I moved over behind the two of them.
"Give me that arm," and I took it. I cleaned it and dressed it, as the bullet had gone on through. I had placed their weapons on the dresser. I tore off their hankies and studied their faces. I did not know them from anywhere.
"Okay, why are you here?" I asked. "And why do you want to know what you want to know?"
There were no replies.
"I don"t have as much time as you did," I said. "So I"m about to tape you in place. I don"t think I can afford to fool around with drugs." I fetched the adhesive tape from the medicine chest and did it.
"These places are pretty soundproof," I remarked, putting the gun aside, "and I lied about them being bugged ... So you can do a bit of screaming if you want. I caution you against it, however. Each one earns you one broken bone.
"So who do you work for?" I repeated.
"I"m a maintenance man on the shuttler," said the shorter one. "My friend is a pilot."
He received a dirty look for this.
"Okay," I said. "I"ll buy that, because I"ve never seen you around here before. Think carefully over your answer to the next one: who do you really work for?"
I asked this knowing that they did not have the advantages that I had had. I work for myself because I am self-employed, an independent contractor. My name is Albert Schweitzer right now, so that"s what it is, period. I always become the person I must. Had they asked me who I had been before, they might have gotten a different answer. It"s a matter of conditioning and mental att.i.tudes.
"Who pulls the strings?" I asked.
No replies.
"All right," I said. "I guess I"ll have to ask you in a different fashion." Heads turned toward me.
"You were willing to violate my physiology for the sake of a few answers," I said. "Okay. I guess I"ll return the favor upon your anatomy. I"ll get an answer or three, I promise. Only I"ll be a little more basic about it. I"ll simply torture you until you talk."
"You wouldn"t do that," said the taller man. "You have a low violence index."
I chuckled.
"Let"s see," I said.
How do you go about ceasing to exist while continuing your existence? I found it quite easy. But then, I was in on the project from the first, was trusted, had been given an option ...
After I tore up my cards, I returned to work as usual. There, I sought and located the necessary input point. That was my last day on the job. It was Thule, way up where it"s cold, a weather station ... An old guy who liked rum ran the place. I can still remember the day when I took my ship, the Proteus, into his harbor and complained of rough seas.
"I"ll put you up," he said to me.
The computer had not let me down.
"Thanks."
He led me in, fed me, talked to me about the seas, the weather. I brought in a case of Bacardi and turned him loose on it.
"Ain"t things pretty much automatic here?" I asked.
"That"s right."
"Then what do they need you for?"
He laughed a little and said, "My uncle was a Senator. I needed a place to go. He fixed me up ... Let"s see your ship ... So what if it"s raining?" So we did.
It was a decent-sized cabin cruiser with powerful engines, and way out of its territory.
"It"s a bet," I told him. "I wanted to hit the Arctic Circle and get proof that I did."
"Kid, you"re nuts."
"I know, but I"ll win."
"Prob"ly," he agreed. "I was like you once, all full of the necessary ingredients and ready to go ... Gettin" much action these days?" And he stroked his pepper-and-salt beard and gave me an evil grin from inside it.
"Enough," I said, and, "Have a drink," because he had made me think of Eva.
He did, and I left it at, "Enough," for a time. She was not like that, though. I mean, it was not something he would really want to hear about. It had been about four months earlier that we had broken up. It was not religion or politics; it was much more basic.
So I lied to him about an imaginary girl and made him happy. I had met her in New York, back when I was doing the same things she was, vacationing and seeing plays and pix.
She was a tall girl, with close-cropped blond hair. I helped her find a subway station, got on with her, got off with her, asked her to dinner, was told to go to h.e.l.l.
Scene: "I"m not like that."
"Neither am I. But I"m hungry ... So will you?"
"What are you looking for?"
"Someone to talk to," I said. "I"m lonesome."
"I think you"re looking in the wrong place."
"Probably."
"I don"t know you from anywhere."
"That makes two of us, but I could sure use some spaghetti with meat sauce and a gla.s.s of Chianti."
"Will you be hard to get rid of?"
"No. I go quietly."
"Okay. I"ll eat spaghetti with you."
And we did.
That month we kept getting closer and closer until we were there. The fact that she lived in one of those crazy little bubble cities under the sea meant nothing. I was liberal enough to appreciate the fact that the Sierra Club had known what it was doing in pushing for their construction. I probably should have gone along with her when she went back. She had asked me.
She had been on vacation, seeing the Big Place, and so had I, I didn"t get into New York that often.
"Marry me," though, I"d said.
But she would not give up her bubble and I would not give up my dream. I wanted the big, above-the-waves world, all of it. I loved that blue-eyed b.i.t.c.h from five hundred fathoms, though, and I realize now that I probably should have taken her on her own terms. I"m too d.a.m.ned independent. If either of us had been normal ... Well, we weren"t, and that"s that. Eva, wherever you are, I hope you and Jim are happy.
"Yeah, with c.o.ke," I said. "It"s good that way," and I drank c.o.kes and he drank doubles with c.o.kes until he announced his weariness.
"It"s starting to get to me. Mister Hemingway," he said.
"Well, let"s sack out."
"Okay. You can have the couch there."
"Great."
"I showed you where the blankets are?"
"Yes."
"Then good night, Ernie. See you in the morning."
"You bet, Bill. I"ll make breakfast for us."
"Thanks."
And he yawned and stretched and went away.
I gave him half an hour and went to work.
His weather station had a direct line into the central computer. I was able to provide for a nice little cut-in. Actuated by short wave. Little-used band. I concealed my tamperings well.
When I was finished, I knew that I had it made.
I could tell Central anything through that thing, from hundreds of miles away, and it would take it as fact.
I was d.a.m.n near a G.o.d.
Eva, maybe I should have gone the other way. I"ll never know. I helped Bill Mellings over his hangover the following morning, and he didn"t suspect a thing. He was a very decent old guy, and I was comforted by the fact that he would never get into trouble over what I had done. This was because n.o.body would ever catch me; I was sure. And even if they do, I don"t think he"ll get into trouble. After all, his uncle was a Senator. I had the ability to make it as anybody I cared to. I"d have to whip up the entire past history, birth, name, academics, and et cet, and I could then fit myself in anywhere I wanted in modern society. All I had to do was tell Central via the weather station via short wave. The record would be created and I would have existence in any incarnation I desired. Ab initio, like. But Eva, I wanted you. I, Well ...
I think the government does occasionally play the same tricks. But I am positive they don"t suspect the existence of an independent contractor. I know most of that which is worth knowing, more than is necessary, in fact, with respect to lie detectors and truth serums. I hold my name sacred. n.o.body gets it. Do you know that the polygraph can be beaten in no fewer than seventeen different ways? It has not been much improved since the mid-twentieth century. A lower-chest strap plus some fingertip perspiration detectors could do it wonders. But things like this never get the appropriations. Maybe a few universities play around with it from this standpoint, but that"s about it. I could design one today that d.a.m.n near n.o.body could beat, but its record still wouldn"t be worth much in court. Drugs, now, they"re another matter.
A pathological liar can beat Amytal and Pentothal.
So can a drug-conscious guy. What is drug-consciousness?
Ever go looking for a job and get an intelligence test or an apt.i.tude test or a personality inventory for your pains? Sure. Everybody has by now, and they"re all on me in Central. You get used to taking them after a time. They start you in early, and throughout your life you learn about taking the G.o.dd.a.m.n things. You get to be what psychologists refer to as "test-conscious." What it means is that you get so d.a.m.ned used to them that you know what kind of asininity is right, according to the book. So okay. You learn to give them the answers they"re looking for. You learn all the little time-saving tricks. You feel secure, you know it is a game and you are game-conscious.
It"s the same thing.
If you do not get scared, and if you have tried a few drugs before for this express purpose, you can beat them.
Drug-consciousness is nothing more than knowing how to handle yourself under that particular kind of fire.
"Go to h.e.l.l. You answer my questions," I said. I think that the old tried-and-true method of getting answers is the best: pain, threatened and actual. I used it.
I got up early in the morning and made breakfast. I took him a gla.s.s of orange juice and shook him by the shoulder.
"What the G.o.ddam ... !"
"Breakfast," I said. "Drink this." He did, and then we went out to the kitchen and ate.
"The sea looks pretty good today," I said. "I guess I can be moving on." He nodded above his eggs.
"You ever up this way, you stop in again. Hear?"
"I will," I said, and I have, several times since, because I came to like him. It was funny.
We talked all that morning, going through three pots of coffee. He was an M.D. who had once had a fairly large practice going for him. (At a later date, he dug a few bullets out of me and kept quiet about their having been there.) He had also been one of the early astronauts, briefly. I learned subsequently that his wife had died of cancer some six years earlier. He gave up his practice at that time, and he did not remarry. He had looked for a way to retire from the world, found one, done it. Though we are very close friends now, I have never told him that he"s harboring a b.a.s.t.a.r.d input unit. I may, one day, as I know he is one of the few guys I can trust. On the other hand, I do not want to make him a genuine accomplice to what I do. Why trouble your friends and make them morally liable for your strange doings?
So I became the man who did not exist. But I had acquired the potential for becoming anybody I chose. All I had to do was write the program and feed it to Central via that station. All I needed then was a means of living. This latter was a bit tricky.
I wanted an occupation where payment would always be made to me in cash. Also, I wanted one where payment would be large enough for me to live as I desired.
This narrowed the field considerably and threw out lots of legitimate things. I could provide myself with a conventional-seeming background in any area that amused me, and work as an employee there. Why should I, though?
I created a new personality and moved into it. Those little things you always toy with and dismiss as frivolous whims, I did them then. I lived aboard the Proteus, which at that time was anch.o.r.ed in the cove of a small island oft the New Jersey coast.
I studied judo. There are three schools of it, you know: there is the Kodokon, or the pure j.a.panese style, and there are the Budo Kwai and the French Federation systems. The latter two have pretty much adopted the rules of the former, with this exception: while they use the same chokes, throws, bone-locks, and such, they"re sloppier about it. They feel that the pure style was designed to accommodate the needs of a smaller race, with reliance upon speed, leverage, and agility, rather than strength. So they attempted to adapt the basic techniques to the needs of a larger race. They allowed for the use of strength and let the techniques be a little less than perfect. This was fine so far as I was concerned, because I"m a big, sloppy guy. Only, I may be haunted one day because of my laxity. If you learn it the Kodokon way, you can be eighty years old and still carry off a nage-no-kata perfectly. This is because there is very little effort involved; it"s all technique. My way, though, when you start pushing fifty, it gets rougher and rougher because you"re not as strong as you once were. Well, that still gave me a couple of decades in which to refine my form. Maybe I"ll make it. I made Nidan with the French Federation, so I"m not a complete slouch. And I try to stay in shape.
While I was going for all this physical activity I took a locksmith course. It took me weeks to learn to pick even the simplest lock, and I still think that the most efficient way, in a pinch, is to break the door in, get what you want, and run like h.e.l.l.
I was not cut out to be a criminal, I guess. Some guys have it and some don"t.
I studied every little thing I could think of that I thought would help me get by. I still do. While I am probably not an expert in anything, except perhaps for my own peculiar mode of existence, I know a little bit about lots of esoteric things. And I have the advantage of not existing going for me.
When I ran low on cash, I went to see Don Walsh. I knew who he was, although he knew nothing about me, and I hoped that he never would. I"d chosen him as my modus vivendi.
That was over ten years ago, and I still can"t complain. Maybe I am even a little better with the locks and nages these days, as a result thereof, not to mention the drugs and bugs.
Anyhow, that is a part of it, and I send Don a card every Christmas. I couldn"t tell whether they thought I was bluffing. They had said I had a low violence index, which meant they had had access to my personnel file or to Central. Which meant I had to try keeping them off balance for the time I had remaining, there on the Eve of RUMOKO. But my bedside alarm showed five till six, and I went on duty at eight o"clock. If they knew as much as they seemed to know, they probably had access to the duty rosters also.
So here was the break I had spent the entire month seeking, right in the palm of my hand on the Eve of RUMOKO"s rumble. Only, if they knew how much time I actually had in which to work them over, they might, probably could, be able to hold out on me. I was not about to leave them in my cabin all day; and the only alternative was to turn them over to Ship"s Security before I reported for duty. I was loath to do this, as I did not know whether there were any others aboard, whoever they were, or if they had anything more planned, since the J-9 trouble had not come off as they had expected. Had it succeeded, it would surely have postponed the September 15 target date.
I had a fee to earn, which meant I had a package to deliver. The box was pretty empty, so far.
"Gentlemen," I said, my voice sounding strange to me and my reflexes seeming slow. I therefore attempted to restrict my movements as much as possible, and to speak slowly and carefully. "Gentlemen, you"ve had your turn. Now it is mine." I turned a chair backward and seated myself upon it, resting my gun hand on my forearm and my forearm on the back of the chair. "I will, however," I continued, "preface my actions with that which I have surmised concerning yourselves.
"You are not government agents," I said, glancing from one to the other.