Solar Lottery

TEN

THE MacMillan robot moved languidly up and down the aisle collecting tickets. Overhead, the midsummer sun beat down and was reflected from the gleaming silver hull of the sleek intercon rocket liner. Below, the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean lay sprawled out, an eternal surface of color and light.

"It really looks nice," the straw-haired young man said to the pretty girl in the seat next to him. "The ocean, I mean. The way it mixes with the sky. Earth is about the most beautiful planet in the system."

The girl lowered her portable tv-lenses, blinked in the sudden glare of natural sunlight, and glanced in confusion out the window. "Yes, it's nice," she admitted shyly.

She was a very young girl, not over eighteen at the most. Her breasts were small and up-tilted; her hair was curly and short, a halo of dark orange—the latest color style-around her slim neck and finely-cut features. She blushed and returned hastily to her tv-lenses.

Beside her, the harmless, pale-eyed young man got out his package of cigarettes, took one, and then politely offered her the gold-encased pack.

"Thanks," she said nervously, in a throaty quaver, as her long crimson-tipped fingernails grappled with the cigarette. "Thanks," she said again, as he applied his gold cigarette lighter in her behalf.

"How far are you going?" the young man inquired presently.

"To Peking. I have a job at the Soong Hill-I think. I mean, I got a notice for an interview." She fluttered with her miniature purse. "I have it somewhere. Maybe you can look at it and tell me what it means; I don't understand all those legal phrases they use." She added quickly, "Of course, when I get to Batavia, then Walter can..."

"Your classified?"

The girl's blush deepened. "Yes, class 11-76. It isn't much, but it helps." Hurriedly, she brushed ashes from her silk embroidered neck scarf and right breast. "I just got my classification last month." After a hesitation, she asked: "Are you classified? I know some people are touchy, especially those who aren't..."

The young man indicated his sleeve. "Class 56-3."

"You sound so ... cynical."

The young man laughed his thin colorless laugh. "Maybe I am." He eyed the girl benignly. "What's your name?"

"Margaret Lloyd." She lowered her eyes shyly.

"My name's Keith Pellig," the young man said, and his voice was even thinner and drier than before.

The girl thought about it a moment. "Keith Pellig?" For an instant her smooth forehead wrinkled unnaturally. "I think I've heard that name, haven't I?"

"You may have." There was ironic amusement in the toneless voice. "It isn't important, though. Don't worry about it."

"It always bothers me when I don't remember things." Now that she knew the young man's name, it was permissible to speak openly. "I wouldn't have got my classification except that I'm living with a very important person. He's meeting me at Batavia." Pride mixed with modesty showed on her guileless face. "Walter fixed things up for me. Otherwise I never would have made it."

"Good for him," Keith Pellig said.

The MacMillan robot slid up beside them and extended its grapple. Margaret Lloyd quickly passed over her ticket and Keith Pellig did the same.

"Greetings, brother," Pellig said cryptically to the robot, as his ticket stub was punched and returned.

After the robot was gone Margaret Lloyd said to him, "Where are you going?"

"Batavia."

"On business?"

"I'd call it business." Pellig smiled humorlessly. "When I've been there awhile, I may start calling it pleasure. My attitude varies."

"You talk so strangely," the girl said, puzzled and more than somewhat awed by the complexities of an older man.

"I'm a strange person. Sometimes I hardly know what I'm going to do or say next. Sometimes I seem a stranger to myself. Sometimes what I do surprises me and I can't understand why I do it." Pellig stubbed out his cigarette and lit another; the ironic smile had left his face and he scowled dark and troubled. His words slowed down until they came out painfully, intensely. "It's a great life, if you don't weaken."

"What does that mean? I never heard that before."

"A phrase from an old manuscript." Pellig peered past her, out the wide window at the ocean below, "Well be there, soon. Come upstairs to the bar and I'll buy you a drink."

Margaret Lloyd fluttered with fear and excitement. "Is it all right?" She was terribly flattered. "I mean, since I'm living with Walter and—"

"It's all right," Pellig said, getting to his feet and moving moodily down the aisle, his hands deep in his pockets. "I'll even buy you two drinks. Assuming I still know who you are, after we get up there."

Peter Wakeman gulped down a glass of tomato juice, shuddered, and pushed the analysis across the breakfast table to Cartwright. "It really is Preston. It's no supernatural being from another system."

Cartwright's numb fingers played aimlessly with his coffee cup. "I can't believe it."

Rita O'Neill touched his arm. "That's what he meant in the book. He planned to be there to guide us. The Voices."

Wakeman was deep in thought. "What interests me is something else. A few minutes before our call reached the Information Library, another call was received for an identical analysis."

Cartwright sat up with a jerk. "What does it mean?"

"I don't know. They claim aud and vid tapes were shot to them for analysis, substantially the same material we sent over. But they don't know who it was from."

"Can't you tell anything?" Rita O'Neill asked uneasily.

"First of all, they actually know who sent in the prior informational request. But they're not telling. That gives me plenty to think about right there. I'm toying with the idea of sending a few Corpsmen over to scan the officials who had access to the face-to-face request."

Cartwright waved his hand impatiently. "Forget that. We have more important things to worry about. Any news on Pellig?"

Wakeman looked surprised. "Only that he's supposed to have left the Farben Hill."

Cartwright's face twitched. "You haven't been able to make contact?"

Rita's hand gripped soothingly around his. "They'll make contact when he enters the protected zone. He's still outside."

"For God's sake, can't you go out and get him? Are you just going to sit there and wait for him?"

Cartwright shook his head wearily. "Sony, Wakeman. I know we've gone over this a thousand times."

Wakeman was embarrassed, but not for himself so much. He was embarrassed for Leon Cartwright. In the few days since Cartwright had become Quizmaster there had been a corrosive change in him.

Cartwright sat twitching and fumbling at his coffee cup, a hunched, aged, and very frightened man. His face was dark and lined with fatigue. His pale blue eyes glinted with apprehension. Again and again he started to speak, then changed his mind and descended into a cloud of silence.

"Cartwright," Wakeman said softly, "you're in bad shape."

Cartwright glared at him. "A man's coming here to kill me, publicly and in broad daylight, with the whole-hearted approval of the system. Everybody in the world's sitting and cheering him, propped up in front of their tv sets, watching and waiting for the results. The winner of this... national sport. How the hell am I supposed to feel?"

"It's only one man," Wakeman said quietly. "He has no more power than you. In fact, you've got the whole Corps behind you, and all the resources of the Directorate."

"If we get him, there'll be another. An endless stream of them."

"Each Quizmaster has had to face this." Wakeman raised an eyebrow. "I thought all you wanted was to stay alive until your ship was safe."

Cartwright's gray, exhausted face was answer enough. "I want to stay alive. Is there anything wrong with that?" Cartwright pulled himself up and forced his hands to stay quiet. "But you're right, of course." He smiled shakily, half-apologetically. "Try to see my side of it. You've been dealing with these assassins all your life. To me it's a new thing; I've been a trivial, anonymous entity, completely out of the public eye. Now I'm chained here under a ten billion watt searchlight. A perfect target—" His voice rose. "And they're trying to kill me! What in the name of God is this strategy of yours? What are you going to do?"

He's pitifully scared, Wakeman thought to himself. He's falling apart. He doesn't care a damn about his ship. Yet that's why he's here in the first place.

In Wakeman's mind, Shaeffer's answering thoughts came. Shaeffer was at his desk on the other side of the Directorate building, acting as the nexus between Wakeman and the Corps. "This is the time to get him over there. Although I don't really think Pellig is very close. But in view of Verrick's sponsorship we should leave a wide margin for error."

"True," Wakeman thought back. "Interesting: at any other time Cartwright would be overwhelmed to learn that John Preston is alive. Now he pays only passing attention. And he can assume his ship has reached its destination."

"You assume there is a Flame Disc?"

"Evidently. But that's no concern of ours." Dryly, Wakeman thought, "And apparently no concern of Cartwright's. He managed to get himself in as Quizmaster—as a function of slamming the ship all the way out to Flame Disc. But now that he's actually face to face with the situation he sees it as a death trap."

Wakeman turned to Cartwright and spoke to him aloud.

"All right, Leon. Get ready: we're taking you out of here. We have plenty of time. No report on Pellig yet."

Cartwright blinked and then eyed him suspiciously. "Out where? I thought the protective chamber Verrick fixed up—"

"Verrick assumes you'll use that; he'll try there first. We're taking you off Earth entirely. The Corps has arranged a retreat on Luna. It's registered as a conventional psycho-health resort. Actually, it's somewhat more elaborate than Verrick's installations here at Batavia. While the Corps battles it out with Pellig, you'll be 239,000 miles away."

Cartwright gazed helplessly at Rita O'Neill. "What should I do? Should I go?"

"Here at Batavia," Wakeman said, "a hundred ships land every hour. Thousands of people pour in and out of the Islands; this is the most populated spot in the universe. Christ, this is the functional center of the nine-planet system. But on Luna, a human being literally stands out. Our resort is set apart from the others; our front-organization bought land in an undesirable section. You'll be surrounded by thousands of miles of bleak, airless space. If Keith Pellig should manage to trace you to Luna and comes walking along in his bulky Farley suit, geiger counter, radar cone and popper and helmet, I think we'll spot him."

Wakeman was trying to joke, but Cartwright didn't smile. "In other words you can't defend me here."

Wakeman sighed. "We can defend you better if you're on Luna. It's nice, there. We have it fixed up attractively. You can swim, play games, bask in the sun, relax, even sleep. We can put you in suspended animation until this blows over."

"I might never wake up again," Cartwright said cunningly.

It was like talking to a child. Frightened, helpless, the old man had ceased to reason. He had plunged all the way down to stubborn, archaic, infantile thalamic processes. Wakeman wished like hell it was late enough in the day for a drink. He got to his feet and examined his watch. "Miss O'Neill will be coming along with you." He made his voice patient but firm. "So will I. Any time you want to come back to Earth, you can. But I suggest you see our lay-out there; make up your own mind after you've seen it."

Cartwright hesitated in an agony of doubt. "You say Verrick doesn't know about it? You're positive?"

"Better tell him we're sure," Shaeffer's thoughts came to Wakeman. "He needs certitude. No use handing him a bunch of statistics at a time like this."

"We're positive," Wakeman said aloud, and it was a coldblooded lie. To Shaeffer he silently thought, "I hope we're doing the right thing. Verrick probably knows. But it doesn't matter; if everything goes right Pellig will never get out of Batavia."

"And if he does?" the thought came back wryly.

"He can't. It's your job to stop him. I'm not really worried, but I'd feel better if Verrick's Hills didn't hold the land on three sides of our resort."

The lounge of the intercon liner was swank and glittering with chrome. Keith Pellig stood by Miss Lloyd as she seated herself awkwardly in one of the deep thick-plush chairs and folded her nervous hands together on the surface of the null-legged plastic table. Pellig then sat down opposite her.

"What's the matter?" the girl asked. "Is anything wrong?"

"No." Pellig moodily examined the menu. "What do you want to drink? Make it snappy; we're almost there."

Miss Lloyd recoiled and her cheeks burned. The nice-looking man was grim-faced and sullen; she repressed a sudden desire to leap up and hurry downstairs to her seat. He was acting badly, insulting and nasty... but the needling fear that it was something she had done dissolved her resentment and made her fearful instead. "What Hill are you under fief to?" she asked timidly.

There was no answer.

The MacMillan waiter glided up. "What did you wish, sir or madam?"

Within the Pellig body, Ted Benteley was deep in stormy thought. He ordered bourbon and water for himself and a Tom Collins for Margaret Lloyd. He scarcely noticed the two glasses the MacMillan slid before them; he paid the chit automatically and began to sip.

Miss Lloyd was babbling youthful nonsense; she was excited with anticipation, her eyes shone, white teeth sparkled, orange hair glowed like a candle flame. It was wasted on the man opposite her. Benteley allowed the Pellig fingers to take the bourbon and water back to the table; he fooled with the glass and continued reflecting.

While he was reflecting, the mechanism switched. Silently, instantly, he was back at the Farben labs.

It was a shock. He closed his eyes and hung on tight to the circular metal band that enclosed his body, a combination support and focus. On his ipvic-engineered vidscreen the scene he had just left glimmered brightly. The body cast a microwave sheet that bounced at close range and was relayed by ipvic along the control channel to Farben in the form of a visual image. A miniature Margaret Lloyd was seated across from a miniature Keith Pellig, in a microscopic lounge. Tiny sounds filtered from the aud end of the system, as Miss Lloyd bubbled away.

"Who's in it?" Benteley demanded shakily. Herb Moore shoved him back down as he started to climb from the protective ring of metal. "Don't move! Unless you want half your psyche slammed over there and half left here."

"I was just in it. It won't hit me again for awhile."

"You might be next. Sit still until your focus-system is disconnected and you're out of the circuit."

At this moment a red button three rows down and four to the right was illuminated. On the screen the operator had already taken over; there was no time lag. He had, Benteley noted, in his first moment of shock spilled his glass of bourbon.

Miss Lloyd's chatter paused momentarily. "Are you all right?" she asked the Pellig body. "You look so sort of—pale."

"I'm okay," the Pellig body muttered.

"He's doing fine," Moore said to Benteley. "That's your friend Al Davis."

Benteley allowed the position of the luminous button to impress itself on his mind. "Which one represents you?"

Moore ignored the question. "The switch will ignite your indicator a split-second before you're actually arced across. If you keep your eyes open you'll have warning. If you turn away you may find yourself standing under a palm tree facing fully armed teeps."

"Or dead," Benteley said. "In this game of musical chairs who gets left standing up?"

"The body's not going to be blasted. It's going to reach Cartwright and destroy him."

"Your lab is already constructing a second android," Benteley contradicted. "When this one is demolished, you'll have it ready to be named by the Challenge Convention."

"Assuming something goes wrong, the operator will be jerked back here before the body perishes. You can calculate the odds against your being in the body at that particular moment. One out of twenty-four, times the forty percent chance of losing the body at all."

"Will you really be hooked into this rig?"

"I'll be hooked in exactly like you."

As Moore moved restlessly toward the exit lock of the cube, Benteley demanded, "What happens to my real body while I'm over?"

"As soon as you're arced out this stuff goes into action." Moore indicated the machinery that filled the metal chamber. "All this keeps the body functioning: supplies air, tests blood pressure, heart rate, carries off wastes, feeds, supplies water—whatever is needed."

The exit lock slammed. Benteley was alone in the machinery-crammed cubicle.

On the screen Al Davis was buying the girl a second drink. Neither he nor Miss Lloyd had much to say: the sound coming over the aud was a blur of crowd noise and clink of glasses. Benteley caught a glimpse through the microscopic window of the liner and his heart constricted. The ship was getting near the sprawling Indonesian Empire, the largest functioning aggregate of human beings in the nine-planet system.

It wasn't hard to picture the teeps checking the mechanics of their interception network. A vision of the first contact: a teep lounging at the transport field, or pounding a typer as some minor official in the ticket office. Or a female teep hanging around with the usual squad of bed girls that met the incoming ships. Or a teep child being tugged along by its parents. Or a terribly old man, a veteran of some roger-war, sitting feebly in the shade with a blanket over his knees.

Anybody. Anywhere. What looked like a lipstick, a fluff of candy, a mirror, a newspaper, a coin, a handkerchief. The variety of modern high-quality weapons was infinite.

On the screen the passengers of the transport were getting fussily to their feet and preparing to land. There was always this moment of suspense and tension as the sleek liner set itself down; then the sigh of relief as the reactors clicked off and the landing locks rumbled open.

Keith Pellig got clumsily to his feet and made vague motions toward Margaret Lloyd. The two of them joined the slowly-moving crowd that pushed down the ramp to the passenger level. Davis was doing fairly well; once he stumbled, but that was all. Benteley glanced up tautly at the detailed schematic of the Directorate's Batavia buildings. The landing field was linked directly to the main building grounds; the position of Pellig was already indicated on the schematics by a moving pin of color.

There it was—but no pin showed the position of the teep network. Without effort Benteley could calculate how soon the first contact between Pellig, the artificial android, and the teep network, would occur. In minutes, it could be figured on one hand.

Wakeman arranged for the C-plus rocket to be brought up to the surface from its storage locker. He poured himself a drink of Scotch, gulped it hastily, and then conferred with Shaeffer. "In half an hour Batavia will be a _cul-de-sac_ for Pellig. Bait but no quarry."

Shaeffer's hurried response came back to him. "We now have an inferential report on Pellig. He boarded a regular non-stop intercon liner at Bremen. Passage to Java. He's on his way someplace between here and Europe."

"You don't know which ship?"

"He has a non-specific commute ticket. But we can assume he's already taken off."

Wakeman hurried upstairs to Cartwright's private quarters. Cartwright was listlessly packing his things with the aid of two MacMillan robots and Rita O'Neill. Rita was pale and tense, but composed. She was going through aud reference tapes with a high-speed scanner, sorting those worth keeping. Wakeman found himself smiling at the slim, efficient figure with a lucky cat's foot dangling between her breasts as she worked.

"Keep hold of that," Wakeman said to Rita, indicating the cat's foot.

She glanced quickly up. "Any news?"

"Pellig will be showing up any minute. Transports land all the time; we have somebody there to check them in. Our own ship is almost ready." He indicated Cartwright's unpacked things. "Do you want me to help you pack?"

Cartwright roused himself. "Look, I don't want to get caught out in space. I—don't want to."

Wakeman was astonished at the words, and at the thoughts he caught behind them. A naked fear trickled piteously through the old man's mind, up from the deepest levels. "We won't get caught in space," Wakeman said rapidly; there wasn't much time for any more shilly-shallying. "The ship is the new experimental C-plus, the first off the assembly-line. We'll be there almost instantly. Nobody can Stop a C-plus once it's in motion."

Cartwright's gray lips twitched. "Is it a good thing to break up the Corps? You said some will be here and some will go with us. And I know you can't scan over that great a distance. Wouldn't it be—"

"Goddam it," Rita O'Neill said explosively. She threw down her armload of tapes. "Stop doing what you're doing! It's not like you!"

Cartwright grunted miserably and began pawing at his heap of shirts. "I'll do what you say, Wakeman. I trust you." He went on clumsily packing, but from his terrified and bewildered mind leaked the growing tendrils of his primitive, atavistic longing-fear. It swelled and became stronger each moment: the overpowering urge to hurry into the reinforced inner office Verrick had constructed, and to lock himself in. Wakeman flinched as the raw primal panic hit him, the frantic desire to claw a way back into the womb. He deliberately turned his mind from Cartwright's to Rita O'Neill's.

As he did so, Wakeman got a further shock. A thin icy column of hate radiated from the girl's mind directly at him. He quickly began untangling it, surprised and taken aback by its suddenness: it hadn't been there before.

Rita saw the expression on his face, and her thoughts changed. Quick, canny, she had sensed his awareness; she was thinking now of the aud tape humming through her ears as she operated the scanner. She passed it on to him; he was deafened by a furious roar of voices, speeches, lectures, parts of Preston's books, arguments, comments...

"What is it?" he said to her. "What's wrong?"

Rita said nothing, but her lips pressed together until they were white. Abruptly she turned and hurried out of the room.

"I can tell you what it is," Cartwright said hoarsely. He slammed his battered suitcases and locked them. "She blames you for this."

"For what?"

Cartwright caught up his two eroded suitcases and moved slowly toward the hall door. "You know, I'm her uncle. She's always seen me at the head of things, in authority, giving orders and making plans. Now I'm mixed up in something I don't understand." His voice died into a troubled murmur. "Situations I can't control. I have to rely on you." He moved wanly aside to let Wakeman open the door. "I suppose I've changed, since I came here. She's disappointed... and she blames you for it."

"Oh," Wakeman said. He moved after Cartwright, aware of two things: that he didn't understand people as well as he thought; and that finally Cartwright had made up his mind to do as the Corps suggested.

The C-plus ship was up-ended on the emergency platform in the center of the main building. As soon as Cartwright and his niece and the group of Corpsmen had entered, the hull locks slid smoothly into place and sealed themselves tight. The roof of the building rolled back and the bright noon-day sky blazed down.

"This is a small ship," Cartwright observed. He had turned pale and sickly; his hands shook as he strapped himself to his seat. "Interesting design."

Wakeman quickly fastened Rita's belt for her and then his own. She said nothing to him; the pencil of hostility had melted a little. "We may black-out during the flight. The ship is robot-operated." Wakeman settled down in his seat and thought the go-ahead signal to the intricate mechanism beneath them. The sensitive relays responded, the machinery shifted, and, someplace close by, high-powered reactors screamed shrilly into life.

With the ship responsive to his thoughts, Wakeman enjoyed the luxury of imagining a vast steel and plastic extension of his own small body. He relaxed and drank in the clean, sleek purr of the drive as it warmed. It was a beautiful ship: the first actually made from the original model and designs.

"You know how I feel," Rita O'Neill said to him abruptly, shattering his temporary pleasure. "You were scanning me."

"I know how you felt. I don't think you still feel that way."

"Perhaps not; I don't know. It's irrational to blame you. You're doing your job the best you can."

"I think," Wakeman said, "I'm doing the right thing. I think I've got this under control." He waited a moment. "Well? The ship's ready to take off."

Cartwright managed to nod. "I'm ready."

Wakeman considered briefly. "Any sign?" he thought to Shaeffer.

"Another passenger transport coming in," the rapid thought came back. "Entering scanning range any moment."

Pellig would arrive at Batavia; that was certain. He would search for Cartwright; that was also certain. The unknown was Pellig's detection and death. It could be assumed that if he escaped the teep net, he would locate the Lunar resort. And if he located the resort...

"There's no protection on Luna," Wakeman thought to Shaeffer. "We're giving up all positive defense once we take him there."

"That's right," Shaeffer agreed. "But I think well get Pellig here at Batavia. Once we make contact, that's it."

Wakeman decided. "All right. Well take the chance; the odds are good enough." He gave the mental signal and the ship moved into position for the take-off. Automatic grapples lined it up with its destination, the pale dead eye hanging dully in the noon-day sky. Wakeman closed his eyes and forced relaxation on his body-muscles.

The ship moved. First, there was the regular turbine thrust, then the furious lash of energy as the C-plus drive swung into life, sparked by the routine release of power.

For a moment the ship hovered over the Directorate buildings, glowing and shimmering. Then the C-plus drive caught, and in an instant the ship hurtled from the surface in a flash of blinding speed that rolled black waves of unconsciousness over the people within.

As the darkness relentlessly collected Peter Wakeman, a vague blur of satisfaction drifted through his dwindling mind. Keith Pellig would find nothing at Batavia, nothing but his own death. The Corps' strategy was working out.

In the moment Wakeman's signal sent the glowing C-plus ship away from Batavia, the regular intercon liner rumbled to a slow halt at the space field and slid back its locks.

With a group of businessmen and commuters, Keith Pellig stepped eagerly down the metal ramp and emerged in the sunlight, blinking and peering excitedly around him, at his first view of the Directorate buildings, the endless hurrying people and traffic—and the waiting network of teeps.