots by this damn principle—it's called—" Klug broke off, choked with impotence and fury.

"I can't even give you the name of the principle that limits me," he said, with descending strength. The battle to communicate—but not to communicate beyond the narrow, proper line—was palpably draining him rapidly.

Lars said, "Guessing games. That's right; you like games."

"Exactly." A resurgence of energy pulsed in the dry, dust-like voice. "You guess. I either answer or I don't."

"Something exists now, in our times, in 2004."

"Yes!" Frenzied, vibrant, humming excitement; the furious regathering of the life-force in response.

"You, in this time period, are not a cog. You're on the outside and that is a fact. You've tried to bring it to UN-W Natsec's attention but since you're not a cog, no one will listen."

"Yes!"

"A working prototype?"

"Yes. By Pete Freid. On his own time. After Jack Lanferman gave him permission to use the company shops. He's so goddam good; he can build so goddam fast."

"Where is the device now?"

A long silence. Then, haltingly, in agony, "I—am—afraid to—say too much."

"Pete has it."

"N-no."

"Okay," Lars pondered. "Why didn't you try to communicate with Lilo?" he asked. "When she went into a trance-state and probed at your mind?"

"Because," Klug whispered wearily in his dry, rushing voice, "she is from Peep-East."

"But the Prototype—"

"I see ahead. This weapon, Mr. Lars, is for Wes-bloc alone."

"Is the weapon," Lars said, "in Festung Washington, D.C. at this time?"

Witheringly, the voice of the ancient Vincent Klug eaten away by the destroyer retorted. "If it were I would not be talking to you. I would have returned to my own period." He added, "Frankly, I have plenty to lose by being here, my friend. The medical science of my own era is capable of sustaining my life on an endurable basis. That, however, is not the case in this year, 2004." His voice pulsated with the rhythm of fatigue and contempt intertwined.

"Okay, this device," Lars said—and sighed—"this weapon originates from my own time and not from the future. You've had the prototype made. Presumably it works. So you've either taken it back to your own tiny factory or whatever it is you operate!" For a long time he considered, recapitulating in his mind over and over again. "All right," he said. "I don't need to ask you any more; we don't need to stain it. Better not to take any more chances. You agree?"

"I agree," Klug said, "if you feel you can continue on your own—with what you now know and no more."

"I'll find it."

Obviously he had to immediately approach the Vincent Klug of this period, drag the device out of him. But—and he saw it already—the Vincent Klug of 2004, having invented the device, would not recognize it as a weapon.

He would not therefore know which object was wanted; Klug might, in his typical, zany, marginal operations, possess a dozen, two dozen, constructs in every possible stage all the way from the rough sketch, the drafting board, to the final autofac-run retail-sales production items themselves.

He had broken contact with the ancient Vincent Klug of 2068 prematurely.

"Klug," he said instantly, urgently. "What kind of toy is it? A hint! Give me some clue. A board game? A war game?" He listened.

In his ears, as spoken words, not telepathically received thoughts, the cracked, senile voice mumbled, "Yeah, we really clobbered them, those slavers; they sure didn't expect us to come up with anything." The old man wheezing chuckling with delight. "Our weapons fashions designers. What a washout they were. Or so the aliens thought"

Lars shaking, opened his eyes. His head ached violently. In the glare of the overhead light he squinted in pain. He saw Lilo Topchev beside him, slouched inert, her fingers holding a pen... against a blank, untouched piece of white paper.

The trance-state, telepathic rapport with the obscured, inner mind of the old "war veteran" Vincent Klug, had ended.

Looking down, Lars saw his own hand as it gripped a pen, his own sheet of paper. There was no sketch of course; he was not surprised by that.