Part 16 (2/2)
”I'm not slipping and whatever it was you were going to say, I won't. No telepathy, no rapport. I've been a career business woman ever since I was fifteen-a good one-and I'm going to keep on being just that.”
He smiled; more a grin than a smile. ”That's the way to talk, Dorry. Strictly business. If there's any one thing in this wide fat world I really love, it's business.”
”Let's get at it, then.” Miss Champion, now all briskly efficient FirSec, picked up her book. ”I'll remind you, Mister Smith, that you are wasting time that is costing the company a dollar a minute. In exactly four and one half minutes you have an appointment with Felton of Barbizon about. enlarging the operation there; at nine plus forty five with Quisenberry of Belmark, ditto; at ten plus ten with Andersen of Pharmics...”
Maynard landed on Earth at Chicago s.p.a.ceport. He took a copter to the big old building on Michigan Avenue that was GalFed's headquarters. Stevens Spehn's office was on the twenty sixth floor, in front, affording a splendid view of Lake Michigan-all water clear out to the horizon.
Having sent a thought ahead, Maynard strode straight through the main office and the FirSec's office. That smart girl, who of course listened in on everything, even -or especially?-on thought, merely glanced up with a smile from the tape she was reading and exchanged greetings in thought with him as he went past.
Spehn's office, vastly unlike his previous one, was small and plainly furnished. Even his desk was small; he could, with a little stretching, reach anything on its plate-gla.s.s top. He was leaning 'way back in his swivel chair, with both feet perched up on the corner of his desk. When Maynard came in Spehn pointed his cigarette at a huge overstuffed chair near the desk, but facing the huge front window. Maynard sat down, lighted a long, thin cigar, crossed his legs, and spoke aloud. ”So you're rolling, Steve. So you like your PsiCor, eh?”
”Oh, brother!” Spehn got up, walked around to the older man, shook him solemnly by the hand, and resumed seat and pose. Then: ”Oh... broth... therr! One hundred percent convictions so far and not a possible miss in sight. Psionic Intelligence agents are things that... well, maybe some cloak-and-dagger men have dreamed about such things, hut we've got 'em. Over ten thousand already and more coming and they're all batting a thousand, Boss, the Big Brains claim that while ethics is related to psionics, ethics is not and cannot be made an absolute. Do you buy that?”
”In the abstract, as a generalization, yes. In practice, and in the specific case of our own culture as it now is, perhaps not. I might almost say probably not.”
”Very, very cautious about going out on a limb, aren't you? So bite yourself off a piece of this and chew on it and give your taste-buds a treat. The opposition hasn't got any psiontists worth a tinker's toot and never will have any.”
Maynard did not question this statement. All experience had shown that any psychics of much ability, immediately upon perceiving the vastnesses of psionics, went to Newmars and the University of Psionics as a matter of course. Spehn went on: ”It's a truly wonderful thing to know, for certain d.a.m.n sure, everything that goes on. So we're steam-rolling 'em to the queen's own taste. This next election will be honest; the kind of election the Founding Fathers had in mind. GalFed should be in the saddle shortly after that. Of course there'll be some fuss, but Guerd should be ready by then. You're sticking around?”
Maynard nodded. ”Longer than that, Stev. Until GalFed is, both in name and in fact, THE GALACTIC FEDERATION; until Tellus-a united Tellus-is both in name and in fact the capital of all civilization.”
Spehn thought for a moment. ”That's a big order, boss, but I wouldn't wonder if we might be able to deliver the goods.”
After half an hour more of discussion, Maynard went up one floor and had a long discussion with Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann.
He then tuned his mind to that of Li Hing Wong, who brought Feodr Ilyowicz in for a three-way. Things were going as well as was to be expected. The Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain, which had faced outward, had been replaced by Psionic Curtains facing inward. Since the fleet englobing Earth, whatever it really was, did not seem to care what happened to either Russia or China, there had not been very much effective opposition. People were dying, but that couldn't be helped. The only way progress could be made was by killing off the commissars and the warlords and all such corruptionists; and, since corruption had been the way of life for centuries, reclamation would necessarily be a slow process.
As each district was reclaimed and put under a psionic Peace-lord its people were given as much self-government as they could handle-which wasn't very much. They would have to grow up to self-government, and that would take a low; time. If famine and pestilence did not take care of the population problem, population control would; by birth-control and logic if possible, by sterilization if necessary.
It was not a cheerful report; but Maynard had not expected it to be. He shrugged his shoulders and went on to interview every one of the men and women who were handling the political campaign. Then, last of all, he turned his attention to the financiers who were operating in the stock market.
The Plastics Building, in Chicago, Illinois, WestHem, Tellus, occupied the entire eight hundred block west; bounded by Halsted and Peoria Streets on the east and west, and by Was.h.i.+ngton and Randolph Boulevards on the south and north. Its main bulk, built of steel-reenforced synthetics of various kinds, was eighty five stories high, and a comparatively slender tower reached up fifteen stories higher still. This tower housed the private offices of the Biggest of the Big of Plastics, Incorporated; and its entire top floor, the one hundredth of the building, was devoted to the series of exceedingly private offices, in ascending order of privacy from the private elevator, of the least accessible man on Earth-President Byron Punsunby himself.
To say that these offices were sumptuous is to make the understatement of the year, but that is all that will be said. At three o'clock one Wednesday afternoon, while President Punsunby was sitting at his most sumptuous desk, alone in his most sumptuous, most private office, clear across the tower from the elevator, a call came in on a communicator that was his alone, in a mish-mash of noise and herringbone that he alone could unscramble. He stared at it angrily for a few seconds; his big, fat body tensing, his big, fat face stiffening, and his small blue eyes growing even harder than their hard wont.
He'd been getting altogether too d.a.m.ned many calls on that com of late and he hadn't liked any one of them. And this was the worst. It wasn't subs.p.a.ce, or even long distance; it was local-and this was one purely sweet-scented h.e.l.l of a time for him to have to leave Earth... why couldn't the ape handle a few things himself?
He unscrambled the mish-mash; Erskine Cantwell, the Comptroller General of The World, appeared. ”Where are you?” Punsunby snapped. ”s.p.a.ceport?” ”Yes. Just landing.”
”Come in. I'll be alone.”
Cantwell did not enter the Plastics Building by any of the usual routes. He approached it via subway, opened an almost invisible door into the second subbas.e.m.e.nt, walked along a deserted hall, opened a completely invisible door by speaking a series of six coined words, and took the ultra-secret elevator straight up into Punsunby's ultra-private office.
”Well?” Punsunby demanded, savagely. ”I told you to take whatever steps might prove necessary. Why the h.e.l.l didn't you do it, instead of coming here again?”
”What do you think?” Cantwell sneered. ”That I'm here for the fun of it? I'm only the Highest Agent, remember? Six A's and a B, with only a violet headlight. It takes the one and only discarnate G.o.d Himself-the one and only holder of seven straight A's-the All-Powerful and Eternal-the one and only being able to pour the pure mercury-vapor light of G.o.d onto his poor dumb creatures-you, you fat-head, are the only living human being who can modify Article Ninety of your precious Second Directive, and by all the devils in h.e.l.l you...”
”Christ almighty!” Punsunby broke in. He had been turning not-so-slowly purple as he listened to this lesemajeste, but at the words ”Second Directive” his face began to pale. ”But that's the basis of the whole caste system-it's never been modified. Things can't be that bad, Ersk-there must be some other way of handling this trouble.”
”It's exactly that bad, and if you can find any other way to clean up the mess I'll roll a peanut from here to Buckingham Fountain with my nose. And I've had it. You can take this...”
”Don't say it, Ersk.” Punsunby got up, walked around the desk, and put a big hand on the slender man's shoulder. ”We couldn't operate without you. But such a change as that... G.o.d knows where a thing like that would end.”
”You're so right. That's the trouble with any rigid system,” Cantwell said, much more calmly. ”When it starts to crack it's apt to shatter. But that's the way you Tops have always wanted it, so you're stuck with it. So let's get at it.”
”All right. I'll have to make a couple of calls.”
There was no more talk of business until they were in SUITE ONE of the subs.p.a.cer. Then Punsunby said, ”Go ahead, Ersk. What do you think it is?”
”I know what it is, now. Sabotage. Expert, organized, directed, and highly efficient sabotage. Worthy of the Commies at their very best.”
”The Commies? But I...
”I didn't say it was and I don't think it is. I don't see how it could be. I can see only one possibility. I never have believed in mind reading; but what else can it be?”
”The Galaxians.” Punsunby thought for minutes. ”Mental stuff-that's why you want our mentalists to work openly with operators without losing caste. But no person has ever-knowingly, that is-has ever even seen a three-A, Ersk. It'd scare 'em to death.”
”It'll have to be worse than that. They'll have to shed their pretty colored spotlights, put on lockets, and become operators. How the h.e.l.l else can we find out what is going on? All we're doing now is knocking h.e.l.l out of production by killing thousands of dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who don't know whether Christ was crucified or shot in a c.r.a.p game.”
”Well, how about hiring some of their psychics away from 'em? Price would be no object.”
”We can't. They're ethical. And if WestHem ever finds out what we're doing they'll stop the Earth in its tracks and throw us the h.e.l.l off bodily. Don't kid yourself about this, Lord Byron, or you'll wind up square behind the eight-ball.”
Punsunby wriggled and squirmed all the way to The World; but his every idea was crushed by Cantwell's relentless logic. Therefore, as soon as the stars.h.i.+p landed, the two Supreme Beings of The World went directly to the immense building housing Information Central and donned the gorgeously-colored, heavily-jeweled regalia of their respective positions. Punsunby sat on the splendidly ornate Throne of The Company; Cantwell on a much smaller and somewhat plainer throne at his master's feet.
Punsunby put on a wisely beneficent smile, Cantwell pressed a hidden switch, and each of the thousands of Agents in Information Central's vast building was bathed both in the pure mercury-vapor Light of the Company and in the warmth and abundance of the Company's good will. Each put hands on head; each was suffused with happiness at this all-too-rare personal contact with The Company Itself.
”Children of the Company-my children-be happy,” Punsunby told the raptly-listening thousands. ”In view of the unprecedented difficulties which the World is now experiencing, The Company decrees that Article Ninety of its Second Directive is amended by the addition to it of Section Fifty Six, as follows: All members of all Mentalist castes in category A A A are permitted and directed to work, with no effect upon caste, at whatever undertakings and in whatever fas.h.i.+ons Highest Agent A A A A A A B shall set up and direct.' Be happy children.”
The Company lights all went out, the golden thrones sank down through the golden floor, and Punsunby whirled on Cantwell.
”I hope to h.e.l.l that does it!” he snapped. ”Now let's shed this junk and get me going back to Earth!”
Deston and his crew were not interested in Punsunby himself. What they wanted was the coordinates of The World. Thus they were on the lookout for, and were checking up on, every stars.h.i.+p approaching Tellus. Thus, even before Cantwell's subs.p.a.cer landed, they had learned everything that Cantwell himself had ever known about The World and had put the Explorer into orbit around The World's sun. And thus, long before the disguised psychologists of The World had made any significant progress in their investigations, the Galaxians were ready to go to work.
”Shall we take a quick peek at Information Central?” Deston asked, ”To see which of those colored-headlamped buzzards are doing what to whom?”
”We shall not!” Barbara declared. ”If I never know exactly which b.u.t.ton a murderer pushes to kill a perfectly innocent person it will be three days too soon. We can cripple all the instrumentation of that whole Information Central without...” She paused and frowned. ”Exactly,” Jones said. ”That would tear it.”
”Well, maybe,” Barbara conceded. ”So well hunt up whoever's causing it and put them out of business, and then stop it. We know it isn't the Galaxians, so it must be the Communists.”
”If we couldn't find the place, how could they?” Deston asked. His thoughts took a new turn then, and as he thought his mind-blocks began unconsciously to go up. ”Okay, we'll hunt 'em up. We know how they work. They won't be close in-too easy to spot. They'll be 'way out somewhere, and quite possibly underground. It will be a job, fine-toothing that much territory, but there's a lot of us. We'll divide it up... like this...
It was super-sensitive Bernice who finally found the Russians' carefully-concealed, deeply-buried headquarters.
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