The Zap Gun

19

Lars could discern very little, as he sat across from Lilo, watching her intently while Dr. Todt prowled about keeping an eye on the spill of tapes secreted by the EEG and EKG machines attached to his patient. But he thought, The promise which this girl made is going to be kept. Harm will arise somehow from this situation. I feel it already, and I am nothing in this. Already Wes-bloc has those three to replace me. And undoubtedly more mediums exist in the East.

But his enemy, his antagonist, was not Peep-East and its KVB; the Soviet authorities had already proved their keen desire to act in his behalf. They had saved his life. His nemesis sat opposite him, an eighteen-year-old girl who wore a black jersey sweater and sandals and tight slacks, whose hair was pulled back with a ribbon. A girl who in her hatred and fear had, as an introduction, already made her first destructive move in his direction.

But, he thought, you are so goddam physically and sexually, so very amazingly sexually, attractive.

I wonder, he wondered, what you are like under that sweater, without those slacks and barefoot, without even that ribbon. Is there any way we can meet in that dimension? Or would the vid aud monitoring-system preclude that? Personally, he thought, I wouldn't care if the whole Red Army cadet academy pored over the tapes. But you'd mind. It would make you hate worse, and not hate just them but me as well.

The medication was beginning to affect him. Soon he would go under, and the next he would know, Dr. Todt would be reviving him and there would be—or would not be—a sketch. The production was automatic, neurologically speaking; it either came or it didn't.

He said to Lilo, "Do you have a lover?"

Her eyebrows knitted ominously. "Who cares?"

"It's important."

Dr. Todt said, "Lars, your EEG shows that you're—"

"I know," he said, and had difficulty articulating; his jaw had become numbed. "Lilo," he said, "I have a mistress. She heads my Paris branch. You know what?"

"What?" She continued to glower at him suspiciously.

Lars said, "I'd give Maren up for you."

He saw her face smooth. Her delighted laugh filled the room. "Wonderful! You mean it?"

He could only nod; it was past the time when speech remained possible. But Lilo saw the nod and the radiance of her face grew to a golden nimbus. Glory incarnate.

From a wall-speaker a business-like voice said, "Miss Topchev, you must synchronize your Alpha-wave pattern for the trance-phase to Mr. Lars. Should I send in a doctor?"

"No," she said quickly. The nimbus faded. "No one from the Pavlov Institute! I can manage it." She glided from her chair to kneel beside Lars. She rested her head against his, and some of her radiance seeped back from the physical contact; he felt it as pure warmth.

Dr. Todt said nervously to her, "Twenty-five seconds and Mr. Lars will be under. Can you manage? Your brain-metabolism stimulant?"

"I took it." She sounded irritable. "Can't you leave so that it's just the two of us? I guess not." She sighed. "Lars," she said, "Mr. Powderdry. You weren't afraid even when you realized you were dying; I saw you and you knew. Poor Lars." She ruffled his hair, clumsily. "And do you know what? I'll tell you something. You keep your mistress in Paris, because she probably loves you, and I don't. Let's see what sort of weapon we can make between us. Our baby."

Dr. Todt said, "He can't answer you but he can hear you."

"What a child for two strangers to pawn," Lilo said. "Does my killing you make us friends? Good friends? Bosom. Is that the idiom? Or breast-friends; I like that." She pressed his head down against the scratchy black wool of her sweater.

All this he felt. This black, soft scratchiness; the rise and fall as she breathed. Separated, he thought, from her by organic fiber and also no doubt by an inner layer of synthetic undergarment and then perhaps one additional layer after that, so there are three layers separating me from what is within, and yet it's only the thickness of a sheet of bookbond paper from my lips.

Will it always be like this?

"Maybe," Lilo said softly, "you can die in this posture. Lars. Like my child. You instead of the sketch. Not our baby but mine." To Dr. Todt she said, "I'm slipping under, too. Don't worry; he and I will go together. What'll we do in the non-space-time realm where you can't follow? Can you guess?" She laughed. And again, this time less crudely, rumpled his hair.

"God knows," Todt's voice came distantly to Lars.

And then he was gone. At once the soft black scratchiness departed. That foremost of all, and first.

But he grabbed to retain it, scrabbling like a beclawed beast; yet, even so, instead of the slim shape of Miss Topchev he found his fingers gripping—grotesquely, and hideously disappointingly—a ballpoint pen.

On the floor lay a scribbled sketch. He was back. It seemed impossible, not to be accepted or believed. Except for the fact of his fright; that made it real.

Dr. Todt, busily glancing at the sketch said, "Interesting, Lars. It is, by the way, one hour later. You have emerged with a simple design for—" he chuckled, Dr. Dead chuckling—"a donkey-type steam engine."

Sitting up groggily, Lars picked the sketch from the floor. He saw to his dulled incredulity that Dr. Todt was not joking. A simple, ancient steam donkey-engine. It was too funny even to try to laugh over.

But that was not all.

Lilo Topchev was crumpled into a heap—like a completed but for reasons unknown discarded android—and one which had been dropped, too, from some immense height. She clutched a wadded sheet of paper. On it was another sketch and this, he saw instantly, even in his semiconscious state, was not any archaic contraption. He had failed but Lilo had not.

He took the sketch from her stiff fingers. She was still quite flown.

"God," Lilo said distinctly. "Do I have a headache!" She did not move or even open her eyes. "What's the result? Yes? No? Just something to plowshare?" She waited, eyes squeezed shut. "Please, somebody answer me."

Lars saw that the sketch was not hers. It was his, too, or at least partly his. Some of the lines were unnatural to him—he recognized them from the material which KACH had shown him over the years. Lilo had done part of this and he had done the rest: they had manipulated the writing-stylus in unison. Had they actually gripped simultaneously? Dr. Todt would know. So would the Soviet big-shots who scanned the vid and aud tape-tracks, and later so would the FBI when these were transmitted to them... or perhaps even an arrangement had been made to provide both intelligence agencies with the result at one exact synchronized instant.

"Lilo," he said, "get up."

She opened her eyes, raised her head. Her face was haggard, wild, hewn hawk-like.

"You look awful," he said.

"I am awful. I'm a criminal: didn't I tell you?" She staggered to her feet, stumbled and half-fell; expressionless. Dr. Todt caught her. "Thank you, Dr. Dead," she said. "Did KACH tell you that I'm as a rule sick at my stomach after a trance-phase? Dr. Dead, take me into the bathroom. Quick. And phenothiazine: do you have some?" She tottered away, Todt assisting her.

Lars remained seated on the floor with the two sketches. One of a steam-driven donkey-engine. The other—

It looked, he thought, like an antonomic, homeostatic, thermotropic wise rat catching-device. Only for rats with an IQ of 230 or better or who had lived a thousand years—mutant rats such as never existed and if all went well in the scheme of things never would.

He knew, intuitively and totally, the device was hopeless.

And, down the back of his neck, a giant blew a dying breath of terror. The chill of failure froze him as he sat rocking back and forth, on the floor of the motel room, listening to the far-off noise of the girl he had fallen in love with being sick.