Counterfeit World (13 page)

“You mean your father’s a success only because you—”

She nodded miserably. “That’s the only reason. When Siskin took him in five years ago, Dad was recovering from a heart attack. He couldn’t survive the knowledge of what the set-up has been.”

She started as the door buzzer sounded. I went over and flicked on the one-way video screen.

The man in the corridor had a pad ready when he identified himself. “James Ross, CRM Number 2317-B3. For Miss Dorothy Ford.”

It was most coincidental that just when I was trying to establish whether Dorothy was the Contact Unit a monitor should appear.

“Miss Ford is ill,” I said. “She can’t see anyone.”

“Sorry, sir. But I’ll have to stand on my RM Code rights.”

Then I remembered what I had seen on entering the apartment. “If you look above the pickup lens, Mr. Ross, you’ll notice a certificate that says Miss Ford holds a special Evening Exemption.”

Hardly glancing up, he grimaced in disappointment. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t see it.”

After I turned the screen off, I stood there for a long while with my hand on the switch. An honest mistake? Or was ARM involved in some special way in the Upper Reality’s designs on me?

I went over to the bar, the faint beginnings of logical realization trying to break through my confusion. Besides being programmed by the Higher World Operator, the Association of Reaction Monitors was in excellent position to keep close watch over not only me, but everybody else, if it wanted to.

Hadn’t it been an anonymous pollster who had warned me, “For God’s sake, Hall… forget about the whole damned thing”?

I dialed a drink, but left it sitting there in the delivery slot, wondering whether the monitors themselves might not be discharging some specific, unsuspected function in this counterfeit world.

Then the answer burst in upon me: Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? A simulectronic creation wouldn’t exist as an end in itself. It would have to have a
raison d’être,
a primary function. The analog community Fuller and I had created was originally intended to forecast individual response as a means of assessing the marketability of commercial products.

Similarly, but on a higher plane, our entire world, the simulectronic creation in which I existed as an ID reactional unit, was but a question-and-answer device for the edification of producers, manufacturers, marketers, retailers in that Higher Reality!

The reaction monitors comprised the system whereby the Upper Operator asked His questions, introduced His stimuli!

The method was analogous to Fuller’s own, cruder expedient of using analog billboards, public address networks, open telecasts to stimulate responses in
our
simulator!

And wasn’t it only logical that the Operator would have a cognizant agent associated
directly with ARM,
the most important institution in His whole simulectronic creation?

Early next morning I cushioned down on a public parking lot two blocks away from the Association of Reaction Monitors building. Pedistripping the rest of the way, I attached to my sleeve the one object that would insure unquestioned access to ARM headquarters—the armband I had wrested from the pollster who had tried to warn me off.

At the entrance, though, there was no guard to check on the identities of the monitors flowing in for their assignments. But before I became suspicious, I reminded myself that ARM wasn’t a secret organization, nor did it ostensibly have anything to hide.

In the central lobby, I paused before the directory and searched out the entry “Office of the President—3407.”

I had a simple plan. I would merely ask the secretary of each official, from the top on down, to announce that a new monitor from
Upper Reality, Inc.,
was checking in with the association. If there was a Contact Unit here, the mere mention of the name of the firm I purportedly represented would flush him out.

On the thirty-fourth floor, I stepped from the elevator and ducked immediately behind a luxuriant potted plant.

Two men were just emerging from the office of the president.

But even as I tried to hide I realized that one of them had seen and recognized me.

And that one was the Contact Unit himself!

It had to be. For it was Avery Collingsworth.

Collingsworth drew up beside the potted plant and our eyes met, his inexpressive, steady, mine casting frantically. about for an avenue of escape. But there was none.

The other man had darted back into the president’s office.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Collingsworth said evenly.

Instinct screamed out for me to kill him, quickly, before he could signal to the Operator. But I only backed against the wall.

“I knew you would eventually suppose that the Association of Reaction Monitors was the Operator’s factotum in this world,” the psychological consultant said. “Whenever you did, you were bound to come here looking for your Contact Unit. Right, Doug?”

Speechless, I nodded.

He smiled faintly. The expression, along with his slightly mussed, white hair and stout face, gave him an anomalous cherubic appearance.

“So you come here and find me,” he went on. “I was afraid that would happen. But I don’t suppose it makes any difference now. Because, you see, it’s too late.”

“Aren’t you going to report me?” I asked, just a bit hopeful.

“Aren’t
I
going to report
you!
” He laughed. “Doug, your mind won’t get out of its rut, will it? You don’t yet see that—”

The man who had been with him made his second emergence from the president’s office. This time he had four rugged-looking reaction monitors with him.

But Collingsworth stepped in front of them. “That won’t be necessary,” he said.

“But you said he was with Reactions!”

“Possibly he still is. But he won’t be, not for long. Siskin’s got him on the skids.”

The man eyed me speculatively. “This is Hall?”

Collingsworth nodded. “Douglas Hall, former technical director for REIN. Doug, Vernon Carr. As you know, Carr is president of ARM.”

The man extended a hand. But I drew back. Only dimly had I heard the conversation. Instead I had braced myself for the final moment when I would be summarily yanked. Would it come without warning? Or would the Operator first couple himself with me to verify my incorrigibility?

“You’ll have to excuse Hall; he’s not himself,” Avery apologized ambiguously. “He had his own trouble to begin with. And Siskin hasn’t been making things any easier.”

“What are we going to do with him?” Carr asked.

Collingsworth took me by the arm and drew me across the hall toward a closed door. “Before we decide that, I’d like to speak with him alone.”

He studded the door open and brought me into what was obviously a board room, with its long mahogany table bracketed by two lines of empty chairs.

Then I understood. He had to get me alone so then would be no witnesses to my deprogramming!

I whirled and hit the door stud. But it was locked.

“Take it easy,” Collingsworth said soothingly. “I’m no Contact Unit.”

I turned incredulously to face him. “You’re
not?
”

“If I were, I would have decided to have you yanked long ago, on the basis of your obstinate convictions.”

“Then what
are
you doing here?”

“Forget about your damned obsession. Look at this development rationally. Isn’t it understandable that my sympathies might be fully
against
Horace Siskin and his grubby enterprise? In short, I’m an agent, all right. But not in the sense you imagine. I’m aligned with ARM because I realize it’s the only organization strong enough to fight Siskin’s simulator.”

Relieved but confounded at the same time, I groped m way into a chair.

Collingsworth came and stood over me. “I’ve been working with the reaction monitors, keeping them filled in on ever move Siskin’s made. That’s why ARM was ready with it picketing gambit within hours after Siskin broke the news of Simulacron-3 at the party.”

I glanced up. “You planted the thermite bomb?”

“Yes. But believe me, son, I didn’t know you were going to be in the peephole room when it went off.”

Unbelievingly, I repeated, “You’ve been spying against Siskin?”

Nodding, Avery said, “He’s vicious, Doug. I realized what his ultimate goal was when I saw him with Hartson. But I was working with Vernon Carr long before then. I had enough sense to know you can’t, with the flick of a simulectronic switch, throw millions of men out of jobs all over the country.”

Convinced finally that he wasn’t, after all, the Contact Unit, I lost interest in his petty intricacies. But he misinterpreted my silence for skepticism.

“We
can
fight him, son! We’ve got allies we don’t even know about! For instance: Siskin and the party get their flunkies to introduce legislation outlawing public opinion sampling. And what happens? A bill that should have become law gets dumped for this session!”

I lunged from the chair. “Avery! Don’t you realize what that
actually
means? Don’t you
see
who your ally is in Congress?”

He straightened, perplexed.

“The Operator up there!” I pointed. “I should have realized it long ago. Don’t you understand? The Upper Reality is not just trying to reorient or deprogram anyone who learns what the set-up is. That’s only one of Their purposes.
Their main target is Siskin’s simulator itself! They want it destroyed!
”

“Oh, for God’s sake, son!” He scowled. “Sit down and—”

“No, wait! That’s it, Avery! You didn’t plant the thermite bomb in the interest of ARM. You did it because you were so programmed by the Operator!”

Impatiently, he asked, “Then why wasn’t I programmed to plant another and another, until I succeeded?”

“Because everything that’s done down here has to be manipulated within a framework of reasonable cause and effect. After Siskin redoubled his security effort at REIN, it wasn’t
likely
that a subversive attempt would succeed!”

“Doug,” he interrupted wearily, “listen—”

“No,
you
listen! The Upper Reality doesn’t want us to put our simulator into operation. Why? Because that would wipe out ARM and all its reaction monitors. And They can’t have that because the pollsters are Their system for introducing reaction-seeking stimuli into this world!”

“Really, Doug, I—”

I paced in front of him. “So They go all out to eliminate Fuller’s simulator. They program you to wield the hatchet. You fail. They program all of ARM. Picketing, unrest, violence will get the job done, They figure. But Siskin counters what he thinks is ARM strategy by marshaling public opinion against the pickets. And now it’s stalemate. That’s why the pressure’s been off me lately. The Operator hasn’t had time to check and see whether I’m still willing to believe I was only suffering pseudoparanoia.”

“You’re just rationalizing your hallucinations.”

“The hell I am! I understand clearly now. And I can see I’m not the
only
one in danger!”

He smiled. “Who else? Me? Because you’ve—ah, contaminated me with forbidden concepts?”

“No. Not just you.
The whole world!
”

“Oh, come now.” But deep furrows were beginning to show his doubt.

“Look. The Operator has tried every reasonable way of eliminating Simulacron-3-subversion, direct attack by ARM, legislation. But all His efforts have failed. He can’t reprogram Siskin because then the party would take up where Siskin leaves off. He can’t reprogram the party because thousands of reactional entities would be involved, right on down to the grass roots level.

“And he hasn’t made a move for several days now. Which means only one thing: He’s planning a final, all-out attack of some sort or other on the simulator! If it succeeds, our world will be safe again. But if it fails—”

Collingsworth leaned forward tensely in his chair. “Yes?”

Grimly, I went on. “If it fails, there’s only one recourse: He’ll have to destroy the entire complex! Wipe every reactional circuit clean! Deactivate His simulator—
our world—
—and start over from scratch!”

Collingsworth clasped his hands together. And, terrified, I realized abruptly that I might be
convincing
him of my case! The disastrous consequences were instantly apparent.

The Operator’s attention was off me at the moment. But it wasn’t off Avery! Collingsworth had been insidiously programmed to sabotage the simulator; to help the pollsters attack Reactions, Inc.;
even to tread along the brink of acknowledging the true nature of reality in order to convince me I was only a victim of pseudoparanoia!

If the Operator should learn that instead I had convinced
Collingsworth,
then He would realize the hopelessness of trying to pull me back in line. It would mean total deprogramming, oblivion,
for both Avery and me!

Collingsworth raised his head and his eyes locked with mine.

“One of the tests of a system of logic,” he said softly, “is whether the predictions it accommodates are valid. That’s why I was so sure I had accurately diagnosed your symptoms. Just a moment ago, however, you made a forecast of your own. You surmised that the Operator was contriving a final, all-out attack on—”

The door opened abruptly to the accompaniment of whirring tumblers activated by a biocapacitance circuit. Vernon Carr barged in. “Damn it, Avery! Do you realize what time it is?”

“Yes,” Collingsworth said distantly.

“Avery,” I pleaded desperately, “forget what I just said!” I laughed. “Don’t you see I was only trying to build up a case and—and show you that—”

It was no use. I had convinced him. And now the next empathy coupling between the Operator and either him or me would be fatal for both of us.

“Well, what are we going to do with Hall?” Carr asked.

Collingsworth shrugged and rose listlessly. “It really doesn’t make any difference—not now.”

Puzzlement seized Carr’s hawklike features, but only for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “But, of course, you’re right. This is it, Avery! We’ll either succeed and destroy the simulator in the next half hour, or we’ll fail. What Hall does between now and then
won’t
make any difference.”

He crossed eagerly to the wall and drew back a pair of drapes, exposing a huge video screen. Somehow I sensed I was about to learn why Collingsworth had been stunned by my spontaneous prediction. Carr turned on the switch and the room was immediately engulfed in a pandemonium of tumultuous sound as whirling patches of light and shadow chased one another frantically across the face of the tube.

From a lofty vantage point, the camera zoomed down upon a close-up of the entire REIN building. It was surrounded by a seething sea of reaction monitors that swirled and eddied and washed up almost to the entrance and was thrown back again and again. Each wave was met first by cordons of club-wielding, laser-spraying police, then by thousands of civilians who were supporting them.

Overhead, sound cars wheeled and looped like vultures searching for carrion while, in Siskin’s voice, their loudspeakers screamed exhortations to the defenders. The policemen and civilians were being reminded that Simulacron-3 was mankind’s greatest boon and that on the offensive now were evil powers that would destroy it.

Paralyzing laser beams cut broad swaths of stillness through the attacking forces. But always, behind them, there were more monitors to take the place of the fallen ones. And, even as I watched the action unfold, steady streams of ARM pickup vans descended in the background to discharge reinforcements.

The Reactions building itself was sheathed in an aura of scintillating sparks as projectile guns and brickbats maintained a steady barrage against its repulsion shield.

Vernon Carr hung anxiously in front of the video screen, gesturing aggressively with each assault surge.

“We’re going to make it, Avery!” he kept shouting.

Collingsworth and I only stared at each other, our mutual silence an adequate bridge of communication.

I had no interest in the struggle, somehow. Not that it wasn’t the most crucial battle ever fought. It was. The very existence of an entire world—a simulectronic universe—hinged on its outcome. For if the reaction monitors won and destroyed Fuller’s simulator, the Operator in that Upper Reality would be satisfied and would spare all His creation.

But, perhaps because the stakes were so enormous, I could not bring myself to watch the flow of battle. Or perhaps it was because I knew that, under these circumstances, the Operator would soon couple Himself with Avery. And when that happened it would be the end for both of us.

I wandered over to the door, still open after Carr’s entrance, and out into the hall. Numbly, I thumbed the stud to call the elevator.

I stumbled along the staticstrip, back toward the parking lot. I passed the foyer of a building where a public video screen displayed its panorama of violence from the pickup cameras above the Reactions building. But I only turned my head. I didn’t
want
to know how the battle was progressing.

A half block from the parking lot I drew up hesitatingly in front of a Psychorama. I stared almost unseeingly at its display posters, which boasted of the current appearance of “The Foremost Abstract Poetrycaster of Our Times—Ragir Rojasta.”

A uniformed attendant appealed to the passing pedistrippers, “Come on in, folks. Matinee performance just starting.”

My mind was a labyrinth of tortuous, terrified thought. It was halted on a dead-center of stark despair. I had to find some way to clear it so I could decide what to do next—if anything. There was no sense in running. For there was no place to hide. I could be empathy coupled or deprogrammed
anywhere. So
I paid my admission and tottered through the foyer.

I took the first empty place I could find in the circular tiers of seats and let my eyes focus indifferently on the central, revolving dais.

Ragir Rojasta sat there, resplendent in his oriental robes and turban, his arms folded, as the rotation of the stage sent his trancelike stare sweeping across the audience. The play of soft lights against his tawny, severe features presented a soothing contrast that invited me to don the Participation Skullcap.

I didn’t have to close my eyes to be swept into the essence of Rojasta’s conceptualized poetry. Instantly superimposed upon my own field of vision was a great flowing procession of the most dazzling jewels I had ever seen. Rubies and sapphires, diamonds and pearls tumbled over one another, their coruscating beauty blinding even my electrotelepathic appreciation of their elegance.