The Computer Connection

13

“I scraped up all I could on short notice,” Hillel said. “We’re meeting in Retchvic. We can’t be eavesdropped in Iceland.”

“D’you think the Extro network tailed you to them?”

“Barely an outside chance. I used cash only; no ID. Your cash, by the way.”

“Mine?”

“Capo Rip’s. Mrs. Curzon handed it over to me.”

“How much?”

“About a million and a half. I have the balance waiting for you.”

“Who’d you get from the Group?”

“M’bantu, Tosca, Domino, Ampersand, Queenie, Herb Wells, and No-Name.”

“Oh, God! Not that nothing.”

“Then you, of course, myself, and our host, Erik the Red.”

Y. Erik owns most of Greenland and Iceland. He has geyser power and probably owns half the hot springs in this heat-hungry world.

“No Poulos?”

“The Greek’s not coming.”

“More important business?”

“No.”

“You couldn’t get in touch with him?”

“No.”

“That’s not like you, Hilly.”

“No one will ever get in touch with him again.”

“What!”

“He’s dead.”

“What? No. Not Poulos…”

“A Malay kris through the heart.”

I was speechless. At last I stammered, “I — No. Not the Syndicate. No. It couldn’t happen. He’s too brilliant — careful — aware…”

“Not enough for the Rajah.”

“Where did it—”

“Calcutta. Last week.”

“Give me a moment, Hilly…”

“All the time you need.”

When I came below from the deck I washed my mouth and face. I was in control again. “You said a Malay kris. How do you know?”

“Left in his heart.”

“But Malay?”

“A hired assassin. These kinks bind up their putz until they’re in agony and then carry out the holy mission. The local polizei say it was planned like a commando raid, with support, flankers, and backups. God knows how many first-class jimps the Rajah has on his payroll. The Greek must have been closing in on him, and he didn’t stand a chance.”

“If the Rajah can hit the Greek—”

“We’re all as good as dead. How do you feel now? I know because it took me the same way in Calcutta. Have you got the strength to give me your news?”

“I can try,” I said heavily.

“Good man. Go ahead. Gescheft is gescheft. Business is business, and it’s our only salvation.”

“You were R, as usual. There was nothing to have out with Nat. She’s all for stopping our brother and saving him. She just didn’t want to go the hit route. I’ll bring her along to Retchvic.” It was painful, talking.

“Good. And?”

“Long Lance came back to the big canoe day before yesterday. Nothing to report. Sequoya is still down there educating his babies.”

“Even better. We can go on using transport safely while he’s separated from the Extro. The trouble is, we don’t know when he’ll come up again, so we’ll have to move fast. Where are the braves?” Hilly was v. brisk. It helped.

“Nat sent them back to Erie.”

“Gung. Let’s move it to Iceland.”

“What about this big canoe?”

“Gottenu! Who cares? We’ll leave it. Maybe it’ll start another Sargasso Sea in Lake Mitch. We’re for Retchvic.”

Erik’s pleasance in Iceland was a giant, steaming greenhouse festooned with exotic tropical plants. The guests from the Group were all there when we arrived and all in character; but as I’ve said, we’re all characters and always in character. A few touches: A drab little woman you wouldn’t look at twice was Tosca, the compelling actress who has been sweeping the media for generations with her electrifying performances. The flamboyant diva in eye-catching costume was Queenie in drag. We have never been able to persuade him to undergo a transsex transformation. He says he prefers remaining a faggot. Erik isn’t red and isn’t even a Scandy. He looks like a jolly Karl Marx.

There were greetings, of course, and the gallant M’bantu put Natoma on his arm and escorted her around, introducing her. He was particularly proud of the tremendous progress she’d made with her XX. I began to wonder whether I should shift my apprehensions from the Greek to the Zulu. Certainly both of them outclassed me, but when you get right down to it every member of the Group outclassed me with the exception of the nothing No-Name who now seemed on the verge of falling into a pitcher plant.

“This is Guig’s meeting,” Hilly said casually, “but I’d better brief you first. You’ll all recall that when I contacted you I handed you a slip of paper asking you to come to Erik’s immediately on an urgent matter. It warned you not to speak and to use cash transport without ID so that you couldn’t be traced. I didn’t use ear-beads or cassettes for a most interesting reason. The whole planet is enmeshed in the damndest electronic bugging network conceivable, the result of Guig’s recruitment of our newest and most splendid Group member. He’ll be our pride, but presently he’s created a crisis which you know about, more or less. Here’s the complete scene.” Hilly gave it to them, fast and acute. Then he turned the meeting over to me. I got to my feet and here is the conference, names withheld on the grounds of Group privilege.

“First, I must reenforce what the Jew has told you. The renegade is a savage, dangerous enemy. The murder of Poulos demonstrates that, and no one knows who will be next if we don’t stop him.”

“You don’t call him the Rajah?”

“No. I’m not so sure as Hilly because the Rajah doesn’t make sense to me as a vendettist. Why? There’s no reason I can think of. I hold that it might be anyone, including myself. Trust no one. Be on your guard.”

“D’you think it might be Guess?”

“Not likely. He’s merely the human switchboard that makes all this possible. The problem: How do you kill the switchboard? Shut up, Nat. You don’t know where I’m headed.”

“Poison is out. Just an hors d’oeuvre.”

“So is gas.”

“It’s got to be an external killing.”

“A stab through the heart, like Poulos.”

“Or a burn.”

“Blow him up, like the attempt on Guig.”

“Simple beheading.”

“Ugh!”

“Yes, we know. You nearly accompanied Danton in the tumbril.”

“Whatever happened to Dr. Guillotine, by the way?”

“Died in bed, not regretted.”

“If you want a neat, tasteful death, shoot Guess into space.”

“How would that kill him?”

“Radiation exposure. Vacuum malnutrition. Or he might explode from internal air pressure.”

“Be realistic. How can you shoot a naked man into space? Tie him to the nose of a rocket vehicle?”

“Then put him in a capsule and shoot him into the sun. That would ionize the package into a fizz.”

“And how would we put him together again?”

“What?”

“That’s the point. We can’t lose him.”

“Then why the talk about killing him?”

“To bring us face to face with the problem. How do we kill the switchboard without killing Guess? That’s where I was headed, Nat.”

“I apologize, Guig.”

“It is a puzzle.”

“Almost a paradox. How do you kill a man without killing him?”

“What about a time-shoot back six months so I can abort this damned crisis before it started?”

“It won’t work.”

“Why not, Herb?”

“You’ll be a ghost.”

“There ain’t no such thing.”

“I’ve tried it. I can’t shoot a man into his own lifetime. The cosmos won’t tolerate two identicals. One of them has to be a phantasma.”

“Which?”

“The second.”

“So possession is nine points of space-time, and we’re back where we started. How do we abort the contact-catalyst without harming Guess?”

“You’re not on target, Guig.”

“N? W?”

“It isn’t a question of killing the switchboard. Kill the computer.”

“S! P! C! So obvious that it never occurred to me.”

“You’re too close to it. That’s why you needed us.”

“I’ll deal some demurrers. The Guess-Extro symbiosis is unique. It should be explored.”

“Too dangerous to delay. The situation is critical. Gottenu! I can feel the hot breath of the Rajah breathing down my neck.”

“If the symbiosis is destroyed, a similar one may never occur again.”

“The sacrifice must be made if we’re to survive.”

“If the Extro is killed have we any guarantee that it will stop the renegade?”

“It will. Not altogether, but to a great extent.”

“How do you figure that?”

“He didn’t start his war until after the Guess-Extro connection was established. When that’s destroyed he’ll be crippled; still deadly but manageable.”

“The Group has always hated killing.”

“N hatred for killing the renegade. He’s a mad dog.”

“Y. I only wish I knew why; it might make the problem easier to solve. Now let’s tackle the next question: How do I get at the Extro?”

“You’re taking this on yourself?”

“I must. I’m driven. How do I kill the Extro?”

“Fire. Explosion. Metal-burn. Power cut. Etcetera.”

“Without its knowledge that an attack is being mounted?”

“Are you sure that it will know?”

“That goddamn Squatter with its ragtag network knows everything we do, every move we make.”

“Only provided Guess is in contact to make the circuitry possible.”

“Have we any guarantee he’ll remain buried in the salt mines?”

“N. We might try kidnapping Guess.”

“How, without the knowledge of the Extro? The moment we haul Guess up to the surface that spying network will be activated, and you know goddamn well that a Moleman can’t be drugged unconscious.”

“You’re driving too hard, Guig. Let’s cool it.”

“I can’t. When I think of Fee-5 and Poulos, the Shortie killings, the — No, I’ll cool it. Back to business. Calmly. The Extro knows everything we do and maybe everything we think. What can I use to outflank it?”

“Hic-Haec-Hoc,” No-Name said.

My jaw dropped. This? From Mr. Nothing? Outclassed even by him.

“He can’t think. He can’t speak. He’s a blank.”

“But he obeys signs. Thank you, No-Name. Thank you all. If Sam Pepys can be located and can tell me where to locate Hic, I’ll bring him and we’ll try.”

But I tried the time-shot first, anyway, and H.G. Wells was right; I was a ghost, invisible and inaudible. Worse, I was like a two-dimensional phone projection. I oozed. I oozed through bods and buildings and I felt damned sorry for ghosts. Herb and I had pinpointed my spot very carefully and I was shot to JPL and oozed my way to the astrochem lab just as the crowd of afflicted stockholders was hacking and coughing its way out right through me. Uncanny.

When I oozed in, Edison was barking with laughter. “That damn fool girl brought you fuming nitric acid. Fuming. And the fumes have turned this room into one big nitric-acid bath. Everything’s being eaten away.”

“Did you see her do it? Did you see the label? Why didn’t you stop her?” The Chief sounded furious.

“No. No, and no. I’ve deduced it. Not an Emergent, just a Resultant.”

“Dear God! Dear God! I’ve ruined the whole pitch to the U-Con crowd.”

Suddenly me did the take and let out a yell. I didn’t like his looks but I suppose nobody likes their own looks.

“What’s the matter, Guig?” the Group called. “Are you hurt?”

“No, you damn fools, and that’s why I’m hollering. I’m Grand Guignol triumphant. Don’t you understand? Why didn’t he know it was fuming nitric acid? Why didn’t he choke on the fumes? Why isn’t he eaten away now? Why wasn’t he forced to run out with Fee and the rest? Think about it while I revel.”

After a long moment, the Syndicate said, “I never believed in your campaign, Guig. I apologize. It was a million to one against, so I hope you’ll pardon me.”

“You’re pardoned. You’re all pardoned. We’ve got another Molecular Man. We’ve got a brand new beautiful Moleman. Still there, Uncas?”

“I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“Take a deep breath of nitric. Belt down a stiff shot. Do anything you like to celebrate. Welcome to the Group.”

And as we all left the astrochem and joined the hacking stockholders outside, he disappeared, but this time the pseudo-me followed him as he slipped out through a side iris and loped down a ramp, the ghost following and hollering. What I said was shouted and screamed: “Chief, it’s me, Guig. Listen! Hear me! Danger ahead. Hear?”

He didn’t hear me, see me, or feel me; just went about his pokerface excape. It was one of the most frustrating and exasperating experiences of my life, and I was relieved when Herbie Wells’ mantis snatched me back. Herb saw my expression and shrugged helplessly.

“I told you it was a lemon,” he said.

So Natoma and I waited on standby for the outjet to Saturn VI, otherwise known as the moon, Titan. Standby because it was strictly a bribe transaction. We submitted to the search for flammable materials without complaint. Titan has a methane atmosphere, poisonous and explosive when spiked with fluorine. Methane is also known as marsh gas, produced by the decompositon of organic matter.

People who don’t travel think all satellites are alike; rocky, sandy, volcanic. Titan is a mass of frozen organic material, and cosmologists are still arguing about that. Was the sun hotter? Was Titan an inner planet (it’s bigger than Terra’s moon) snatched by Jupiter and delivered to Saturn without charge? Was it seeded by cosmonauts from deep space ages ago who abandoned our solar system in disgust?

Natoma came along, not because I needed her for Hic-Haec-Hoc but because you don’t shoot Saturn in a week, it’s more like a month and there’s a limit. The standby wasn’t too boring. We were entertained by the broadcast of Ice-O-Rama, a penguin sitcom. Zitzcom has just discovered that his daughter, Ritzcom, has accepted an invitation from Witzcom to spend the night with him on an iceberg. There are hilarious complications. The antarctic night lasts three months, and Zitzcom doesn’t know that it was Ritzcom’s twin sister, Titzcom, who accepted the invitation in a snit because her beau, Fitzcom, didn’t invite her to the penguin slide-in. Oh, bbls of laughs.

I’d warned Nat that Titan was a mining moon (they quarry the organic layer and ship it out in frozen blocks) but she didn’t really understand until we’d boarded the freighter and located our private cabin for two. That was the bribe. No passengers; no crew; just deck officers and no doubt a couple of them had been willing to doss anywhere for a substantial cut. The freighter stank. The compost it shipped in-jet left a permanent aroma of the grave.

I’d been smart enough to be prepared; a huge wicker hamper with enough deli for months, clean linen and blankets. A freighter to Saturn is no luxury jet, and although there’s a captain there’s no such thing as a captain’s table, a steward, formal meals. It’s all catch-as-catch-can, with the staff helping itself to the frozen food and drink stocks whenever so inclined. You merely endure and survive at the minimum, which is another reason why Titan will always remain a mining moon.

We stayed in our tiny cabin a lot, talking, talking, talking. So much to catch up on. Natoma grieved with me over Poulos and tried to cheer me up. She wanted to know all about CNA-Drone. I told her all I could about DNA-Cloning, which wasn’t much, but then the technique isn’t much, still in its infancy. Then she insisted on knowing why I had deep depressions, and what big L was. I had to tell her all about Lepcer.

“You must never, never, never run another physical risk,” she said severely.

“Not even for your sake?”

“Most of all never for my sake. There will be no big L this time. I know it because I have second sight, all the Guess women do, but if you ever run a risk again I’ll have you roasted over a slow fire. You’ll wish you had the big L then.”

“Yes’m,” I said meekly. “That linear explosion wasn’t my fault, you know.”

She pronounced a Cherokee word that would probably have shocked our brother.

Nat had been boning up, practicing reading XX. “Titan is the largest of Saturn’s satellites,” she reported. “It is seven hundred and fifty-nine thousand miles distant from Saturn. Its sidereal period is — I don’t know what that is.”

“How long it takes to go around.”

“Is fifteen dot nine four five days. The inclination of its orbit to the ring plane — I looked those words up — is twenty apostrophe. Its—”

“No, darling. That’s the astronomer’s symbol for minutes. They measure space in degrees, minutes, and seconds. A degree is a little zero. A minute is an apostrophe, and a second is a quotation mark.”

“Thank you. Its diameter is three thousand five hundred and fifty miles, and it was discovered by — by — I don’t know how to pronounce this name. It’s not in the dictionary.”

“Let me see. Oh. Not many people do. Huyghens. Hi-genz. He was a very great Dutch scientist a long time ago. Thank you, love. Now I know all about Titan.”

She wanted to ask questions but I promised to take her to what used to be Holland and show her all the sights that still remained, including Hi-genz’ birthplace, if it still existed. Saturn was quite a sight itself as it came looming up. Nat had already charmed her way onto the flight deck and would spend hours staring at the cold, belted, spotted disk and the widening rings inclined ten little zero.

Alas, only the two inner rings remain. Despite violent protests by ecologists and cosmologists, the Better Building Conglomerate had been permitted to harvest the third outer ring for some kind of better building aggregate. There was a housing crisis and BBC paid enormous taxes. One infuriated astronomer had been euthanized for burning the chairman of the board.

If you think the inspection was tough when we embarked you should have seen what we went through when we arrived. As we came down the long tunnel to Mine City we were searched over and over again for combustibles, quasicombustibles, ferrous metals, anything that could produce a spark or a flame. Titan lived on a perpetual brink of disaster. One spark outside and the methane atmosphere could turn the moon into a nova.

The city was freaky. This is how it was born: The prospectors quarried out the frozen marsh compost to a depth of fifty feet. When it extended for a square mile, the crater was roofed over with plastic by ORGASM (The Organic Systems and Manure Company, Ltd). Narrow streets were blocked out in a rectilinear pattern, houses were built, and there was your mining town on your explosive mining moon. It was dark; the sun was no more than a brilliant arc light, but it did receive a lovely thermal glow from Mama Saturn. It was damp to eliminate any chances of electrostatic sparks. It stank of halogens and methane and the compost choppers.

No hotel, of course, but a residence for visiting clients with clout. I bluffed our way in. “I am Edward Curzon of I.G. Farben, and I cannot understand why you did not receive my message from Ceres. Kindly contact Directeur Poulos Poulos to verify.” I also tipped in a lordly manner and did what it had taken me years to learn; behaved quietly as though I took it for granted that my orders would be obeyed. They obey.

I found Hic easily enough on the fourth day. I had a nerve-fire finder and all I had to do was move out beyond the quarrymen in each quarter — checking production techniques, you understand — and take a con. On Day Four the finder pointed and I followed it, hopping and galloping, for about ten miles until I came to a compost hut, rather like the sod houses the primitive pioneers used to build for themselves in nineteenth-century America. It was glittering with crystals of ammonia, as was all Titan. There were spectacular meteorite cracks and craters in the ice cover, and volcanic magma boiled up (“boiled” in the relative sense; Titan’s mean temperature is minus one hundred and thirty little zero Celsius) forming pools of liquid methane. Saturn was rising dramatically behind the hovel, and Hic-Haec-Hoc was crouched inside like a predator about to spring on his prey.

Now, I know the popular impression. Say “Neanderthal” to anyone and an instant image of a caveman carrying a club and dragging a lady by the hair pops into their mind. Well, the Neanderthalers couldn’t do much carrying or dragging; their thumbs were badly opposed. They were incapable of speech because of the inadequate musculature of mouth and throat. Anthropologists are still arguing about whether it was speech and the thumb that produced Homo sapiens. Certainly, Homo neanderthalensis had the equivalent cranial capacity; it just never developed. If you can read XX, look up Homo neanderthalensis and you’ll have some idea of what Hic looked like; a punch-drunk, prizefighting loser. But strong. And like most animals, he lived a life of constant terror.

I’d removed my helmet but I don’t know whether he recognized or remembered me. As No-Name said, he can’t think; but he understood my grunts and signs. I’d been farsighted enough to fill a pocket with sweets and every time he opened his mouth I popped one in, which delighted him. That’s how the Russians used to reward their trained bears.

It was one hell of a session. I could give you the signs in diagram but you wouldn’t understand them. I could give you the grunts in phonetic symbols but they would be meaningless to you. But Hic understood. It’s true that he can’t think, but only in the sense of memory and rational sequence. He can absorb and understand one idea at a time. How long it remains with him depends on how soon it’s dispossessed by survival terror. The sweets helped.

After I’d signed, grunted, bullied, and sweeted him into obedience it was hell getting Hic into the extra thermal I’d packed out, but he couldn’t come in out of the methane naked. Questions would be asked. I got him sacked at last and back we schlepped to Mine City, Colossus of Compost, Mother of Methane, Daughter of Destruction, with the two-ringed Saturn behind us. Damn Sequoya, he was right about Mankind-F. How can you fight a bod you agree with?

After a careful inspection Natoma said, “He must be shaved from top to bottom. We’ll take him back as your feebleminded brother.” She looked at me perplexedly. “Guig, how the devil did he ever get out here?”

“Stowaway, probably. A Moleman can endure months of that cold, and he ate anything that was handy.”

Between signs and sweets we managed to bathe and shave Hic-Haec-Hoc. Natoma decorated him with graffiti which made him look like an average. Hic liked Nat and was comfortable with her. I think maybe he never had a mother. On the other hand he also liked his bath. I’m sure he never had one before.

He slept on the floor of our cabin during the freighter in-jet. Only one trouble; he didn’t like any of our hamper food and the compost stench made him hungry. I couldn’t get any for him — all sealed in the freight hull — and he started eating the most lunatic things; our linen, fire extinguishers, luggage, books, playing cards. We had to keep a constant watch (he ate my watch, by the way) or he might have chewed a hole in the freighter hull.

He’d become accustomed to Titan’s methane atmosphere and didn’t like the air in the jet. Natoma took care of that by spraying insecticide up his nose. Altogether, a problem child, and he was so brute-strong that you had to be cautious with him. But Natoma handled him beautifully. I think her experiences with the Erie warriors probably gave her the expertise.

As we started our approach to Earth, Natoma gave a thank-you luncheon party for the deck officers. She used the last of our provisions and even heated some of them up, a tremendous luxury. How did she do it on a jet where there were no ignition tools? She made a bow-drill and sawed away until she got an ember going. Shredded plastic for tinder. Chunks of plastic for fuel. And then a fire in an aluminum basin. No fool she. The officers were enchanted, and so appreciative that two of them proposed and all of them made plans to smuggle us out of the spaceport with no passport problems for my idiot “brother” who’d lost his on Titan. (And no warning to the Extro network which, of course, they knew nothing about.) We would be home free.

And when we put down we discovered that we’d acquired a hitchhiker.