The Zap Gun

5

The coffee house as an institution, Lars knew, had great historicity behind it. This one invention had cleared the cobwebs from the minds of the English intellectuals at the period of Samuel Johnson, had eradicated the fog inherited from the seventeenth century's pubs. The insidious stout, sack and ale had generated—not wisdom, sparkling wit, poetry or even political clarity—but muddied resentment, mutual and pervasive, that had degenerated into religious bigotry. That, and the pox, had decimated a great nation.

Coffee had reversed the trend. History had taken a decisive new turn... and all because of a few beans frozen in the snow which the defenders of Vienna had discovered after the Turks had withdrawn.

And here, already in a booth, cup in hand, sat small, pretty Miss Bedouin, with her pointed silver-tipped breasts fashionably in sight. She greeted him as he entered "Mr. Lars! Sit with me, okay?"

"Okay," he said, and he and Pete shuffled and squeezed in on both sides of her.

Surveying Miss Bedouin, Pete interlaced his fingers and rested his hairy arms on the table of the booth. He said to her, "Hey, how come you can't beat out that girl he keeps to run his Paris office, that Maren something?"

"Mr. Freid," Miss Bedouin said, "I'm not sexually interested in anyone."

Grinning, Pete glanced at Lars. "She's candid."

Candor, Lars thought, at Mr. Lars, Incorporated. Ironic! A waste. But then Miss Bedouin didn't know what went on. She was sublimely pursap. As if the era before the Fall had been re-established for roughly four billion citizens of Wes-bloc and Peep-East. The burden, which had once been everyone's rested now on the cogs alone. The cognoscenti had relieved their race of a curse... if "cog" really derived from that and not, as he suspected, from an English rather than Italian word.

The English archaic definition had always seemed almost supernaturally apt to him. Cog. Using one's finger as a sort of cog to guide or hold the dice; i.e. to cozen, wheedle; to cheat.

But I could be candid, too, he thought, if I didn't know anything: I see no particular merit in that. Since Medieval times a fool—no offense to you, Miss Bedouin—has been permitted the liberty of wagging his tongue. But suppose, just for this one moment, as we sit pressed together in this booth, the three of us, two cog males and one dainty silver-tipped pursap girl whose cardinal preoccupation resides in a perpetual concern that her admittedly lovely little pointed breasts be as conspicuous as possible... suppose I could cheerfully pass back and forth as you do, without the need to sharply split what I know from what I say.

The wound would be healed, he decided. No more pills. No more nights of being unable—or unwilling—to sleep.

"Miss Bedouin," he said. "I actually am in love with you. But don't misunderstand. I'm talking about a spiritual love. Not carnal."

"Okay," Miss Bedouin said.

"Because," Lars said, "I admire you."

"You admire her so much," Pete said grumblingly, "that you can't go to bed with her? Kid stuff! How old are you, Lars? Real love means going to bed, like in marriage. Aren't I right, Miss whatever-your-name-is? If Lars really loved you—"

"Let me explain," Lars said.

"Nobody wants to hear your explanation," Pete said.

"Give me a chance," Lars said. "I admire her position."

" 'Not so perpendicular,' " Pete said, quoting the great old-time composer and poet of the last century, Marc Blitzstein.

Flaring up, Miss Bedouin said, "I am too perpendicular. That's what I just now told you. And not only that—"

She ceased, because a small, elderly man with the final glimmerings of white hair coating irregularly a pinkish, almost glowing scalp, had abruptly appeared by their booth. He wore ancient lens-glasses, carried a briefcase, and his manner was a mixture of timidity and determination, as if he could not turn back now, but would have liked to.

Pete said, "A salesman."

"No," Miss Bedouin said. "Not well dressed enough."

"Process-server," Lars said; the elderly, short gentleman had an official look to him. "Am I right?" he asked.

The elderly gentleman said haltingly, "Mr. Lars?"

"That's me," Lars said; evidently his guess had been correct.

"Autograph collector," Miss Bedouin said, in triumph. "He wants your autograph, Mr. Lars; he recognizes you."

"He's not a bum," Pete added reflectively. "Look at that stickpin in his tie. That's a real cut stone. But who today wears—"

"Mr. Lars," the elderly gentleman said, and managed to seat himself precariously at the rim of the booth. He laid his briefcase before him, clearing aside the sugar, salt and empty coffee cups. "Forgive me that I am bothering you. But—a problem." His voice was low, frail. He had about him a Santa Claus quality, and yet he had come on business, something firmer and without sentiment. He employed no elves and he was not here to give away toys. He was an expert: it showed in the way he rooted in his briefcase.

All at once Pete nudged Lars and pointed. Lars saw, at an empty booth near the door, two younger men with vapid, cod-like, underwater faces; they had entered along with this odd fellow and were keeping an eye on matters.

At once Lars reached into his coat, whipped out the document he carried constantly with him. To Miss Bedouin he said, "Call a cop."

She blinked, half-rose to her feet.

"Go on," Pete said roughly to her; then, raising his voice, said loudly, "Somebody get a cop!"

"Please," the elderly gentleman said, pleadingly but with a trace of annoyance. "Just a few words. There's something we don't understand." He now had in sight pics, glossy color shots which Lars recognized. These consisted of KACH-accumulated reproductions of his own earlier sketches, the 260 through 265 sequence, plus shots of final accurate specs drawn up for presentation to Lanferman Associates.

Lars, unfolding his document, said to the elderly man, "This is a writ of restraint. You know what it says?"

Distastefully, with reluctance, the elderly man nodded.

"Any and every official of the Government of the Soviet Union," Lars said, "of Peoples' China, Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic,—"

"Yes, yes," the elderly gentleman agreed, nodding.

" '—and all other ethnic or national entities comprising the political entity Peep-East, is restrained and enjoined during the pendency of this action from harassing, annoying, molesting, threatening or striking the plaintiff—myself, Lars Powderdry—or in any manner occupying him or being upon or within proximity so that—' "

"Okay," the elderly gentleman said. "I am a Soviet official. Legally I cannot talk to you; we know that, Mr. Lars. But this sketch, your number 265. See?" He turned the KACH-manufactured glossy for Lars to examine; Lars ignored it. "Someone in your staff wrote on this that it is—" the wrinkled, plump finger traced the English words at the foot of the sketch—"is 'Evolution Gun.' Correct?"

Pete said loudly, "Yes, and watch out or it'll turn you back into protoplasmic slime."

"No, not the trance-sketch," the Soviet official said, and chuckled slyly. "Must have prototype. You are from Lanferman Associates? You make up the model and prove-test? Yes, I think you are. I am Aksel Kaminsky." He held out his hand to Pete. "You are—?"

A New York City patrol ship flopped to the pavement before the coffee shop. Two uniformed policemen hastened, hand at holster, through the doorway with glances that took in everyone, anything or person capable of harm, activity and/or motion—and most particularly those who might be able to in any fashion, wise or manner whatsoever draw a weapon of their own.

"Over here," Lars said, heavily. He disliked this, but the Soviet authorities were behaving idiotically. How could they expect to approach him like this, openly, in a public place? Rising, he held his restraining writ out to the first of the two-man team of police.

"This person," he said, indicating the elderly Peep-East official who sat frowning, drumming nervously with his fingers against his briefcase, "is in contempt of the Superior Court of Queens County, Department Three. I'd like him arrested. My attorney will ask that charges be pressed. I'm supposed to tell you that," he said. He waited while the two policemen studied the writ.

"All I want to know," the elderly Soviet official said plaintively, "is part 76, your number. What does it refer to?"

He was led off. At the doorway the two silent ultra-neat, fashionable, cod-eyed young men who had accompanied him pursued his retreating figure but made no move to interfere with the actions of the city police. They were unemotional and resigned.

"All in all," Pete said presently as he sat down again, "it wasn't too messy." He grimaced, however.

Clearly he hadn't enjoyed it. "Ten will get you twenty he's from the embassy."

"Yes," Lars agreed. Undoubtedly from the USSR Embassy, rather than the SeRKeb. He had been given instructions and had sought only to carry them out, to satisfy his superiors. They were all on that ratwheel. The encounter hadn't been pleasant to the Soviets, either.

"Funny they were so interested in 265," Pete said. "We haven't had any trouble with it. Who do you suppose on your staff is working for KACH? Is it worth having the FBI check them over?"

"There isn't a chance in the world," Lars said, "that the FBI or CIA or anybody else in the business could pry loose the KACH-man on our staff. You know that. What about the one at Lanferman Associates? I saw shots of your mockups." He had of course known that anyhow. What bothered him was not the verification that KACH had someone at Mr. Lars, Incorporated—that Peep-East knew as much about his output as he did about Miss Topchev's—but that something ailed item 265. Because he had favored that. He had followed it through its several stages with interest. The prototype, down in Lanferman's almost endless subsurface chambers, was being tested this week.

Tested, anyhow, in one sense.

But if he let himself dwell on that long enough, he would have to abandon his profession. He did not blame Jack Lanferman and certainly not Pete. Neither of them made the rules or defined the game. Like himself they sat passive, because this was the law of life.

And in the subsurface chambers that linked Lanferman Associates of San Francisco with their "branch" in Los Angeles—actually merely the south end of the titanic underground network of the organization itself—item 265, the Evolution Gun (a hastily scrawled screed of a title, in the trade deprived of durability by adding the term working to it), this superweapon snatched from the puzzling realm which the weapons-mediums groped about in, would see what the pursaps liked to think of as—action.

Some ersatz gross victim, susceptible of being expanded, would be treated to a swat from item 265. And all this would be caught by the lenses of the media, the mags, the books, the 'papes, the TV, everything except helium-filled blimps towing red neon signs.

Yes, Lars thought; Wes-bloc could add that to its repertory of media by which the pursaps are kept both pure and saps. Something that lights up ought to cross the nighttime sky very slowly, or, as in former times, sputter unendingly around and around the turret of a skyscraper, edifying the public to the extent desired. Due to the highly specialized nature of this info-medium, it would have to be phrased simply, of course.

The blimp could initiate its journey, Lars reflected, with what might be a sanguine piece of knowledge. That the "action" which item 265 was now seeing beneath the surface of California was utterly faked.

It would not be appreciated. The pursaps would be furious. Not UN-W Natsec, he realized. They could take such a leak in their stride. The cogs would survive an exposure of that and every other datum their possession of which defined them as a ruling elite. No, it would be the pursaps who would crumble. And that was the part that made him feel the impotent anger that eroded, day by day, his sense of his own worth and the worth of his work.

Right here in this coffee shop, Joe's Sup & Sip, he realized, I could stand up and yell, There are no weapons. And I'd get—a few pale, frightened faces. And then the pursaps within range would scatter, get out as fast as possible.

I know this. Aksel Kandinsky or Kaminsky or whatever it calls itself, the kindly, elderly official from the Soviet Embassy—he knows. Pete knows. General Nitz and his kind know.

Item 265 is as successful as anything I have ever produced and ever will produce, the Evolution Gun which should turn every living sentient, highly organized life form within a five-mile radius back two billion years, devolved to the most remote past; articulated morphological structures should give way to something resembling an amoeba, a slime lacking a spine, fins; something unicellular, on the order of a filterable protein molecule. And this the audience of pursaps watching the six o'clock news-roundup on TV, will see, because it will happen. In a sense.

In that, fake heaped on fake, it will be staged before the variety of cameras. And the pursaps can go to bed happy, knowing that their lives and the lives of their kids are protected by Thor's hammer from The Enemy; that is, from Peep-East, which is also mightily testing their disaster-producing tearweps of havoc.

God would be amazed, probably pleased, by the ruin items 260 through 280, when built by Lanferman Associates, can call into being. It is the Greek sin of hubris made incarnate logos-wise in the flesh—or rather in poly-something and metal, miniaturized with backup systems throughout in case some gnat-sized component fails.

And even God, in raring back and passing the original miracle, The Creation, hadn't gone into miniaturized backup system. He had put all His eggs in one faultily woven basket, the sentient race which now photographed in 3-D ultra-stereophonic, videomatic depth something which did not exist. He thought, Don't knock it until you've tried it. Because getting clear 3-D ultra-stereophonic, videomatic depth shots of constructs which do not exist is not easy. It has taken us fifteen thousand years.

Aloud he said, "The priests of ancient Egypt. Circa Herodotus."

"Pardon?" Pete said.

Lars said, "They used hydraulic pressure to open temple doors at a distance. As they raised their arms and prayed to the animal-headed gods."

"I don't get it," Pete said.

"You don't see?" Lars said, feeling baffled. It was so obvious to him. "It's a monopoly, Pete. That's what we've got, a goddam monopoly. That's the whole point."

"You've gone nuts," Pete said grumpily. He fooled with the handle of his empty coffee cup. "Don't let that Peep-East flunky come in here and get you shook."

"It's not him." Lars wanted to make his point; he felt the urgency of it. "Down below Monterey," he said, "where nobody can see. Where you fellas run the prototypes. Cities blown up, satellites knocked down—" He halted. Pete was jerking his head warningly toward silver-tipped Miss Bedouin. "A hedgehog satellite," Lars said carefully, thinking of the most ominous extant. The hedgehogs were considered impenetrable, and out of the more than seven hundred Earth-satellites in current orbit, almost fifty were hedgehogs. "Items 221," he said. "The Ionizing Fish that decomposed to the molecular level, drifted as gas—"

"Shut up," Pete said harshly.

They finished their coffee in silence.