Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (14 page)

The
old man shook his head feebly. "Let me
alonel
I
can't answer any more questions."

"Who's been asking you
questions?"

"I
don't know, I don't know.
Somebody.
My mind is a
blank."

Bahr's jaw settled grimly. "Your name is
James Cullen?" Cullen did not answer.

"Dr.
Cullen, I have some idea of what you've been through. If what we think is
right, more than forty of your colleagues are going through the same thing
right now. Don't you want to help stop that?"

The
old man shook his head helplessly. "I don't know anything. I'm tired. I
don't remember what happened."

"We'll help you
remember."

"Does my family know
I'm safe?"

Bahr's
fist clenched at the digression. "They'll be told. Now just answer yes or
no to my questions." He eased back in his chair and rolled the polygraph
paper ahead. "You are a professor of
Vanner-Elling
principles at the University of Michigan?"

Again
Cullen did not answer. Bahr smashed his hand down on the desk, noticing with
satisfaction the sudden change of blood pressure at the noise. "I think
you're tired," he said solicitously. "I think you'd better have a
little stimulation."

"Please . . ."

"Just a little adrenalin and amphetamine.
You'll feel like a new man." The
technician clamped Cullen's arm down, deliberately missing the vein twice. In a
minute Cullen's heart was thumping desperately against the chest constrictor,
his eyes blinking rapidly. "Have another dose ready in case he begins to
doze off," Bahr said.

Cullen
was really quite co-operative after that, and his memory became remarkably
clear, at least in places. There were aggravating holes in his story, but the
pattern was clear enough.

He had been abducted from his home in Ann
Arbor sometime Sunday night. He could not remember how, nor what his captors
had looked like. He did recall, vaguely, a long ride somewhere in some sort of
vehicle, a strange room, and blindingly bright fights.

And
the questions . . .

"Who was questioning
you?"

"I couldn't see.
Just a voice.
An odd voice."

"A
human voice?"

"No.
Definitely not . . . not
what I heard." The old
man hesitated. "It didn't make sense, but I was sure it was a
tik
-talker."

Bahr's
eyebrows went up, and he glanced excitedly at the technician. The electronic
tik
-talker, which converted punched tape patterns into
speech sounds, had first been developed for long-distance speech communication,
particularly useful when scrambled signals were necessary. Scrambled voice,
bouncing off a fluctuating ionosphere, was likely to emerge
Irom
the descrambler as a series of moans, pops and
whisties
.
The
uk
-talker reduced speech to a
burst of seven pulse characters, reassembling and unscrambling them at the
receiving end.
It was quite reliable, but the speech itself always had
the tonal curiosities of electronically sliced language, and was easily
identified by anyone who had ever heard it before.

"You've heard a
tik
-talker before?" Bahr asked.

"We've
used them at the Center.
For distant communications and
translation purposes."

"And what were the
questions like?"

Here
Cullen was very clear. He had been asked hundreds of questions about his work
at Michigan, especially with regard to the
Vanner-Elling
equations and their current application to controlling the psychological and
economic stability of the country since the economic collapse of the crash in
1995. He had been asked about the poll-taking functions, the work of the
machines in outlining production schedules and anticipating psychological
soft-spots in various segments of society.

He
had refused to answer questions on one very highly classified project, and was
given repeated low-voltage electroshocks until he passed out. He could not
remember being reawakened. His next recollection was wandering in confusion
through the downtown Los Angeles streets until the police picked him up for
vagrancy.

He
also refused to tell Bahr what the project was, or anything about it, even
though Bahr threatened him with more amphetamine. Cullen knew about security,
and nothing short of a BRINT unrestricted examination would have gotten
topsec
information out of him. Bahr made a note on the spot
to give Cullen a type 4 background check as soon as things quieted down; Bahr
did not like people to refuse him anything.

The
following six men, far more co-operative, had also been picked up, as far as
they knew, from their homes on Sunday night by unidentifiable captors. There
were two sociologists, a biologist, two linguists, and one of the few
physicists in the country still working on physics. They had all been
questioned intensively about their respective fields, never seeing their
questioners and all confirming the curious sing-song of a
tik
-talker
intermediary. One of them had been indiscreet enough, after two hours of
electroshock, to divulge certain information about a
topsec
project he was connected with for DEPCO. It showed on the PG, of course, and
Bahr made a note to frighten as much information out of the man as he could
about DEPCO research plans before turning him over to DEPCO for prosecution.

This
procedure was not ultimately carried out, due to the subject's suicide sometime
after the interview, which annoyed Bahr considerably. Bahr did not as a rule
allow people to change his plans for him.

But
the pattern was unmistakably clear, when all the data had been gathered. All seven
men had been abducted by someone, taken somewhere, and systematically drained
of information, then dumped in widely distributed areas in a state of confusion
and extreme nervous exhaustion.

Bahr
slammed the folders shut and went down to the room where the repatriates had
been herded after their interrogation. Dr. Petri was hovering there, anxiously
awaiting permission to administer sedation. Bahr shrugged
oS
his protests, and nodded to the two DIA men standing guard at the door. One of
them was a tall, heavy man with a crew cut and a hard, convict's face; he
returned the nod briefly, and straightened his shoulders automatically when
Bahr came into the room.

The
repatriates looked up apathetically as Bahr put a heavy foot up on a chair and
faced them. "All right, we're through questioning you for now," Bahr
said. "When Dr. Petri is satisfied that you're in good medical shape,
you'll be released." He watched the sagging heads, heard the tiny sigh of
relief around the room. "However, you will be kept under full security
surveillance."

It
was the equivalent of house arrest. The sagging heads jerked up again in
protest.

"But you've already questioned us,"
Cullen said feebly.

"Obviously
you must realize that under the circumstances we can't assume that
anydiing
you've told us is true," Bahr said.

"But surely the
polygraph records. . . ."

"May mean nothing at all.
I realize that we've never found Occidentals
who could beat our polygraph system, under suitable drug treatment.
Unfortunately, the results are inconclusive with Orientals, who have a
different notion of truth, and particularly with yogis, who can control their
sympathetic system."

Cullen
was sitting up now, his face red with anger. "Mr. Bahr, we have certain
legal rights."

"As
of now, Dr. Cullen, you have no legal rights," Bahr said sharply.
"Until proven otherwise, we are forced to assume that your abductors were
alien creatures who are engaged in the first steps in an invasion. You men have
been in contact with those aliens . . . the
only ones
who have been in contact with them. From the
manner in which you were abducted, it seems obvious that the aliens are able to
penetrate our cities without detection, either in disguise as humans, or by
using and controlling humans. All right,
you
add
it up. If your abductors have techniques of mind control I hat we don't know
about, you men may be dangerous pawns. We can't take the risk that you're
not."

He paused for it to sink in. "Now, if
you have that straight, we'll get on. You will be released in the custody
oE
Mr. Yost." He indicated the hard-faced man with the
crew-cut. "You will be responsible to Mr. Yost for everything you do or
say. You will answer no questions and make no statements. If I find a single
quote, admission, or good guess in any of the TV-casts, Mr. Yost will be in
charge of improving your understanding of security."

Yost
led them away to the recovery room. Bahr had seen the spark of grudging
admiration in Yost's eyes, and he smiled in satisfaction. Yost was a former
801st lieutenant who had been in a Texas penitentiary for rape, assault, and a
dozen other crimes of violence before he had volunteered. In Texas he had been
a prison bully; in the 801st he found his calling, and had toughened his
guerrilla platoon, and subsequently his DIA field unit, into a sharp, violently
dangerous force. Yost believed in only one thing—power—and to him Bahr was
power. He was afraid of Bahr, and hated him, but he was willing to obey him to
the point of death. Bahr knew this, and depended on it. He recognized the
advantages of a subordinate whom everybody feared and hated, who would do his
dirty work for him.

And
he was quite sure that by the time the repatriates were released, they would
have transferred their hate and fear permanently from him to Yost.

He
pushed back his chair and went upstairs to where the committee from DEPCO was
waiting.

The Department of Control, the sprawling,
multi-faceted, interlocking bureau which held the ultimate, final and definitive
executive power of the
Vanner-Elling
Stability Government
in its hands, was a love organization.

It
had taken Julian Bahr several years and hundreds of contacts with DEPCO men at
all levels of importance, from top-level executive sessions with the Joint
Chiefs right down to the most casual contacts at cocktail parties, to realize
the fundamental truth of that fact and, realizing it, to fully comprehend its
implications. Libby Allison had denied it vigorously, and just as vigorously
(if unconsciously) proved it