Shadow of Heaven

Chapter Thirteen

There was very little free space anywhere in the station’s four floors, but the F.T.A. men had managed to find enough room on the top level to set up a kind of field camp. Just inside the rarely used entrance were three portable beds, chairs and a small table, and a communications set. A hatch, which had been cut in the roof, led to a nest of two heavy machine guns and a modern rad-rifle.

The raid had gone better than they might have expected. Apart from the loss of Borges, the only casualty among the villagers was Forsythe, who had been kicked in the eye and almost blinded while going through to the roof. Of the four F.T.A. men who had been in the station, one was dead—at the hands of Dix—and another had been shot in the knee. Johnny permitted the two remaining men to put their wounded comrade on a negative-gravity sled and fly him back to the elevator head. They had gone gratefully, with curious looks at the bearded viking, whose voice was a thin squawk issuing from a tarnished medallion at his throat.

In the meantime, Theodore, who was the party’s nearest approach to an electronics expert, had been examining the communications set. Johnny sat down on a bed and began removing the extra clothing he had put on for the raid.

“What’s the range of that thing?”

Theodore looked up from the set “I’m out of touch, Jaycee. Can’t say for sure.”

“Will it reach the coast?”

“Which one?”

“What do you mean which one? The Bast Coast, of course. If I use that thing, will they hear me in Newburyport?”

“Sure thing, Jaycee. They’ll be able to see you too.”

“All right, fix it up for me. I want to talk now.”

“Johnny.” Stirling had been leaning against a wall, with unfocused eyes watching Borges fall into the clouds. “Do you want to block the channels right now? Lomax could come through at any minute, and it might be best to straighten him out first.”

Johnny raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think that would be too bright. If Lomax gets an idea of what we’re planning, he’ll do anything to stop us. He might have equipment there which could jam this set. Right, Theo?”

Theodore nodded; and Stirling realized he had been nursing a tiny, illogical hope that, somehow, he would succeed in escaping from the nightmare and get off the lie with his anonymity still intact. But once the story became public, there would be an explosion which, as well as harming the F.T.A., would permanently alter the lives of all the men concerned. He could never again become Vic Stirling, the strolling reporter, the man whose only concern in life was keeping it at arm’s length. All the wordage he had written against the F.T.A., all the anger he had expressed, none of it had ever touched another human being; and at last he understood why. He had been playing games and now—through blind chance—had strayed into the big league, where there was no second-guessing and the umpire’s decision was very, very final.

Johnny walked over to the communications set. “How about wavelength? Who am I going to talk to?”

“How about using a police wavelength, Jaycee? That should stir things up for a start—and you get a lot of nosy characters listening in as well.” Theodore spoke with the kind of patient, manufactured enthusiasm the villagers often used when addressing Johnny.

“That’ll do. Set it up.”

Johnny positioned himself in front of the set’s console and began to talk, without hesitation or any signs of self-consciousness about either his ridiculous voice or the equally unlikely context of his message. He began by identifying himself by name and former address: John Considine, Fam-apt 126-46, Flat-block 353, Res-area 93N-54W. As he reeled off the string of figures, Johnny’s eyes met Stirling’s for an instant, and their minds vaulted into realms beyond normal communication. Always think a good address is so important, don’t you? But Stirling got a depressing intuition that this was the last real contact he and his brother would make.

Speaking calmly but quickly, Johnny stated where he was speaking from and, at Theodore’s instigation, invited listeners with direction-finding equipment to check his bearing. He went on to say he was an eyewitness to the destruction of crops by F.T.A. men who were building living quarters on the He, and that his statement would be verified by a reporter from the Newburyport Record, who was also present. Stirling took his place at the set and confirmed everything Johnny had said; he also added that the F.T.A. had used machine guns in an effort to prevent their activities being brought to the attention of the American public.

He had barely finished speaking when Theodore picked up an incoming call and threw the picture onto the set’s main screen. Stirling recognized the pale, round face, and sliced-liver lips of Jepson Lomax.

“Stirling!” Lomax leaned forward until the camera distorted his features. “You’ve brought yourself some real trouble this time. It may interest you to know that your name has gone up to Mr. Hodder himself, and that …”

“It may interest you,” Stirling interrupted, “to know that we’ve been using this communications set to broadcast direct to the East Coast.”

“You’ve … what?”

“Starting any moment now, you’re going to get a lot of calls about what’s been going on here, Lomax. And I imagine your name has gone up to Mr. Hodder himself along with mine.” Stirling was surprised to discover how much he was enjoying the hour of self-immolation.

Lomax brought himself under control with an obvious effort. “I’ve given orders for you and the rest of those thugs to be brought back to this building right away, Stirling. We’ll see how insolent you can be in prison—if you can get back in one piece.”

Stirling shrugged. “Tell your boys to hurry over. It would be best from our point of view if your gunners were doing their party piece when the first spectators arrive. Even a helicopter could get out here from the coast in less than five minutes; so they should be overhead any time now.” He nodded at Theodore, who broke the connection, and Lomax’s image went on a comet-ride into the spurious depths of the screen.

“Good stuff,” Johnny said. “I think I’ll appoint you my permanent press officer.”

“It was good stuff, all right.” Stirling could feel his elation begin to ebb. “I only hope Theodore had the set pushing it all out.”

There was a movement at the hatch above their heads, and Dix called them up onto the roof. Stirling climbed up into the sunlight behind Johnny and peered towards the west to the spot where Dix was pointing. A flotilla of F.T.A. sleds, rising and falling in flight, was coursing above the soil beds towards the station; but Stirling’s gaze centered itself higher up.

Above the rim of the lie, the crystal carapaces of three bubblecraft were glittering against the pale blue sky.

Johnny’s next move filled Stirling with an even deeper sense of unease. He manhandled the rad-rifle down off the roof and used it to burn through the locks on the station’s output master-switches. When the job was finished, Johnny had in his hands the power to drop International Land Extension, U.S. 23, into the North Atlantic if he so desired.

Apart from not liking the implications of what Johnny was doing, Stirling was worried about what might happen if the rifle slipped at the wrong moment and burned through vital circuitry in another part of the station. He took his mind off it by sitting at the communications set and searching the wavebands to see how the various news-services were handling the story. The reaction had been almost immediate. On seeing the bubblecraft overhead, the F.T.A. sleds had scampered back to headquarters to wait while Lomax assessed the new situation. And, in spite of the fact that it was illegal to overfly an lie, the sky had been filled with assorted sizes and types of craft all morning—until the arrival of a squadron of army drift-ships had cleared the air. Even then, an occasional bubble filled with newsmen and photographers had been skimming in over the wall for a quick pass across the He. Watching the newscasts on the main screen, Stirling had felt a slight sense of dislocation at sitting inside the power station, yet seeing it from the machines passing above. Each time one of the machines passed by, the villagers manning the two guns remaining on the roof waved like excited children.

At first there had been some confusion in the news-stories: many stations had given the impression that the F.T.A. had sent men onto the He simply to clear out newly discovered squatters. But Johnny’s statement about the destruction of crops had burned in deep, and aerial shots of the building-work-in-progress on the strips had begun to occupy most of the transmission time. Within two hours the major stations were using their political specialists on the story; and reports began to come in of Gordon Hodder, President of the F.T.A., and Lester B. Raddall, the East Coast Administrator, not being available for comment.

Stirling nodded in satisfaction—Hodder’s propaganda machine was going to be faced with an impossible task trying to erase this incident from the public memory before the elections. Dealing the F.T.A. a body blow had been almost too easy, Stirling thought, but what was going to happen next? Johnny was relaxed and confident, seemingly under the impression that Lomax had been his last enemy. He had already sent the F.T.A. man a message that any further attempts to retake the power station would result in the lift energy for the whole western sector of the He being shut off at its source. Stirling was satisfied the threat would be effective against Lomax, but it would take more than that to restrain the entire F.T.A. and the Government. If necessary, either one of them could— given a little time—set up ground-based equipment which would support the He long enough for a military action to be carried out against the villagers.

Late in the afternoon the communications set suddenly refused to pick up anything but audio and visual noise; and Stirling guessed Lomax, or someone higher up the pyramid, had given orders for the power station to be screened off. Johnny was unimpressed when told about it.

“When anybody who matters wants to get through to us, he will. Don’t forget, they haven’t heard my terms yet.” He bit off a piece of wheat cake, washed it down with a gulp of water, and leaned back against the parapet of the machine-gun nest. Dix laughed near at hand, but kept his eyes on the distant shapes of the drift-ships patrolling beyond the He’s perimeter.

“All right, Johnny,” Stirling said patiently. “I keep on underestimating you; so I’m not going to point out the impossibility of fighting Hodder and Raddall. You must know that already. Just tell me what terms you can hope for.”

“Hope for, big brother? I’m not hoping for anything. I told you, I’m laying down the terms.” Johnny kept watching the eastern horizon as he spoke; and, following his gaze, Stirling saw the yellow outline of a robot approaching at top speed. It was too far away for him to see who was riding it.

“But think ahead, Johnny. You surely can’t …” “For Christ’s sake!” Johnny flowed upright and turned his back on Stirling, “Do you ever get tired listening to yourself, Vic? You make such a profession out of sounding reasonable, and yet the things you say … Think ahead, you said. You want to talk about thinking ahead? You’re good at that, are you?”

“Your ‘rhetorical question’ sign has just lit up, Johnny.” “Well, let’s see how good you really are. Some of the people who came to the He to live brought guns with them, just la case they would be needed. Old man Latham brought his library. How about you, Vic. Supposing you had planned to stay on the He permanently, what would you have brought? What’s the one thing you could have packed which would make it impossible for anybody in the whole world to order you back down?”

Stirling hesitated, unable to force his brain into action.

“I’ll give you a few hints, Vic. The thing I brought weighs about ten pounds; it’s metal; and it’s filled with a micro-powder called …” He waited, smiling.

“Herbicide,” Stirling blurted out. “Paraquat dichlorideD!”

“Good boy,” Johnny said with mock indulgence. “Isn’t he a good boy, Dix?”

Stirling was too occupied with his own thoughts to note Dix’s reaction. Johnny was unbalanced, of course; but it was possible to have too much equilibrium, to have a mind that was stable to the point of being static. Johnny’s father, from whom he had inherited the ancient World-War-II flying boots, had been an antique aircraft enthusiast; and Stirling suddenly remembered him saying that the best fighting planes were slightly unstable.

And Johnny had piloted the slightly distorted, out-of-true craft of his mind with the lonely brilliance of an ace. The whole point about Heaven was that, in the eyes of the average American, the soil was sacred. That was the primitive psychology underlying the nation’s acceptance of the fantastic cost of the air-borne islands in spite of their relatively insignificant output. They represented the cherished fecundity without which no organism can have a stake in the future, and to threaten even one of them with sterility was to wield a dark power against which little could stand. One herbicidal bomb exploded inside the He’s shell field would render it meaningless, valueless, infertile.

There was a noise at the hatch, and Theodore’s head appeared in the opening. “The set’s working again, Jaycee, and somebody wants to talk to you and your brother.”

“Who is it?”

“I’m not sure. I told you, I’m out of touch; but it looks like Administrator Raddall.”

Johnny rocked back and forwards gently, eyes closed, smiling peacefully. “Tell Administrator Raddall I’ll be happy to discuss my terms with him—after I’ve finished eating.”