The Zap Gun

26

At the immense parking-field atop the military hospital he was met by three snappily uniformed young Marines. They escorted him, as if he were a dignitary, or perhaps, he reflected, a criminal, or a gestalt of both combined, down-ramp at once to the high security floor on which it was taking place.

It. No such word as they. Lars noted the attempt to dehumanize the activity which he had come here to involve himself in.

He remarked to his escort of Marines, "It's still better than falling into the hands, if they do have hands, of alien slavers from some distant star system."

"What is, sir?"

"Anything," Lars said.

The tallest Marine, and he really was tall, said, "You've got something there, sir."

As their group passed through the final security barrier, Lars said to the tall Marine. "Have you seen this old war vet, this Ricardo Hastings, yourself?"

"For a moment."

"How old would you guess he is?"

"Maybe ninety. Hundred. Older, even."

Lars said, "I've never seen him."

Ahead, the last door—and it had some super-sense, in that it anticipated exactly how many persons were to be allowed through—swung temporarily open; he saw white-clad medical people beyond. "But I'll make a bet with you," he said, as the sentient door clicked in awareness of his passage through. "As to Ricardo Hastings' age."

"Okay, sir."

Lars said, "Six months."

The three Marines stared at him.

"No," Lars said. "I'll revise that. Four months."

He continued on, then, leaving his escort behind, because ahead he saw Lilo Topchev.

"Hi," he said.

At once she turned. "Hi." She smiled, fleetingly.

"I thought you were at Piglet's house," he said. "Visiting Piglet."

"No," she said. "I'm at Pooh's house visiting Pooh."

"When that Beretta went off—"

"Oh Christ I thought it was me, and you thought it was me; you were sure and you couldn't look. Should it have been me? Anyhow it wasn't. And I would have done the same; I wouldn't have looked if I thought it was headed at you. What I've decided, and I've been thinking and thinking, never stopping thinking... I've been just so damn worried about you, where you went—you had your trance and you simply wandered off. But thinking about her I decided she must never have fired that pelfrag pistol before. She must not have had any idea what it did."

"And now what?"

"I've been working. Oh God how I've been working. Come on into the next room and meet him." She somberly led the way. "Did they tell you I haven't had any luck?"

Lars said, "It could be worse, considering what's being done to us every hour or so." On the trip east he had learned the extent of the population-volume now converted out of existence—as far as Earth was concerned—by the enemy. It was grotesque. As a calamity it had no historic parallel.

"Ricardo Hastings says they're from Sirius," Lilo said. "And they are slavers, as we suspected. They're chitinous and they have a physiological hierarchy dating back millions of years. On the planets of their system, a little under nine light-years from here, warm-blooded life forms never evolved past the lemur stage. Arboreal, with foxmuzzles, most types nocturnal, some with prehensile tails. So they don't regard us as anything but sentient freaks. Just highly-organized work-horse organisms that are somewhat clever manually. They admire our thumb. We can do all sorts of essential jobs; they think of us the way we do rats."

"But we test rats all the time. We try to learn."

"But," Lilo said, "we have lemur curiosity. Make a funny noise and we pop our heads out of our burrows to see. They don't. It seems that among the chitinous forms, even highly evolved, you're still dealing primarily with reflex-machines. Talk to Hastings about it."

Lars said, "I'm not interested in talking to him." Ahead, beyond an open door, sat—a stick-like clothed skeleton, whose dim, retracted, withered-pumpkin, caved-in face revolved slowly as if motor-driven. The eyes did not blink. The features were unstirred by emotions. The organism had deteriorated into a mere perceiving-machine. Sense-organs that swivelled back and forth ceaselessly, taking in data although how much eventually reached the brain, was recorded and understood, God knew. Perhaps absolutely none.

A familiar personality manifested itself, clipboard in hand. "I knew you'd eventually reappear," Dr. Todt said to Lars, but nevertheless he looked drastically relieved. "Did you walk?"

"Must have," Lars said.

"You don't remember."

Lars said, "Nothing. But I'm tired."

"There's a tendency," Dr. Todt said, "for even major psychoses to get walked off, given enough time. The Nomadic Solution. It's just that there's not enough time in most cases. As for you, there's no time at all." He turned then to Ricardo Hastings. "As to him, what are you going to try first?"

Lars studied the huddled old figure. "A biopsy."

"I don't understand."

"I want a tissue-sample taken. I don't care what from, any part of him."

"Why?"

Lars said, "In addition to a microscopic analysis I want it carbon-dated. How accurate is the new carbon-17-B dating method?"

"Down to fractions of a year. Months."

"That's what I thought. Okay, there won't be any sketches, trances, any other activity from me, until the carbon dating results are in."

Dr. Todt gestured. "Who can question the ways of the Immortals?"

"How long will it take?"

"We can have the results by three this afternoon."

"Good," Lars said. "I'll go get a shower, a new pair of shoes and I think a new cloak. To cheer myself up."

"The shops are closed. People are warned to stay underground during the emergency. The areas taken now include—"

"Don't rattle off a list. I heard on the trip here."

"Are you honestly not going to go into a trance?" Dr. Todt said.

"No. There's no need to. Lilo's tried it."

Lilo said, "Do you want to see my sketches, Lars?"

"I'll look at them." He held out his hand and after a moment a pile of sketches was given to him. He leafed briefly through them and saw what he had expected—no less, no more. He set them them down on a nearby table.

"They are of an elaborate construct," Dr. Todt pointed out.

"Of an android," Lilo said hopefully, her eyes fixed on Lars.

He said, "They're of him." He pointed at the ancient huddled shape with its ceaselessly revolving, turret-like head. "Or rather it. You didn't pick up the contents of its mind. You picked up the anatomical ingredients constituting its biochemical basis. What makes it go. The artificial mechanism that it is." He added. "I'm aware that it's an android, and I know the carbon-dating of the biopsy sample will bear this out. What I want to learn is its exact age."

After a time Dr. Todt said hoarsely, "Why?"

"How long," Lars said, "have the aliens been in our midst?"

"A week."

"I doubt," Lars said, "whether an android as perfectly built as this one could be thrown together in a week."

Lib said presently, "Then the builder knew—if you're right—"

"Oh, hell," Lars said. "I'm right. Look at your own sketches and tell me if they aren't of 'Ricardo Hastings.' I mean it. Go ahead." He picked up the sketches, presented them to her; she accepted them reflexively and in a numbed, sightless way turned from one to the next, nodding faintly.

"Who could have built such a successful android?" Dr. Todt said, glancing over Lilo's shoulder. "Who has the facilities and the capabilities, not to mention the—inspirational talent?"

Lars said, "Lanferman Associates."

"Anyone else?" Dr. Todt said.

"Not that I know of." Through KACH, he of course had a fairly accurate concept of Peep-East's facilities. They had nothing comparable. Nothing was comparable to Lanferman Associates, which after all stretched subsurface from San Francisco to Los Angeles: an economic, industrial organism five hundred miles long.

And making androids which could pass, under close scrutiny, as authentic human beings, was one of their major enterprises.

All at once Ricardo Hastings croaked. "If it hadn't been for that accident when that power-surge overloaded the—"

Lars, walking over, interrupted him, abruptly. "Are you operating on intrinsic?"

The ancient, dim eyes confronted him. But there was no answer; the sunken mouth did not stir, now.

"Come on," Lars said. "Which is it, intrinsic or remote? Are you homeostatic or are you a receptor for instructions coming from an outside point? Frankly, I'd guess you're fully intrinsic. Programmed in advance." To Lilo and Dr. Todt he said, "That explains what you call its 'senility.' The repetition of certain stereotyped semantic units over and over again."

Ricardo Hastings mumbled wetly, "Boy, how we clobbered them. They didn't expect it; thought we were washed up. Our weapons fashion designers, they hadn't come through. The aliens thought they could just walk right in and take over, but we showed them. Too bad you people don't remember; it was before your time." He—or it—chuckled, sightlessly staring at the floor, its mouth twitching in a grimace of delight.

"I don't," Lars said, pausing, "buy the idea of the time-travel weapon anyhow."

"We got the whole mess of them," Ricardo Hastings mumbled. "We warped their goddam satellites entirely out of this time-vector, a billion years into the future, and they're still there. Heh-heh." His eyes, momentarily, lit with a spark of life. "Orbiting a planet that's uninhabited except by maybe spiders and protozoa. Too bad for them. We caught their ships of the line, too; with the T.W.G. we sent them into the remote past; they're set to invade Earth around the time of the trilobite. They can win that easy. Beat the trilobites, club them into submission." Triumphantly, the old veteran snorted.

At two-thirty, after a wait which Lars would not have undergone again at any price, the carbon-dating of the tissue taken from the old man's body was brought in by a hospital attendant.

"What does it show?" Lilo asked, standing up stiffly, her eyes fixed on his face, trying to apprehend his reaction, to share it with him.

Lars handed her the single sheet. "Read it yourself."

Faintly she said, "You tell me."

"The microscopic analysis showed it to be indubitably human, not syntho—that is, android—tissue. The carbon-17-B dating procedures, applied to the tissue-sample, indicate that the sample is one hundred and ten years to one hundred and fifteen years old. And possibly—but not probably—even older." Lilo said, "You were wrong."

Nodding, Lars said, "Yes." To himself, Ricardo Hastings chuckled.