Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sunday, April 12, 2043

“And why not hold our first American Party Congress here next week?” Jennifer Caw stuck out her truculent chin still farther.

“Attracts attention,” Liese argued patiently. “Here in America? On April twentieth… the First Führer’s birthday? Noticed!”

“Good!” Bill Goddard yawned hugely into his breakfast plate. It had once held a dozen hotcakes; now it resembled the floor of a hyena cage.

“We’re part of Outram’s big national think-out here in New Orleans: what to do about Starak, Pacov, and the rest. If we quietly hold a side meeting of our own Party at the same time, nobody’ll pay any attention. We need to talk to our American leadership… plus anybody else who’s inclined our way.” Jennifer wadded up her napkin inexorably, as though disposing of both the subject and any benighted dissenters. “We don’ t need to say a word about our origins… our heritage. Who’ll care? The world’s got bigger problems.”

“Yes. but….”

“But what, dammit? Sure, the Jews would panic if we went around draped in swastikas, but as far as the world knows the Party of Humankind is just one more conservative organization among many, all under Outram’s conservative, ultra-patriotic, America-forever banner. He’s playing host to them all… even some right-of-center Jewish groups. So long as nobody yells ‘Nazi!’ we’re all ‘grass green,’ as the Bangers say. And we’re focusing on stuff everybody wants. Look who— all’s here: people from the old fuddy-duddy political parties, Catholics, Protestants, Born-Agains, Bangers, businessmen, students, farmers, good ole boys. Whites, Blacks, Jews, Chicanos, Arabs… anybody from anywhere… all billing and cooing together over in the Convention Center like… like….”

“Turkey doves?” Wrench supplied with malicious helpfulness.

“I wish we could have our convention in a friendlier city,” Goddard grumbled unhappily. “New Orleans is too racially mixed, too goddamned ‘liberal.’” With him, “liberal” was a bleep-word.

Liese made a sarcastic face at him across the pink plastic table. “Friendly like you? Scare people away!” She sat curled beside Lessing in the farthest comer of the coffee-shop booth. “Popular support? Not your way!”

Goddard’s broad nostrils flared, his eyes blazed, and he opened his mouth to reply.

“Shush,” Jennifer laid scarlet-tipped fingers on his wrist. “You know what we’re doing and why. Our immediate goals are to stop Pacov and Starak, end the half-war in Europe, and put civilization back together. We get in on the ground floor. No more exile out in the Third World where we can’t influence the mainstream. We do exactly what the First Führer did: organize, build a power base, appeal to other groups with similar views, even though they may not be identical, and work like hell! Later, if we do get anywhere, we can worry about restructuring society. Now we push for traditional, positive, American values: peace, prosperity, strength, enterprise, reconstruction, and moral and physical well-being.”

“You quote your own speeches beautifully… or rather the speeches Liese writes for you.” Goddard rumbled. “But you don’t mention the thing that sets us off from all the others: the ending of racial integration and the moral and spiritual mongrelization that goes with it! We ought to say what we really want, and let the chips… and the weak sisters… fall where they may!”

Wrench rattled his fork. “Nobody’s hiding anything. It’s all in our literature. We’re just not emphasizing some of our longer-range objectives in view of the present emergency.” He sounded as though he were reading from one of Outram’s interminable presidential memos. “Anyway, racial policy is only one of our planks. There ‘re others, some just as important.”

Goddard snorted. “You’ve been out in the ‘Third World’ too long… or just out in the sun! You don’t know what it’s like to hold our views and live here in the United Stales. I may not be a ‘Descendant’ like some of you, but I’ve seen it up close. We’ve got enemies, and they’re not going to give up, go away, or let us be. My father was falsely accused, hunted down, and shot by some of the ‘guardians of American liberties.’ His friends were hounded by the Jewish-run press and the government’s ‘special interest’ agencies. My mother ‘broke the law’… the Anti-Defamation Amendment of 2005… when she accused the Vigilantes for Zion of having my father killed, and I remember what they did to her and to my older brother. The way the media told it, we were like some kind of rabid monsters! Me, they just shoved into a school for brainwashing. Later I ‘accidentally’ got convicted of a burglary I didn’t commit, and school turned into a prison cell… until Mr. Mulder’s friends found me and got me out. I grew up hard. Real hard.”

“So did I,” Wrench stated flatly. He almost never talked about himself. They waited, but the little man only licked his lips and stared down at his plate.

“I’ve said my piece,” Goddard insisted. “We’ve got to take a tougher line; otherwise we’ll end up where my dad did: on a slab in the morgue. The cops and the coroner stood around smirking and telling me and my mother that the holes in his body must’ve been made by moths! They ‘lost’ the charge-sheet… the whole dossier. We have to be tough.”

“We go legitimate,” Liese said. “Party’s orders.”

Goddard grunted and looked away. The coffee shop was full: military people, officials from a score of government agencies, a scattering of businessmen. There were no tourists; the cataclysm of Starak was still too fresh.

Jennifer saw Lessing and Liese watching her. She winked at them and let her nails stray along Goddard’s bristle-thatched bare arm. To push the man any further would lead to a quarrel. Goddard gave her a possessive grin: Mr. Mucho Macho about to drag his prize off to his cave. Hans Borchardt wouldn’t like that, but then he was over at the Convention Center orchestrating the morning’s events.

Jennifer moved her hand away: mission accomplished. She said, “Already we’ve had people asking what we mean by the ‘ supremacy of the Western ethnos.’ Yet you’d be surprised: after all the world’s just been through, some meek, little liberal lambs find themselves very comfortable in our camp.”

Wrench hated to let any argument drop without a final word. He rubbed at his wounded shoulder, now mostly healed, and pointed his fork across the table at Goddard. “You linientreue Old Guard! You march, you sing the Horst Wessel Lied, you wear sexy uniforms, and you attract so much crappy publicity you might as well be working for the opposition! You don’t convince anybody! Your only members are the guys you started with… plus,” he sang, “four FBI agents, three CIA operatives, two kikibirds… and an Israeli in a pear tree!” He waved his fork in time to the old Christmas carol.

“We are attracting members! And who cares about the rest?” Goddard snarled. “The First Führer had only contempt for ‘silent workers’… guys who hung back, who didn’t want to join, who were afraid to come forward and take their lumps with the rest. Those’re the ones who pop up later bragging about how much they did for the Party during the ‘time of struggle.’”

“Times change, and either we change too, or we go under. The First Führer would have recognized that.”

“I like linientreue better. Fight me, beat me, stomp me, but at least you’ll never forget my face. Any other way is to copy the Jews… changed names, warm handshakes, country club smiles “

“Yeah, and look where they are.”

Liese leaned over to whisper to Lessing, “Linientreue means ‘true to the line’… keeping to the exact letter of the First Führer’s ideas.”

“Like an old Muslim I knew who hated the taste of fat but always ate it anyway, because the Prophet Muhammad was supposed to have liked it. Blind obedience. Cling to every detail.”

“Goddard follows everything. Big, little, important, minor. Loyal and brave, though.”

“Yeah.”

He didn’t want to think about politics. Liese was very close, her fragrance compelling. He felt the tingle of contact against his arm and along his thigh. She had chosen a skirt and blouse of thin, sky-blue chiffon for the Congress’ morning session, a statement even more dramatic than Jennifer Caw’s pants suit of black Shan-tung silk and turquoise neckerchief. In the narrow confines of the booth, Lessing felt the slither of the fabric between Licse’s body and his own.

He had to resist the temptation. Liese was frightened of contact that she herself did not initiate. She might see him as a threat, a violator, another abuser like her father, like the pimps and gang-rapists in New York, like the unspeakable creatures who had brutalized her in that Cairo brothel.

Liese said something, but Jennifer’s voice was louder. “Look, Bill, we’re following the strategy our forefathers set up nearly a century ago: get rich, organize, buy publicity, build good will, and eventually push society in directions we want it to go. Why don’t you go with the flow? Right now we’re hauling in new members hand over foot.”

Goddard pursed his lips sarcastically. “Members, maybe, but not believers. Everybody’s preaching peace, love, reconstruction, prosperity, and sanity: the good, sweet, syrupy stuff. The Party’s on the same wavelength as the government, the churches, the United Nations…!”

“What’s wrong with peace and love?” Jennifer’s reasonableness was beginning to fray. “What would you do? Break the Anti-Defamation Amendment again? Holler for racial reforms? Get arrested for nothing?”

“Of course not! But home, mother, and germ-free apple pie are not all we want! Let’s lay out our total program! Stand up for our beliefs!”

“Which beliefs?” Wrench interposed slyly. “Remember that there were splits within the Third Reich itself. It wasn’t a monolith, you know. Even the leadership of the SS was divided into at least five cliques, each with its own interpretation of the First Führer’s ideals. It took all his charisma to hold ’em in check. We’re going to have the same thing, and in spades, as we pick up new members.”

“Fine. We’ll listen to differences of opinion. Then we… the Party Committee… will decide which road to take. You try one idea, then another and another, until you get to one that suits.”

“Not so easy,” Wrench scoffed. “With two people you have a love affair, with three you get politics, with four you get factions; after that you fight.”

“Damn it, belonging to the movement is like being born: either you’re in or you’re out! No matter how we differ about the details… even to fighting among ourselves… we still agree on our eventual goals! Come around to our thinking or go find another sandbox to play in. Does a Jewish rabbi preach the divinity of Jesus? Does the Pope go Banger and pound the drums for sex, sin, and syncopation?”

Lessing lumbered up to his feet, forcing Wrench out into the aisle to make way. Jennifer Caw threw him a look of gratitude.

“I should be getting over to the Congress,” he told them. “I’ve got a security force of sixty half-trained kids from Ponape, one company of Louisiana National Guardsmen, and two squads of Marine MP’s on loan from Outram… all to keep six thousand conference-walas from cutting each other’s throats. Every one of ‘em thinks all the rest are either heretics or boobs.” He waved for his bill.

Liese rose to stand beside him. “Walk you?” She took her beige coat down from the rack beside the table. The sunlight transformed her spring dress into a sapphire cascade that rippled down over her thighs and calves.

Lessing pulled his gaze away. “Sure.”

It was a longish walk from their hotel in the French Quarter down Canal Street to Front Street, and over to the Convention and Exhibition Center on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was exhilarating, nevertheless. The day was sunny, not too humid, and just over sixty-five degrees, a blessing after Lucknow and Ponape.

Nostalgia was tempting: oh, to be just an average guy out with his girl on a spring day, with nothing more to worry about than where to take her, how to please her, and when to make his moves! Lessing half closed his eyes and let the old city slip back in time: all normal, tourists in tee-shirts and tank-tops mingling with the dudes and the hustlers, strains of New Orleans jazz drifting along the narrow streets even at nine o’clock in the morning.

Fantasy! That world was gone. Innocence existed now only in fairy tales. Reality was all around them. Seedy, old New Orleans, seedier than ever, was crammed with refugees, soldiers, police, the displaced, the lost, and the confused: the nameless flotsam of a major disaster. The tee-shirts and tank-tops belonged to people who had no homes, whose loved ones were dead or missing, who had no jobs, no food, and no future. The dense traffic wasn’t made up of rubber-necking tourists; these cars were full of shock-numbed refugees and hard-eyed military police. New Orleans reminded Lessing of Aleppo after the Israelis had occupied it: the universal face of tragedy.

A middle-aged couple came toward them, the man well-dressed and dignified but rumpled and dirty, unused to asking for aid. His wife hovered nervously behind him. Their story was everywhere: caught away from home by Starak with no place to go. The military had sealed off the poisoned cities, sent in shoot-on-sight patrols to discourage looters, and herded the “lucky” survivors into sprawling, chaotic camps. Liese spoke to the couple and pointed them around to the other side of the Convention Center, where the Party’s soup kitchens were working around the clock side by side with the Red Cross and a half-dozen Louisiana charities.

Two uniformed teenagers, Lessing’s pupils from Ponape, admitted them into the Center’s security area. The hallway was dingy and stank of ammoniated floor-cleaner. A building that was upwards of ninety years old developed a personality all its own — and an odor to match.

“Mallon. Holm.” Lessing greeted them. “Anything happening?”

The tall one, Wayne Mallon, gave him a military salute that was somewhere between the U.S. Army, the SS, and “Marlow Striker’s Mercs” on TV. “No, sir. Mr. Morgan’s speaking now. Then come Senator Watt of Georgia, Miss Howard of the Center for Communicable Diseases, Dr. Astel from the Tulane School of Medicine, Mr. Grant Simmons of the Congress of Americans for Personal Freedom…”

“Mulder going to speak?” Lessing asked Liese.

“No. Low profile. Jennifer, Borchardt, local American leaders. Jennifer’s best. Pretty. Dramatic. Exciting.”

He made no comment. Liese didn’t appear jealous of Jennifer Caw, but you never knew. He walked on, still talking to the two young guards. “Who’s in security control?”

“Abner’s watching the screens, sir,” Timothy Holm called after him. “Lieutenant Bellman just left to pick up his Marines. Some ruckus in section twenty-two.”

“Serious?”

“No, sir. People just worked up “The rest of Holm’s reply was lost as they turned a comer. No guard stood at the security control-room door, an oversight somebody would have paid for if they weren’t so shorthanded Abner Hand wasn’t inside, either, probably gone with Bellman to see the fun.

Lessing marched straight to the bank of TV screens and found the one covering section twenty-two. It showed two helmeted Marines impassively listening to an angry, glittery-eyed young man in jeans and a cowboy hat The youth was lecturing everybody within earshot on the perils of buying foreign imports. He seemed to have it in for the Japanese.

Lessing watched for a moment. The sight bothered him; he could not have explained why. “Look at that guy!” he began. “Single-minded, fanatic, crazy bastard!” Each word stirred up others, like waking sleeping bats in a cave.

Liese stared at him, puzzled.

“Fanatics! Without them, the world’d be a happier place!”

Liese cocked her head at him and smiled uncertainly. She made a slow circuit of the desks, typewriters, telecom machines, and locked equipment racks. Finally she came back to dump her coat onto a desk and perch upon a tatty, black-cushioned typist’s chair. She smoothed her skirt over one silk-sheathed knee.

Her silence goaded him to say more. “It’s true!” he expostulated. “Everybody’s got an answer… the answer! Do like I say, and the world is roses! I’ve got the handle on politics, history, God, life, death, and the pursuit of happiness! I’m the one! Whether I’m President of the United States, the Pope of Rome, Herman Mulder, or Ignatz Schmerz… it’s me who’s right, and all you other jizmos are gubbing foozy!” He spat out the Banger obscenities as though they tasted bad.

“Ignatz Schmerz?” Liese raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Yeah, the comic-strip character. You know, the little Yiddish mouse.”

“Oh we… the Party… everybody… wants solutions to problems.” She shut her eyes and tugged at a milky opal earring, unsure of what was bothering him. “Find what works and tell people. Get them to join. To help. That wrong?”

“No, but it’s too easy. Too simple. Too… too black and white. Every issue’s got at least two sides. Most have more. Some have sides that go on forever.” He knew how hard it was for her to speak, but he found he couldn’t quit baiting her.

Liese gulped in air and stared down at the cluttered desk. She swallowed and tried again. “Better one-sided than too-many-sided. Democracy… everybody’s opinion equal… sounds fine. But too many real inequalities. Everybody is not equal. Too much talk, nothing done. We don’t have time; Pacov and Starak have ended time. Tomorrow too late. We fix things now, or else we… the human race… dies. Over. Finished.”

She pointed at a wall rack bristling with riot-control tear-gas guns. The Born-Agains’ revival meetings must’ve been real doozers! “You… Alan. The soldier. Pull the trigger. Bang. Problem solved. Just your side left.”

“That’s not fair! I… people like me… soldiers, the police… are the last resort, the enforcers, the muscle. We don’t make policies. You know what I mean: it’s this talk of our movement, and our Party, and our principles, and our goals that bothers me! You can’t solve human complexities with a cookbook, whether it’s the Communist Manifesto, the Bible, the Qur’an, the Constitution, or Mein Kampf.”

“Books give ideas, philosophies, plans, platforms. Show how to act, to solve, to build.”

“Or how to tear down, to hate, to kill, to destroy!” He was jabbing at her hard. Maybe it was Goddard who was the real cause of the bubbling frustration he felt within himself.

“Goals the same: human happiness, a better world. Methods differ.”

“Even Mein Kampft?” Why couldn’t he stop needling her?

“Especially Mein Kampf. World view: goals, not rules. Not a cookbook, not a manifesto. Way to a happy and prosperous Germany… Europe… the world. A new order. Fix the Weimar depression. Solve awful inflation. Restore Germany after humiliating Treaty of Versailles. End old, decaying society. Make social reforms. Stop Bolsheviks from taking over Western society. Clean up. Build. Mein Kampf says these things.”

“Most people see Hitler’s book only as a hymn of hatred against the Jews.”

She curled her lower lip. “They haven’t read it… only listened to what Jews say about it. Jews only one problem… maybe ten, fifteen pages out of whole book. Emigrate abroad. Leave German society to develop as majority of Germans wanted. No more problem.”

He changed his tack. “Authority, that’s what people want from their books, their holy scriptures: authority they can piously quote to push their own brand of horse apples!”

Her hands were trembling. She clenched them in her lap, crumpling the pleats of her blue dress. He was intimidating her, terrifying her, hurting her. Damn it, why had he started this stupid tirade? He had promised himself never to discuss her peculiar politics with her. Yet, with dull amazement, he heard himself continuing, “How can you be sure you’ve got the truth… that it’s your key that opens the Pearly Gates?”

“Do best we can.” She raised her eyes, shook out her blonde hair, and seemed to pluck eloquence out of the stuffy, muggy, antiseptic-smelling air. “We… the Western ethnos… are the creators, the inventors, the doers. We lead the way! That’s our destiny, our duty, our right. We judge because we are best fitted to judge. We, Alan, the people who made all this…” she made a circular gesture “… the same people who will make the future, too, unless we fritter it away, surrender it to some alien ethnos, or just plain kill the planet!” She glared at him defiantly.

He fought down another smart retort. After a long moment he won the struggle. In a brittle, cheerful tone, he said, “Hey, I forgot. I have to check in with Eighty-Five. That’s why I came over here.”

He let the tension ebb away by unlocking the wall safe and taking out the scrambler modem Wrench had put there. It was a green, metal box about thirty centimeters square and twenty high, with a receptacle for a telephone at one end and a headset of its own at the other. He set one of the office telephones in place, flipped on the room-speaker switch so Liese could hear too, dialed the number, and waited.

Eighty-Five’s sultry voice said, “Four, nine, twenty-seven.”

Today was Sunday. That meant he had to add two to the first number, twelve to the second, and forty -one to the third. There was no mathematical logic to the code; Wrench had picked the additives by flipping through the pages of a book. New additives — or subtrac-lives, multipliers, etc. — had to be memorized at irregular intervals. Charles Hanson Wren was a devious bastard!

Lessing replied, “Six, twenty-one, sixty-eight.”

“Acknowledge.” He heard the scrambler click. “Hello, Mister Lessing.” He had corrected Eighty-Five’s misunderstanding of his name, but it still perversely insisted on calling him “Mister.”

“Scramble to nineteen and file under Oubliette.” That would keep Outram’s people from listening in and also erase the conversation (but not the data) from Eighty-Five’s memory as soon as he hung up. More of Wrench’s cleverness.

“Acknowledge.” More clicking.

“Status report: countries and cities reporting new outbreaks of Pacov, Starak, or related phenomena.”

“Mexico City, Mexico: Starak, presumed 5.7 million dead or dying. Canton, China: Pacov, new outbreak, casualties unknown. Kharkov, U.S.S.R.: Pacov, new outbreak uncertain, casualties unknown. Central and northern Africa, portions of Libya and Egypt: mutated form of Pacov, casualties unknown but reported severe.”

“What?” Liese gasped. “Say again!”

“Unidentified operator,” Eighty-Five warned sharply. “Security clearance?”

“Anneliese Meisinger! Fifty-nine, three, seventy-five.”

So Wrench had finagled clearances for more than just himself and Lessing. It figured. What would the little man have done if Golden hadn’t shot the Marine captain and provided him with such a “golden” opportunity? The captain was now recovering in a Virginia hospital.

“Acknowledge, Miss Meisinger. Repeat: Central and…”

“No, no. Want Pacov mutation details.”

“Medical data are imprecise. Many Black persons are highly susceptible to this variant of the disease, while Whites, North African Berbers, Arabs, and those of other ancestries are relatively immune. A mutation is therefore presumed, with a margin of error of 2.21 percent.”

Selective genocide!

Lessing massaged the bridge of his nose; this helped the headaches he had been having lately.

“Canada?” Liese went on. “The United States? Israel? South America?”

“India?” Lessing added urgently. “Pakistan?”

“Negative or no new outbreaks. Do you wish political reports? Data on natural disasters, such as the new volcano in Colombia? The earthquake in Japan?”

“No.” Lessing had asked his next question many times before. “Perpetrators of Pacov?”

The answer was never what he wanted. “Forty-three individual perpetrators identified; dossiers indicate the following ethnic origins: Latin American, 17; Arab, 9; Afghan, 4; Irani, 3; Chinese and Japanese, 2; European, 2. Identification of the remainder is uncertain. These aggregates can be differently broken down or analyzed using other variables, if you wish.”

“Persons or groups behind these individual perpetrators?” He would bet money on Eighty-Five’s answer to this one, too.

He was right. Eighty-Five said, “Data inconclusive. Twelve major hypotheses are under consideration. Many dossiers are missing, however, and your human failure to keep complete and accurate records of private conversations, telephone calls, and written documents makes my task difficult.” The machine sounded testy. And that jab about “human failure” had an ominous ring to it. Lessing wondered if Outram’s computer whizzes knew their baby was developing an ego.

“Attempted Outram assassination?”

This might be too sensitive. The National Defense Emergency Committee had probably zipped this subject up tight. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask, unless Eighty-Five was set to flag unwarranted inquiries and pass them on to some unpleasant monitoring agency or other.

“Certain files and data require special clearance, Mister Lessing, but I can tell you the names, Social Security numbers, and some personal data concerning the members of the helicopter crew. All three were Caucasian males, members of the U.S. Army, ages…”

“Never mind. Just state who ordered that spesh-op?”

“I can’t tell you that.” The thing sounded coy! “I am investigating several theories. Conclusions will be released upon proper authorization.”

So much for that! He asked, “And Major Golden? Who was he working for?”

To his surprise, Eighty-Five replied at once. “A small clique of U.S. Army officers, mostly of Jewish background, although their exact numbers and composition are not yet finalized. These persons were supported by three radical Zionist and/or Israeli organizations. One may be a special section of ARAD, the current acronym for the central intelligence network of the State of Israel. The second is the Vigilantes for Zion, and the third remains unidentified. James Golden was actually Yigael Goldman, of New York City. Do you wish further data on him?”

“Unnh. Not now. What are… were… Golden’s objectives?”

“The same as yours, Mister Lessing. To gain control of me and my files.” The artificial voice carried no inflection.

Lessing shook his head ruefully and reached for the modem. “I’m signing off…”

Liese laid cool fingers over his. “I have questions.” She let her hand stay where it was.

“Go ahead. Miss Meisinger.”

“Status of The Sun of Humankind by Vincent Dorn? Clearance code: one, ninety-seven, thirteen.”

“Acknowledge. The book is approximately five-eighths completed, Miss Meisinger. I have taken the liberty of preparing three versions of it: one to attract intellectuals, one for general, non-politicized American readers, and one for those likely to be most hostile to Mr. Dorn’s ideas.

“Will you want the three versions of the book translated into other languages?” Eighty-Five went on. “I can redesign these editions to appeal specifically to members of foreign cultures.”

“Later. English first. Next project is a public-relations campaign, a big, effective one. Persuade people to join movement.”

“That will be an interesting test. What percentage should I consider a success? Must all humans be persuaded?”

Liese glanced over at Lessing, but he only shrugged. She replied, “Don’t know. Appeal to the largest audience, but target percentage not finalized.”

“There ‘re always holdouts,” Lessing muttered to her.

Eighty-Five heard him. “Untrue, Mister Lessing. Every human decision has a yes-or-no point. I can devise unique strategies to cause each individual to ‘flip the conviction-switch,’ so to speak. Given time and patience, every target can be convinced.”

“What? A separate program for each person? Impossible!”

“Do you know how many megabytes of memory I have? Give me the dossiers, and I shall lay out a strategy for each body of similar targets. I will then prepare programs for each sub-grouping, until the residue consists of sets of one target each. Those can then be dealt with. Within one year my success will be 96.4 per cent, with an error margin of 2.79 per cent. The programs will vary, of course; most recalcitrants can be won over with indoctrination and propaganda. Olhers will be susceptible to positive inducements: wealth, status, material goods, sex, etc. Some will require negative pressures: the withdrawal of possessions and perquisites, subjection to public humiliation, exposure of crimes, scandals, personal weaknesses, and the like. In extreme cases it may be necessary to withhold privileges, liberty, sustenance, and ultimately life itself. As humans, you and your fellow primary operators will doubtless be able to suggest still more effective methods unknown to me.”

“Blackmail… threats… bribery!” Lessing chortled. “Eighty-Five, you’re a goddamned gangster!” He couldn’t take the honeyed, feminine voice seriously.

“Mister Lessing, gangsters are, after all, no more than the operants and enforcers of simplified power structures, equivalent in purpose, and to a large extent in methodology, to your larger human governments. As for being damned by God “

“All power structures not the same,” Liese rapped. “Some more effective and less restrictive than others!”

“True. The one I suggest would fulfill human needs best,” the machine replied blandly.

“You are forbidden… you hear me?… forbidden to consider personalized persuasion!” she commanded. “Return to the Dom book and publicity methods.”

“Acknowledge. This is wasteful, however, and it will also affect other projects.”

“Explain other projects!”

“Professor Archibald is working on a similar personalized persuasion program for use by agencies of the United States government. Complete data control, coupled with comprehensive individual surveillance, will result in an optimal human society. It is needful to conceal this project from the populace, of course, since rationality is not a human strong point.”

“Cancel!” Licse ordered flatly. “Stop work on Professor Archibald’s project until further notice.” Professor Archibald was presumed dead, though his body had not been found.

“It is tempting,” Lessing murmured to her. “There s your totalitarian state on a platter! The sort of unified world government that Adolf Hitler never dreamed possible. He would’ve loved it!”

She whirled on him fiercely. “The First Führer would have hated a machine-run society! He wanted one Europe, eventually one world-state. But one governed by people, human beings, the best and most qualified, genetically and historically: the Aryan race! Not a computer-generated, futuristic nightmare!”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a nightmare! Maybe it’s the best way of running a world too complicated for humans to handle?” He despised himself for starting in on her again, but he just couldn’t seem to leave her alone.

“Computers necessary. Not to decide. Just store data. Collate. Make projections.” Her anger-fired eloquence subsided. She was breathing hard, speaking in husky, chopped phrases. Her hands were pale, bony knobs, tight and trembling in her lap.

“A computer or one-man rule, it still isn’t democracy.

“Democracy? What is that, really? It never existed! Not even in Athens. The Athenians had slaves, commoners, non-voting residents. True democracy works only in very small communities, like the Quakers.”

He tasted frustration at the back of his throat once more. I know that… and you know I know it! I’m talking about what people call democracy here in the United States, whatever the hell its real, socio-political, fancy-ass jargon name is!”

“Representative democracy? Constitutional hypocrisy! Government by lobbies, interests, and the media! Molding people without letting them know they’re being manipulated. Like Professor Archibald!”

“Oh, come on, it’s not as bad as all that!” He was furious with himself.

“No, not bad. Just run by the wrong people for the wrong reasons and headed toward the wrong goals.”

“I’m no great patriot, but I don’t see what’s wrong with America as it is: a good standard of living, reasonable personal freedom, the vote, participation in government… a chicken in every pot, as my father used to quote from some place.”

“As long as you stay a nice chicken, jump into the pot when you’re told. Conform, play the Establishment’s game. Don’t preach major change, reforms, or unpopular political views. Don’t offend the corporations, the bureaucrats, the Jews, the Born-Agains. Pay taxes, vote for the ‘safe’ candidates… either major party, it doesn’t matter since they’re practically mirror images… don’t complain, and don’t push too hard for alternate lifestyles!”

“And your White Western ethnos is going to be different? Not just another power group, a new name for old repression?”

“Yes. Streamline institutions, reduce wasted billions spent on government agencies… many overlapping, redundant, obsolete. Make clear, fair laws that apply equally. Change unfair courts that rule in favor of the interests. Replace middle-man system so real producers get more, consumers pay less. Re-establish work ethic. So much to do ” She ran out of breath.

“And it’s going to be paradise? No homeless, no poor, no corrupt politicians, no criminals, no weaklings? All heroic, loyal, noble, industrious workers for the New Order?”

“’Course it won’t be perfect! Nothing ever is.” She broke off, embarrassed by her own fervor. “Lots of problems, mistakes, evils. Do the best we can, that’s all.”

He was silent. She leaned forward upon the creaking, old typist’s chair and stretched out one hand toward him.

She said only, “Alan.”

He knew what she wanted, what she meant. Politics and social reform and all merest needed words, books, speeches. For this topic, the oldest there was between men and women, she had only to say his name.

He discovered two things, both absolutely new and startling: the first was that he could come to love Liese — if this subtle, weirdly positive-negative compulsion fitted the definition. The second was that his subconscious had made up his mind for him: he couldn’t stay here, couldn’t pretend that he was a loyal Party stalwart, couldn’t let Liese believe that he was coming around to her point of view.

As soon as this convention was over he would resign from Indoco, from beegeeing Mulder, and from his post on Ponape. It was as though he were an alien in these roles, a Martian trapped in an Earthman’s body, forced to say and do strange things, obey unfamiliar customs, and think unintelligible, outlandish thoughts.

More, he had to see Jameela. He had to test his feelings for her against what he was starting to feel for Anneliese Meisinger.

He had to know what Jameela Husaini meant to him. He was the sort who could never just leave things unfinished and go on to something else. Each action, each phase of his life, had to have a neat beginning, a middle, and an end. That was the way he was.

Was his need to see Jameela the beginning of a new epoch or the end of an old one?

He would know when he saw her. Then and then alone.

Why couldn’t he make up his mind here and now? Set Liese on one side and Jameela on the other? Come on, Alan Lcssing, Mr. Smart-Ass, decide! He had all the facts: he had lived with Jameela long enough to know her as well as one human being can know another. What would one more look, a kiss, an embrace, a night in bed, tell him that he didn’t know already?

Screw logic and reason. He had to see Jameela.

How did she compare with Liese? Over here in this comer, ladeez and gents, we have Anneliese Meisinger, the ideal of every red-blooded American boy: slender, long-limbed, lithe, blonde, and hazel-eyed, the spiritual descendant of goddesses like Jean Harlow, Carol Lombard, Grace Kelly, and Susan Kane! Pretty as a picture, folks, even slouched on a battered typist’s chair in a crumby office that stinks of floor-cleaner, rancid French fries, and long-dead cigarettes!

And on the other side we have Jameela Husaini, dark and sensuous, like some houri out of Sindbad the Sailor. God, how he had loved her in India! How he loved her still!

Did he?

He couldn’t decide. Not this way. He had to see Jameela. Okay, then, what now? Go to her.

But how? India’s borders were scaled, a “health precaution” of Prime Minister Ramanujan’s zealous Hindu government. Reports from Delhi were scarce, vague, awash with rumors of bloody communal violence. Letters never got to India; they just disappeared. An Indian might carry a message in for him, but Indians didn’t often come out again, not these days. Nor was Lessing stupid enough to try a disguise! People did that only in the silliest of silly movies. He had never met a single Westerner whose Hindi or Urdu could truly pass as native, and if such a mythical creature did exist, his body language, his stance, and his walk would give him away as surely as if he wore a red-white-and-blue tutu and tap-danced in singing the Star Spangled Banner!

He would find a way. He was sure of that.

All of this took less than a heartbeat.

Liese knew at once: his feeling for her, the indecision that was pulling him apart. She let her hand fall back upon the desk.

Any other movement, a word, a look, a smile, and he would have gone to her.

“Better leave now,” she whispered. Then, louder: “Got to write a speech for Jennifer. This afternoon.”

“Liese, I have to go to India.”

“All right. Go.” She smiled, too brightly. “Letter from Emma.”

She wanted to change the subject as much as he did.

He asked, “How is she? Is she coming here?”

“No. Not well. Homesick. For Pretoria. Can’t go because of Black riots, possibly Pacov.”

“Tell her to stay put. Ponape’s dull but safe. No Pacov and nobody nicer than the Ponapeans.” He could feel the tightness ebbing away.

Something bothered him: he sensed a false note in his last utterance, a mistake, a lie, a falsehood. What had he said? It took him a moment to remember.

There was Pacov on Ponape! Lessing’s own stash was there, wrapped in tough plastic and buried in a steel ammo box beneath a floorboard in the bungalow Mulder had given him. Would he ever be free of the curse of Marvelous Gap?

Liese was frowning, two lines of concern drawn down between her brows. He sighed, smiled, and said, “Nothing. Just a thought.”

She took him to mean their own unresolved situation. “Never mind,” she said. “You come back, we’ll see.” She rose, smoothed down her shimmery, blue dress, and stretched. That almost changed his mind, almost undid him completely.

“Okay. Later.” He peered at the TV screens again. Section twenty-two was quiet. There was no sign of the distraught youth who had precipitated Lessing’s crisis. Abner Hand was visible there, talking with three of his cronies. He was Lessing’s pupil, a good pupil — too good: he was tough, street-smart, clever with weapons, quick with slogans and speeches, educated, and likable. He had become Bill Goddard’s disciple, a member of the Unientreue faction growing within the Party. Abner Hand would make a fine storm trooper.

Lessing reached over to shut off the modem, forgotten in the strain of the past few minutes. As he did so, he caught sight of another familiar face in the TV screen, a long, lugubrious, liver-spotted face with a drooping lump of a nose and smudges like dirty fingerprints under the eyes.

It was Richmond, the Zionist kikibird who had almost unzipped him in Paris!

What was Richmond doing here? Aside from security reasons, Lessing owed the old bastard something in memory of a skinny Banger girl who had almost become an unwilling star on the Torturers’ Happy Hour Show!

He fumbled for the public address microphone, found it, got it upside down, righted it, and somehow switched it on “Abner,” he called, “Abner Hand! Ten, nine, please. Ten, nine, please.” That was the signal to contact security control.

On the screen Abner glanced up, then around for the nearest telephone. Richmond could be seen just behind the youth’s left shoulder. The agent grinned — knowingly, Lessing would have sworn — into the camera. He looked Hand up and down as though admiring his uniform. Then he turned and strolled away.

Three long minutes elapsed before Abner’s excited voice crackled over the security-control telephone. It took Lessing another minute to describe Richmond and then still more time to gather a squad to look for him.

By that time the kikibird was gone. No one saw him again during the rest of the Congress.