High-Opp

Chapter 18

Movius was tired when he reached the apartment, his nerves frayed out by the day. He nodded to the door guards, went up in the elevator. The apartment was empty. Movius sensed it the minute he closed the door. Damn it! Grace wasn’t supposed to go out! A note was pinned to the bedroom door. “Dan: I’ve gone with Navvy to see friends.” No signature.

Friends? Sep business? He could think of nothing she was supposed to do. The organization was running smoothly, the way a good organization should. It hardly required his attention anymore.

The door chimes rang. Movius went to the door, hesitated, palmed the little gun before opening the door wide. It was Janus Peterson, the fat Bu-Trans driver Movius had appointed one of his chief lieutenants. Peterson ducked inside, waited for the door to be closed.

“Can we talk here?” Peterson’s husky voice rumbled in the effort to keep it low.

“You are now conversant with a privilege of Upper Rank,” said Movius. “A master scrambler on the building. It prevents any kind of tapping.”

Peterson’s eyes blinked. “A courier came in from Madrid today.”

Something occurred to Movius. “How’d you get in here? Nobody’s allowed in this building without a permit and the place is crawling with guards.”

Peterson grinned, pulled out a thin leather folder. “What kind of a permit do you need?” He pulled out a building maintenance permit signed with Warren Gerard’s unmistakable scrawl. “Traced the signature from a regular Bu-Trans order.”

“Anybody could do that,” said Movius.

“Anybody with enough brass,” said Peterson.

“Well, come in and sit down.” Movius waited for Peterson to crowd his barrel-shape into a chair, then perched on the arm of a chair opposite. “What’s the word?”

“People are all ready to revolt. Capetown was set to go it on their own. Now they say they’ll wait for the word from here. They like the idea of all moving at once.”

“How many are ready?”

“Maybe one hundred cities—the big ones. More coming in every day.”

“How’re we coming on the new headquarters?”

“Furniture goes in today,” said Peterson. “It’ll be ready by tomorrow night.”

Movius nodded. “All right. Here’s a message for you to take to Phil Henry: get the parts for the beam trap into a shipment to Bu-Psych by tomorrow morning. Have the men start assembling it tomorrow night. Got that?”

Peterson nodded. “I’m still not sure what that thing will do.”

“It’ll cause the biggest furor this government has ever seen,” said Movius. “The Coor is like Montcalm ignoring the Cliffs of Abraham.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s out of a history book,” said Movius. “A general once lost an ancient city called Quebec because he thought there was one way the enemy could not reach him and failed to guard that way.”

“Oh.”

“The Coor and all of his advisors believe it’s impossible to trap a communications beam without jamming it so that the effort would be noticeable. Phil Henry and I figured out a way to do it way back when we were in Comp Section together. Only we didn’t think there was any use for the idea and dropped it.”

“I’ll see that Phil gets the word today,” said Janus. “Soon’s I can.”

Movius got to his feet. “How many new recruits?”

Peterson wiped perspiration from his face with a soiled handkerchief. “Over two hundred today. That makes it sixty thousand in this city alone.”

“That’s a lot of people to trust.”

Peterson shook his head. “It isn’t hard to trust angry people. And it’s not hard to find out who’s angry and why. The Madrid courier said all of the people he talked to like the way you’re operating. They listened close to your recordings. He said they like the way you’re putting it over on the High-Opps.”

The door rattled, opened. Grace stood in the doorway with a package in her arms. She looked at Peterson questioningly.

“I was just going,” said Peterson.

“No need to leave on my account, Janus,” said Grace.

“Have to be getting back,” said Peterson. He lifted his bulk out of the chair, went to the door, turned sideways to go past Grace. Movius noted amusedly that Peterson was no thinner that way than across the beam.

Grace closed the door, dropped her package on the hall table, met him halfway across the room. They clung to each other for a moment without speaking. Grace pushed away.

Movius said, “Janus and I…”

“Will it wait?” She smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from his lapel, turned away from him. “You must stay away from my father. Don’t let my father or Navvy get near you.”

“But your note said you’d gone with Navvy to…”

“I made him drop me off downstairs in the basement driveway.”

“Why?” he asked. “Because your father is spying on me for O’Brien?”

She whirled on him. “Don’t be an oaf! I knew the second I told you about my father’s phone call the other night that you’d planted the story with O’Brien.” She twisted her hands. “You’re going to hate me.”

“I couldn’t do that.” Why did the lie come so easily? “I’m in love with you.” Somewhere in his mind a tiny thought said, “That’s right. You are in love with her.” He’d known it for three days now—three days and nights.

“You shouldn’t have gone out,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”

“I thought I’d be back before you got home and…”

“And what?” He moved to her, stroked her hair.

“I had to find out what they’re planning,” she said. She leaned against him, her cheek against his chin. “I had Navvy take me to father’s apartment to get some things I’d left there. I got away from Navvy and looked in a special place. I found a note for Navvy. It said, ‘We’ll have to do without.’ And…”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they plan to kill you.” She began to cry.

He held her away, looked at her. “How do you know?”

The tears rolled down her cheeks. “Because he was going to send me that message once.”

Movius jerked away from her. “Until you became untrustworthy!”

She nodded.

“That’s why they let you marry me. They wanted a scorpion in my bedroom. A trained scorpion that’d sting me when they gave the word.”

Again she nodded. The tears were now a steady pulse out of her eyes.

The agony in Grace’s expression came through the numbness in him. She risked me hating her, he thought. She risked it rather than let me be killed. He pulled her to him, stroked her head.

“I knew he was cold,” he said, “but…”

She pulled her head back, looked up at him. “He’s not really. He just can’t feel anything but the need for revenge. He wants to strike back for what they did to my mother.”

“No revenge is worth that.”

She stared at him. “Not even your revenge?”

“No, not even mine.” He took her arm. “Come in here and sit down. I want you to tell me their whole plan, why they called on me. Everything you know.”

She held back. “First I have to know something.”

“What?”

“These nights… have you…”

He looked at her, loving the little-girl expression of hesitancy. “I started to make love to you out of pity, but…”

“But?” The hurt showed near the surface of her eyes.

“But somewhere along the way I found you had more pity than I have.” He shook his head. “Men aren’t very good at this sort of thing. We try to do everything by logic and lose touch with our own feelings.”

“Dan.” Her face glowed. “Let’s apply for sparse area resettlement. We could go away and…”

“Grace!”

The glow left her face.

“You know better than that, Grace. We’re riding the tiger now. We can’t get off the tiger until we tame it.”