The Zap Gun

13

Because of Miss Topchev's delicate psychological fugue, it was bootless for him to journey to Iceland immediately—so he had time to pursue the project suggested by Maren.

In person, rather than by vidphone, he approached the Soviet Embassy in New York City, entered the rented-at-vast-price modern building and asked the girl at the first desk he saw for Mr. Aksel Kaminsky.

The embassy appeared in a state of frenzy. Confusion dominated, as if the personnel were pulling up stakes or burning files or, at the very least, shifting positions along the tea-table Alice-wise. Someone was getting a clean cup, Lars decided as he watched the USSR officials, big and small, hurry by, and someone else was getting a dirty cup. The brass, no doubt obtained the former. It was the pursap majority who would find themselves reseated in less satisfactory circumstances.

"What's up?" he asked a pimple-faced, awkward young staff-member, who sat rapidly inspecting what appeared to be KACH pics of a non-classified nature.

In idiomatic English the young man piped, "An agreement has been made with UN-W Natsec to use these ground-floor offices as a place of exchange for information." He added in explanation, glad to pause in a job of no creative value, "Of course the real meeting-ground is in Iceland, not here; this is for routine material." His marred face showed the distaste he felt for his abrupt new spate of tasks. Not the alien satellite; that was not what bothered him, this petty clerk in the universe of officialdom. It was the monotonous labors imposed on him by the situation—a situation, Lars reflected, that conceivably might not leave this youth very many more years to suffer through his unrewarding tasks.

The two blocs had mounds of scientific, technical, cultural and political articles passed back and forth like so many Old Maid cards, common property. East and West agreed that it was scarcely worth paying a profession espionage outfit such as KACH or even their own national secret police establishments to sneak out copies of abstracts dealing with soybean curd production in the Tundra-covered regions of the northeastern USSR. The quantity of such non-classified papers within that rubric amounted, daily, to the gool that threatened to burst the sea wall of bureaucracy itself.

"Mr. Lars!"

Lars rose. "Mr. Kaminsky. How are you?"

"Terrible," Kaminsky said. He looked worn, hectic, over-worked, like a retired, once-adequate garage mechanic. "That thing up there. Who are they? You asked yourself that, Mr. Lars?"

"Yes, Mr. Kaminsky," he said patiently. "I've asked myself that."

"Tea?"

"No, thank you."

"Do you know," Kaminsky said, "what your news-medium TV just now said? I caught it in my office; it made that ting-noise it does to attract attention and then shut on." Gray-faced he stumbled on, "Forgive me, Mr. Lars, for bearing grim news, like the Spartan soldier back from the Battle of Thermopylae. But—now second alien satellite in orbit." Lars could think of nothing to say. "Sit in my office," Kaminsky said, leading him through the clutter to a small side room. Kaminsky shut the door and turned to face him. He spoke more slowly, with less of the overtone of an old man's hysteria. "Tea?"

"No, thank you."

"While you waited to see me," Kaminsky said, "they put that second one up. So we know they can put up all they want. Hundreds, if they feel inclined. Our sky. Think. Operating not out around Jupiter or Saturn, at the perimeter where we only keep picket ships and sats but here. They bypassed the easy." He added, "Maybe for them this is easy, too. These two sats were undoubtedly deposited from ships. Dropped out like eggs, not launched and then halted at orbital plane. Nobody saw any ships. No monitors caught anything. Anti-matter alien inter-system vessels. And always we thought—"

"We thought," Lars said, "that sub-epidermal fungi-forms from Titan that knew how to simulate everyday household objects shapewise were our great unTerran adversary. Something that looked like a vase and then when you had your back turned seeped into your dermal wall and migrated to the omentum where it resided until surgically cut out."

"Yes," Kaminsky agreed. "I hated those; I saw one once, not in object-simulation but in cyst form, like you depict. Ready for cobalt-bombardment." He looked physically very sick. "But Mr. Lars, doesn't that tell us? We know the possibilities. I mean rather we know we don't know."

"No percent-extensors have picked up any clues as to the morphology of these—" the only word he had heard so far was alien—"these adversaries," he finished.

Kaminsky said, "Please, Mr. Lars. You and I can take time to talk about easy things. What did you want, sir? Not to hear the bad news. Something else. Anything." He poured himself cold, dark tea.

"I'm to meet with Lilo Topchev in Fairfax as soon as she's psychologically fit. That time back there in the coffee shop you asked me about a component on them—"

"No deal is needed. I forget weapons item. We are not plowsharing now, Mr. Lars. We will never plowshare again."

Lars grunted like an animal.

"Yes," Kaminsky said. "Never again. You and I—not individual you and I but ethnological totalities, East, West—rose from savagery and waste; we were smart; we became buddy-buddies, made deals, you know, hand-clasp on it, our words in the Protocols of '02. We went back to being, what does the Jewish Christian Bible say? Without leaves."

"Naked," Lars said.

"And now plain jane in the streets," Kaminsky said, "or what do you call him? Poor sap. Poor sap reads in homeopape about two new not-us kind of satellite and he maybe worries a little; says, Wonder which modern new weapons work the best on this apparition. This weapon? No? Then that. Or that." Kaminsky gestured at nonexistent weapons that might have thronged his small office; bitterness made his voice into a wail. "On Thursday, first They-satellite. Friday, second They-satellite. So on Saturday—"

"On Saturday," Lars said, "we use weapons catalog item 241 and the war is over."

"241." Kaminsky chuckled. "A bell rings, thank you. For use exclusively against exoskeleton life forms, dissolves chitinous substances and makes—poached egg, right? Yes, poor sap would enjoy that. I recall KACH-people's pirated video tape of 241 in dramatic action. Good thing you could locate chitinous life form on Callisto to humble; otherwise graphic demonstration would not have been effective. Even I was moved. Down there below California, in Lanferman's catacombs. Must be thrilling to observe creative processes in different stages. Right?"

"Right," Lars said stolidly.

From his desk Kaminsky selected a Xeroxed document, one-page only; for this day and age it was an anomaly. "This is poop-sheet, for we to give here at Soviet Embassy to news media of Wes-bloc. Not official, you understand. A 'leak.' Homeopape and TV interviewers 'overhear' discussion and get general notion of what Peep-East plans, and so forth." He tossed the document to Lars.

Picking it up Lars saw at a glance the strategy of SeRKeb.

Amazing, Lars thought as he read the one-page Xeroxed copy of the Peep-East document. They didn't mind behaving idiotically; they just wanted to protect themselves from having this idiocy noised about. And right now. Not after the aliens are routed, he realized, or we succumb to them; whatever ultimately happens. Paponovich, Nitz and the nameless second-string are scribbling busily not merely to protect four billion humans from a superlative menace that hangs—literally—over our heads but to get their own damn bastard rascally selves off the hook.

The vanity of man. Even in the highest places.

To Kaminsky he said, "I glean from this document a new theory about God and the Creation."

Nodding, Kaminsky politely, waxenly, waited to hear.

Lars said, "I all of a sudden understand the whole story of the Fall of Man. Why things went wrong. It's one great White Paper."

"You are wise, Mr. Lars," Kaminsky said, with weary appreciation. "I agree; we know, don't we? The Creator bungled, and rather than correcting bungle He concocted cover-story which proved someone else responsible. A mythical nogoodnik who wanted it this way."

"So a minute sub-contractor in the Caucasus," Lars said, "is going to lose his government contract and be sued. The director of the autofact—and I can't pronounce his name or the fac's—is going to discover something he didn't know."

"He knows now," Kaminsky said. "Now tell me. Why are you here at the embassy?"

"I wanted to get a good pic, three-D and in color, possibly even animated, if you have it, of Miss Topchev."

"Of course. But you can't wait a day?"

"I want to be prepared in advance."

"Why?" Kaminsky's eyes were sharp with old acuity.

Lars said, "You never heard of bridal portraits."

"Ah. Plot of many plays, operas, heroic legend; done to death, ought to be buried forever. You're serious, Mr. Lars? Then you've got troubles. What is called here in your Wes-bloc problems."

"I know."

"Miss Topchev is wrinkled, dried-out, leather-like handbag. Should be in old folks' home, except for the medium talent."

The blow almost unhinged him; he felt himself calcify.

"You croaked just now," Kaminsky said. "Sorry, Mr. Lars. Psychological experiment Pavlov style. I regret it and apologize. Consider. You are going to Fairfax to save four billion. Not to find mistress to replace Maren Faine, your Liebesnacht compatriot of the moment. As you found her to replace—what was her name? Betty? The one before, the one KACH says had lovely legs."

"Christ," Lars said. "Always that KACH. Living things turned into data sold by the inch."

"To any buyer, too," Kaminsky reminded him. "To your enemy, your friend, wife, employer, or worse: employees. The agency on which blackmail grows like mold. But as you discovered in that blurred pic of Miss Topchev, something always is held back. To keep you dangling. To make sure you still need more, yet. Look, Mr. Lars; I have a family, wife and three children in Soviet Union. Two They-satellites in our sky, they can kill so as to get at me. They can get at you, maybe if your mistress in Paris died in some awful way, contaminated or infused or—"

"Okay."

"I just want to petition you; that's all. You will be in Fairfax to see that nothing happens like that to us. I pray to God you and Lilo Topchev imagine up some masterpiece that will be a shield: we are children, playing under the protection of a father's armor. See? If you forget that—"

Kaminsky produced a key, unlocked an old-fashioned drawer of his desk. "I own this. Dated." It was an explosion-pellet automatic that he held up, its muzzle pointed carefully away from Lars. "As an official in an organization that can never back down but would have to be burned out, destroyed, for it to cease, I can offer you an advanced piece of news. Before you leave for Fairfax you will be told there is no returning. Somewhere we make a mistake. A picket ship or immense-radius-orbit monitoring satellite, a solar-sat, failed. And because of it maybe a relay system or a percept-extensor did nothing." He shrugged, put the automatic hand-weapon away in the desk drawer, scrupulously relocking it with his key. "I am ranting."

Lars said, "You should see a psychiatrist while you're still stationed in Wes-bloc." Turning, he left Kaminsky's office. He pushed the door open and emerged in the buzzing, activity-drenched main chambers.

Following after him, Kaminsky halted at the office door and said, "I would do it myself."

"Do what?" He turned, briefly.

"With what I showed you, locked in the desk."

"Oh." Lars nodded. "Okay. I've got that noted."

Thereupon he numbly made his way among the scurrying minor bureaucrats of the embassy, through the front door, and out onto the sidewalk.

They're out of their minds, he said to himself. They still believe that in a really tight situation, when it really matters, things can be solved that way. Their evolution of the last fifty years has been all on the surface. Underneath they remain the same.

So not only do we face the presence of two alien satellites orbiting our world, Lars realized, but we have to endure, under this not-prepared-for stress, a return to the unsheathed sword of the past. So all the covenants and pacts and treaties, the locker at the Greyhound bus station at Topeka, Kansas, Geldthaler Gemeinschaft in Berlin, Fairfax itself—it's a delusion. And we both, East and West, shared it together. It's as much our fault as theirs, the willingness to believe and take the soft road out. Look at me now, he thought. In this crisis I've headed straight for the Soviet Embassy.

And look what it got me. An automatic old-time hand-weapon pointed, in the service of the technical aspects of bodily safety, at the roof instead of my abdominal cavity.

But that man was right. Kaminsky was telling me the truth, not blustering or engaging in hysteria. If Lilo and I fail, we will be destroyed. The blocs will then turn elsewhere for assistance. The heavy burden will fall on Jack Lanferman and his engineers, most especially Pete Freid—and God help them if they can't do it either, because if so then they will follow Lilo and me into the grave.

Grave, he thought, you were once asked where your victory is. I can point it out for you. It is here. Me.

As he hailed a passing hopper car he realized suddenly. And I didn't even get what I went into that building for; I couldn't wangle a clear pic of Lilo.

In that, too, Kaminsky had been correct. Lars Powderdry would have to wait until the meeting at Fairfax. He would not go in prepared.