The Zap Gun

28

"The small-time operator. The marginal, null-credit, kicked-around toy man himself," Lars said.

"That's right. Not an android but a man like yourself, only old, very old. At the end of my days. Not as you've met me and seen me subsurface, at Lanferman Associates." The voice was weary, toneless. "I have lived a long time and seen a good deal. I saw the Big War, as I said. As I told everyone and anyone who would listen to me as I sat on the park bench. I knew eventually the proper person would come along, and he did. They got me inside."

"And you were main-man in the war?"

"No. Not for that or any weapon. A time-warpage instrument exists—will exist—but it will not factor in the Big War against the Sirius slavers. That part I made up. Sixty-four years from now, in 2068, I will make use of it to return.

"You don't understand. I can come back here from 2068; I've done so. Here I am. But I can't bring anything. Weapon, artifact, news, idea, the most minuscule technological pursap entertainment novelty—anything." The voice was savage, roused to bitterness. "Go ahead! Telepathically pry at me, tinker with my memory and knowledge of the next six decades. Obtain the specs for the Time Warpage Generator. And take it to Pete Freid at Lanferman Associates in California; get a rush-order on it, have a prototype made right up and used on the aliens. Go ahead! You know what'll happen? It will cancel me out, Mr. Lars." The voice cut at him, deafening him, cruel. Corrupted by vindictiveness and the futility of the situation. "And when it cancels me out, by instigating an alternate time-path, it will cancel the weapon out, too. And an oscillation, with me caught in it, will be erected in perpetuity."

Lars was silent. He did not dispute; it seemed evident and he accepted it.

"Time-travel," said the ancient, decayed Klug of sixty-four years from now, "is one of the most rigidly limited mechanisms arrived at by the institutional research system. Do you want to know exactly how limited I am, Mr. Lars, at this moment in time, which is for me over sixty years in the past? I can see ahead and I can't tell anything—I can't inform you; I can't be an oracle. Nothing! All I can do, and this is very little, but it may be enough—I know, as a matter of fact, whether it'll be enough, but I can't even risk telling you this—is call your attention to some object, artifact or aspect of your present environment. You see? It must already exist. Its presence must not in any way be dependent on my return here from your future."

"Hmm," Lars said.

" 'Hmm.' " Vincent Klug sneered, mocking him.

"Well," Lars said, "What can I say? It's been said; you just now went through it, stage by stage."

"Ask me something."

"Why?"

"Just ask! I came back for a reason; isn't that obvious? God, I'm tied in knots by this damn principle—it's called—" Klug broke off, choked with impotence and fury.

"I can't even give you the name of the principle that limits me," he said, with descending strength. The battle to communicate—but not to communicate beyond the narrow, proper line—was palpably draining him rapidly.

Lars said, "Guessing games. That's right; you like games."

"Exactly." A resurgence of energy pulsed in the dry, dust-like voice. "You guess. I either answer or I don't."

"Something exists now, in our times, in 2004."

"Yes!" Frenzied, vibrant, humming excitement; the furious regathering of the life-force in response.

"You, in this time period, are not a cog. You're on the outside and that is a fact. You've tried to bring it to UN-W Natsec's attention but since you're not a cog, no one will listen."

"Yes!"

"A working prototype?"

"Yes. By Pete Freid. On his own time. After Jack Lanferman gave him permission to use the company shops. He's so goddam good; he can build so goddam fast."

"Where is the device now?"

A long silence. Then, haltingly, in agony, "I—am—afraid to—say too much."

"Pete has it."

"N-no."

"Okay," Lars pondered. "Why didn't you try to communicate with Lilo?" he asked. "When she went into a trance-state and probed at your mind?"

"Because," Klug whispered wearily in his dry, rushing voice, "she is from Peep-East."

"But the Prototype—"

"I see ahead. This weapon, Mr. Lars, is for Wes-bloc alone."

"Is the weapon," Lars said, "in Festung Washington, D.C. at this time?"

Witheringly, the voice of the ancient Vincent Klug eaten away by the destroyer retorted. "If it were I would not be talking to you. I would have returned to my own period." He added, "Frankly, I have plenty to lose by being here, my friend. The medical science of my own era is capable of sustaining my life on an endurable basis. That, however, is not the case in this year, 2004." His voice pulsated with the rhythm of fatigue and contempt intertwined.

"Okay, this device," Lars said—and sighed—"this weapon originates from my own time and not from the future. You've had the prototype made. Presumably it works. So you've either taken it back to your own tiny factory or whatever it is you operate!" For a long time he considered, recapitulating in his mind over and over again. "All right," he said. "I don't need to ask you any more; we don't need to stain it. Better not to take any more chances. You agree?"

"I agree," Klug said, "if you feel you can continue on your own—with what you now know and no more."

"I'll find it."

Obviously he had to immediately approach the Vincent Klug of this period, drag the device out of him. But—and he saw it already—the Vincent Klug of 2004, having invented the device, would not recognize it as a weapon.

He would not therefore know which object was wanted; Klug might, in his typical, zany, marginal operations, possess a dozen, two dozen, constructs in every possible stage all the way from the rough sketch, the drafting board, to the final autofac-run retail-sales production items themselves.

He had broken contact with the ancient Vincent Klug of 2068 prematurely.

"Klug," he said instantly, urgently. "What kind of toy is it? A hint! Give me some clue. A board game? A war game?" He listened.

In his ears, as spoken words, not telepathically received thoughts, the cracked, senile voice mumbled, "Yeah, we really clobbered them, those slavers; they sure didn't expect us to come up with anything." The old man wheezing chuckling with delight. "Our weapons fashions designers. What a washout they were. Or so the aliens thought"

Lars shaking, opened his eyes. His head ached violently. In the glare of the overhead light he squinted in pain. He saw Lilo Topchev beside him, slouched inert, her fingers holding a pen... against a blank, untouched piece of white paper.

The trance-state, telepathic rapport with the obscured, inner mind of the old "war veteran" Vincent Klug, had ended.

Looking down, Lars saw his own hand as it gripped a pen, his own sheet of paper. There was no sketch of course; he was not surprised by that.

But the paper was not blank.

On it was a scrawled, labored sentence, as if the awkward, unskilled fingers of a child had gripped the pen not his. The sentence read:

The (unreadable, a short word) in the maze.

The something in the maze, he thought. Rat? Possibly. He seemed to make out an r. And the word consisted of three letters, the second of which—he was positive, now, as he scrutinized it—was a.

Unsteadily, he rose, made his way from the room; he opened door after door, at last found someone, a hospital orderly.

"I want a vidphone," Lars said.

He sat, finally, at a table on which rested an extension phone. With shaking fingers he dialed Henry Morris at his New York office.

Presently he had Henry on the screen.

"Get hold of that toy-maker Vincent Klug," Lars said. "He has a kids' product, a maze of some kind. It's gone through Lanferman Associates and come out. A working model exists. Pete Freid made it."

"Okay," Henry said, nodding.

"In that toy," Lars said, "there's a weapon. One we can use against the aliens—and win. Don't tell Klug why you want it. When you have it, mail it to me at Festung Washington, D.C. by 'stant mail—so there's no time-lapse."

"Okay," Henry Morris said.

After he had rung off, Lars sat back, once more picked up the sheet of paper, reexamined his scrawled sentence. What in God's name was that blurred word? Almost he had it...

"How do you feel?" Lilo Topchev appeared, bleary-eyed, rubbing her forehead, smoothing back her rumpled hair. "God, I'm sick. And again I got nothing." She plopped herself opposite him, rested her head in her hands. Then, sighing, she roused herself, peered to see the paper he held. "You derived this? During the trance-state,"

She frowned, her lips moving. "The—something—in the maze. That second word." For a time she was silent, and then she said, "Oh. I see what it says."

"You do?" He lowered the sheet of paper, and for some reason felt cold.

"The second word is man," Lilo said. "The man in the maze; that's what you wrote during the trance. I wonder what it means."