The Zap Gun

20

Later, they had coffee. He and Lilo Topchev, Dr. Todt and the Red Army officer who was their warden and protector against the insanities within themselves, Red Army Intelligence Major Tibor Apostokagian Geschenko. The four of them drank what Lars Powderdry knew to be a toast to ruin.

Lilo said abruptly, "It's a failure."

"And how," Lars nodded without meeting her gaze.

In a Slavic gesture, Geschenko patted the air, priest-like, with his open hand. "Patience. By the way." He nodded, and an aide approached their circular table with a homeopape—in Cyrillic type. Russian. "An additional alien satellite is up," Geschenko said. "And it is reported that a field of some variety, a warpage of electromagnetic—I don't understand it, being no physicist. But it has affected your city New Orleans."

"Affected how?"

Geschenko shrugged. "Gone? Buried or hidden? Anyhow, communication is cut and sensitive measuring apparatus nearby records a lowering of mass. And an opaque barrier conceals what transpires, a field identified as connected with that of the satellites. Isn't this approximately what we foresaw?" He deliberately slurped his coffee.

"I don't understand," Lars said tightly. And the drum of fear beat and beat inside him.

"Slavers." Geschenko added, "They are not landing. They are I think taking pieces of population, New Orleans first." He shrugged. "We will knock them down, don't worry. In 1941 when the Germans—"

"With a steam donkey-engine?" Lars turned to Lilo. "This is the true, undefiled reason that moved you to try to kill me, isn't it? So we'd never have to arrive at this point, sit here and drink coffee like this!"

Major Geschenko said with psychological acumen, "You give her an easy out, Mr. Lars. That is unhealthy, because she can divest herself further of responsibility." To Lilo he said, "That was not the reason."

"Say it was," Lars said to her.

"Why?"

"Because then I can think you wanted to spare us both even the knowledge of this. It was a form of mercy."

"The unconscious," Lilo said, "has ways of its own."

"No unconscious!" Major Geschenko said emphatically, reciting his doctrine. "That's a myth. Conditioned response; you know that, Miss Topchev. Look, Mr. Lars; there's no merit in what you're trying to do. Miss Topchev is subject to the laws of the Soviet Union."

Lars sighed, and from his pocket he brought out the rolled-up comic book which he had bought at the enormous news-counter at the space terminal. He passed it to Lilo: the Blue Cephalopod Man From Titan and His Astonishing Adventures Among the Fierce Protoplasms of Eight Deadly Moons. She accepted it curiously.

"What is it?" she asked him presently, large-eyed.

"A glimpse," Lars said, "into the outside world. What life would be like for you if you could come with me, leave this man and Peep-East."

"This is what is for sale in Wes-bloc?"

"In West Africa, mostly," he answered. Lilo turned the pages, inspected the lurid and really downright dreadful drawings. Major Geschenko meanwhile stared off into space, lost in gloomy thought; his fine, clear face showed the despair which he had so far kept from his voice. He was, undoubtedly, thinking about the news from New Orleans... as any sane man would. And the major was indubitably sane. He would not be looking at a comic book, Lars realized. But Lilo and I—we are not quite sane, at this point. And for good reason. Considering the magnitude of our spectacular failure.

He asked Lilo, "You notice anything strange about that comic book?"

"Yes." She nodded vigorously. "They've used several of my sketches."

"Yours!" He had noticed only his own weapons sketches. "Let me look again."

She showed him the page. "See? My lobotomy gas." She indicated Major Geschenko. "They conducted tests on political prisoners and showed the results on TV just like this comic strip: it causes the victims to repeat endlessly the last series of instructions arising from the damaged cerebral cortex. The drawist has the Twin-brained Beasts From Io victims of this; he understood what weapon BBA-81D did, so he must have viewed the TV tape made in the Urals. But the tape was only shown last week."

"Last week?" Incredulous, Lars took the comic book back. Obviously it had been printed longer ago than that. It carried last month's date, had sat on the newsstand for perhaps sixty days. All at once to Major Geschenko he said, "Major, may I contact KACH?"

"Now? Immediately?"

"Yes," Lars said.

Major Geschenko silently took the comic book from Lars and glanced through it. Then he rose and gestured; an aide stepped into existence and the two men discoursed in Russian.

"He's not asking for a KACH-man for you," Lilo said then. "He's telling the KVB to investigate this comic book firm, where it originates in Ghana." She spoke to Major Geschenko in Russian herself. Lars felt, unhappily, the acute linguistic insularity of the American; Lilo was right. Mark of the province, he said to himself, and he wished to God he knew what they were saying. All three of them kept referring to the comic book and at last Major Geschenko handed it over to his aide.

The aide departed with it, rapidly. The door slammed shut, as if the aide were mad.

"That was mine," Lars said. Not that it counted.

"A KACH-man will come," Lilo said. "But not immediately. Not what you asked for. They will conduct their own investigation and then let you make your try."

Lars said to the powerful Red Army intelligence officer, "I want to be returned to the jurisdiction of the FBI. Now. I insist on it."

"Finish your coffee."

"Something is wrong," Lars said. "Something about that comic book. I could tell by your manner; you discovered or thought something. What was it?" Turning to Lilo he said, "Do you know?"

"They're upset," Lilo said. "They think KACH has been supplying repros to this comic-book firm. That irks them. They don't mind if Wes-bloc has access, but not this; this goes too far."

"I agree," Lars said. But I think there's more, he said to himself. I know there is; I saw too much agitation, here, just now.

"There is a time-factor," Major Geschenko said, presently. He poured himself a fresh cup, but the coffee was utterly cold now.

"The comic-book firm got the sketches too soon?" Lars asked.

"Yes." Major Geschenko nodded.

"Too soon even for KACH?"

"Yes."

Stricken, Lilo said, "I don't believe it."

Major Geschenko glanced at her, briefly and without warmth.

"Not for them," Lilo said. "Surely we couldn't be."

"The final episode in the magazine," Major Geschenko said. "The Blue Whatever-he-is-man devised as a temporary source of power, while imprisoned on a barren asteroid, a steam engine. To act as an agent by which to reactivate the dead transmitter of his half-demolished ship, the normal power supply having been rayed out of existence by the—" he grimaced—"the Pseudonomic Flower-carnivores from Ganymede."

Lars said, "Then we are getting it from them. From the artist of that magazine."

"Perhaps so," Major Geschenko said, nodding very slowly, as if out of the most intense politeness he was willing to consider it—and for that reason only.

"Then no wonder—"

"No wonder," Major Geschenko said, sipping cold coffee, "that you can't perform your function. No wonder there is no weapon when we need it. Must have it. How could there be, from such a source?"

He raised his head, eyed Lars with a peculiarly bitter, accusing pride.

Lars said, "But if we are simply reading some comic artist's mind, how could there be anything?"

"Oh, that artist," Major Geschenko said disdainfully, "he has much talent. An inventive mind. Don't ignore that. He's kept us going a long time, both of us, my friend. East and West."

"This is the worst news—" Lars began.

"But interesting," Major Geschenko said. He glanced from Lars to Lilo. "Pitiful."

"Yes, pitiful," Lars said thickly.