Our Friends From Frolix 8 (16 page)

But Amos Ild. He differed from them: he was
building
something, rather than merely describing it in theoretical, mathematical terms. The government would make good use of him, if it did happen to occur to Gram. Yes, he would think of it, Provoni decided. Because by bringing Ild into top government levels, work on the Great Ear would slow down, perhaps even cease. It would take Gram time to figure this out, but eventually he would.

So I have to assume, Provoni thought, that we’ll be up against Amos Ild. The brightest light the New Men possess – hence the most dangerous to us.

‘Morgo,’ he said.

‘Yes, Mr. Provoni.’

‘Can you construct a receiver out of yourself or out of parts of this ship by which you can monitor thirty meter band output by Earth transmitters? I mean ordinary transmitters, used for commercial purposes.’

‘Why, may I ask?’

‘They run regular news broadcasts at two spots on the thirty meter band. Hourly.’

‘You wish to know what’s happening on Earth politically?’

‘No,’ he said with sarcasm. ‘I want to know the price of eggs in Maine.’

My temper’s wearing thin, he realized.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘No sweat,’ the Frolixan answered.

Thors Provoni threw back his head and laughed. ‘“No sweat” from a ninety ton gelatinous mass of protoplasmic slime that has engulfed this ship in its fluid body, that’s on every side of me, like a barrel. And it says, “No sweat.”’

This kind of usage would surprise the New Men, when they reached Terra. After all, it had learned his vocabulary
and
mannerisms – which were not the king’s.

‘I can pull the sixteen meter band,’ Morgo said presently. ‘Will that do? There seems to be considerable traffic on it.’

‘Not the kind I want,’ he said.

‘The forty meter band, then?’

‘Okay,’ Provoni said irritably. He put on the headphone, turned the variable condenser of his receiving rig. Cross-talk
came and went, and then, for an instant, he had a news broadcast.

‘… the end of relocation camps on… and Luna brought a… who some of which for years… coupled with this, the destruction of the subversive 16th Avenue printing…’ It faded out.

Did I hear that right? Provoni asked himself. The
end
of the relocation camps on Luna and southeastern Utah? Everyone freed? Only Barnes could have thought of that. But even Barnes… it was hard to believe. Maybe as a whim of Gram’s, he thought. A momentary panic reaction to our three radio messages to the 16th Avenue plant. But if it’s been destroyed, perhaps they didn’t receive the messages; perhaps they received only the first one or two.

He hoped both the government
and
the Cordonites had received the third message. It ran:

To the Frolixan he said, ‘Would you augment my transmission strength and beam the third message over and over again. Here, I can make you a rotary loop or tape.’ He snapped on his tape recorder and read the words, grimly, and with ultra-clear articulation – and intense satisfaction.

‘On a variety of frequencies?’ Morgo asked.

‘Every one you can manage. If you can get it up into the frequency modulation channels we might be able to print over a video image. Get it right into their TV sets.’

‘Good. That will be enjoyable. It’s a cryptic message; it does not, for example, mention that I am alone, that my brothers lag half a light year behind us.’

‘Let Willis Gram figure that out when we get there,’ Provoni grunted.

Morgo said, ‘I have been meditating over the possible effect my presence will have on your Mr. Gram and his cronies. First of all, they will discover that I cannot die, and that will frighten them. They will see that I can grow, if fed properly, and in addition I am able to make nutritional use
of almost any substance. Third—’

‘A thing,’ Provoni said. ‘You’re a thing.’

‘A thing?’

‘That’s what it’s all about.’

‘The psychological effect, you mean?’

‘Right.’ Provoni nodded somberly.

‘I think,’ Morgo said, ‘that my ability to replace sections of living organisms with my own ontological substance will frighten them the most. When I manifest myself smally, as say a chair, consuming the actual object as a source of energy – this event, in miniature, so they can understand it, will panic them. As you have seen, I can replace any object with myself; there is no viable limit to my growth, Mr. Provoni, as long as I am fed. I can become the entire building in which Mr. Gram works; I can become an apartment building of five thousand people. And’ – Morgo hesitated – ‘there is more. But I will not at this time discuss it.’

Provoni meditated. The Frolixans had no specific shape; their historic method for survival was to mimic objects or other living creatures. Their strength lay in the fact that they could absorb creatures, become them, using them as fuel, and then abandoning their empty husks. This process, like that of cancer, would not easily be uncovered by Gram’s detection-police apparatus; even when the transformation process reached vital organs, the imitated creature could function and survive. Death came when the Frolixan withdrew – ceased to provide counterfeit lungs, heart, kidneys. A Frolixan liver, for example, could function as well as the authentic liver it replaced… but it declined to remain once it had devoured everything of value.

Most frightening of all was the Frolixan invasion of the brain. The human – or other invaded organism – suffered from pseudo-psychotic thought-processes which he did not recognize as his own… and he would be correct; they would not be. And gradually, as the brain became absorbed and replaced, all of his thought-processes would be Frolixan. And at that point the Frolixan abandoned him, and he ceased to be, utterly empty of psychic content.

‘Fortunately,’ Provoni mused, ‘you’re selective in your
choice of hosts, since you have no interest in or intention of populating Earth and bringing to an end the life of humanoid organisms. All you’re going after is the governmental structure.’ And once that’s done, he mused, you will retire.

Won’t you?

‘Yes,’ Morgo said, listening to his thoughts.

‘You’re not lying?’ Provoni asked.

The Frolixan let forth a cry of pain.

‘All right,’ Provoni said hastily. ‘I’m sorry. But suppose—’ He did not finish, at least not aloud. But his thoughts jumped to the ultimate conclusion: I have sent a race of murderers to Earth, to destroy everyone equally.

‘Mr. Provoni,’ Morgo said, ‘this is why I, and only I, am here with you: we want to try to settle matters without a physical conflict… as would happen when my brothers arrive – happen then because we will not call on them unless needed for open warfare. I will negotiate a basic change in the establishment of your planet; that establishment will agree. In the news item you monitored, it mentioned that the concentration camps have been opened. They are doing it to placate us, are they not? Not from weakness on their part but from their desire to avoid an open fight, to present a united front. Your race is xenophobic. And I am the ultimate foreigner. I love you, Mr. Provoni;I love your people… insofar as I know them through your mind. I will not do what I can do, but I will make them know what I can do. In your mind’s memory-section there is a Zen story about the greatest swordsman in Japan. Two men challenge him. They agree to row out to a small island and fight there. The greatest swordsman in Japan, being a student of Zen, sees to it that he is last to leave the boat. The moment the others have leaped out onto the shore of the island he pushes off, rows away, leaving them and their swords there. Thus he proves his claim for what he is: indeed he is the finest swordsman in Japan. Do you see the application to my situation? I can outfight your establishment, but I will do so by not-fighting… if you follow my thought. It will be in fact be my refusal to fight –
yet showing my strength
– which will frighten them the most, because they cannot imagine such
power held but not used. Had they it, they would use it, your government. Your New Men, who to me are like the buzzing of flies. If I am obtaining an actual picture of them from your mind; if you do in fact know them.’

‘I should know them,’ Provoni said. ‘I’m one of them. I’m a New Man.’

Presently Morgo said, ‘I knew. Hints of it, and your knowledge of it, have leaked into your conscious mind. Especially during sleep.’

‘So I’m a double renegade,’ Provoni said starkly.

‘Why did you break with your fellows?’

Provoni said, ‘There are six thousand New Men on Earth, ruling with the help, such as it is, from four thousand Unusuals. Ten thousand in a Civil Service hierarchy that cuts everyone else out…
five billion
Old Men with no way—’ He lapsed into silence and then he did a surprising thing: he raised his hand, and a plastic cup of water floated directly to him, depositing itself in the grip of his hand.

‘You are an Unusual, too,’ Morgo said. ‘A t-k.’ He added, ‘That I did not guess.’

Provoni said, ‘As far as I know, I’m the only fusion of New Man and Unusual. I’m a freak, splitting off from other freaks.’

‘How far you could have gone in the Civil Service; consider, as you must have, what rating you could score.’

‘Oh, hell; I was double-03. Not overtly, but when I had tests administered to me sub rosa. I could have challenged Gram. I could have challenged any of them.’

‘Mr. Provoni,’ the Frolixan said, ‘I do not see why you failed to work from within.’

‘I couldn’t dislodge ten thousand civil servants, from G-1 to double-03, all the way up to the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety and Council Chairman Gram.’ But that
was not the reason, and he knew it. ‘I was afraid,’ he said, ‘that if they found out they would kill me. My parents were afraid when I was a child. All of them, New Men, Unusuals… and the Old Men and Under Men. I could harbinger a race of super supermen; if it became public the upheaval would be vicious and I would’ – he gestured – ‘disappear. And they would begin to watch for others like me.’

‘It never occurred to anyone that a person might emerge who comprised both types,’ the Frolixan said, ‘That is, theoretically. Before they tested you.’

‘Like I said, my tests were private. My father was at a G-4 rating, as a New Man, and he secretly arranged for the tests, after he saw my t-k ability and knew, in addition, that I had Nodes of Rogers sticking from my brain like pencil stubs. It was my father who made me wary, God rest his soul. You know, these great planet-wide and inter-planet-wide wars break out, and everyone is supposed to be thinking of the ideologies involved… whereas in actuality most people simply want a good, safe night’s sleep.’ He added, ‘A statement I read, literature on a pill. It said, in fact, that many persons who were suicidally inclined really wanted a good night’s sleep and they thought they’d find it in death.’ Where are my thoughts taking me? he wondered. I haven’t thought of suicide in years. Not since I left Earth.

‘You need sleep,’ Morgo said.

‘I need to know if my third message is getting through to Earth,’ Provoni said gratingly. ‘Can we really reach Earth in just six more days?’ Ghosts had begun to haunt him: fields and pastures, the vast floating cities on Earth’s blue oceans, the domes on Luna and Mars, New York, the kingdom of L.A. And especially San Francisco, with its quaint, fabulous, old-time BART ‘rapid transit’ system, built back in 1972 and for sentimental reasons still used.

Food, he thought. Steak with mushrooms, escargots, frogs legs… which to be tender had to be frozen in advance, which most people did not know, including many otherwise good restaurants.

‘Do you know what I want?’ he asked the Frolixan. ‘A glass of ice cold milk. Milk with ice in it. A half-gallon of it.
I want to just sit there and drink milk.’

‘As you pointed out, Mr. Provoni,’ Morgo said, ‘a man’s real interest is in the immediate and the small. We are on a voyage affecting the lives and hopes of six billion people, and yet when you imagine yourself there, at last, you imagine yourself sitting at a table on which rests a carton of milk.’

‘But you see,’ Provoni said, ‘
they’re the same way.
There is an invasion of Earth by nonterrestrials, and everyone – everyone! – wants merely to continue living. The myth of the seething, inarticulate mass that’s searching for a spokesman, a leader – that would be Cordon. But how many people really care? Maybe even Cordon doesn’t care… not terribly. Do you know what the French gentry were afraid of during the Revolution? They were afraid someone would come in and smash their pianos. Their narrow vision…’ He broke off. ‘Which even I share,’ he said aloud, ‘to an extent.’

‘You’re homesick. It shows up in your dreams; nightly, you walk the paths of Earth’s forests, and rise in majestic elevators to rooftop restaurants and drugbars.’

‘Yes, drugbars,’ Provoni said. He had run out of all medication long ago, fun and otherwise – including, of course, all the mind-affecting pills. I’ll sit there at a drugbar, he said to himself, and have one capsule, pellet, tablet and span-sule after another. I’ll frost myself into invisibility. I’ll fly like a raven, like a crow; I’ll cackle and chirp my way across the fields of greenhouses, into the sunlight and out of it. In only six more days.

‘There is one matter which we have not settled, Mr. Provoni,’ the Frolixan said. ‘Are we to make an initial public appearance, with great pomp and circumstance, or shall we land in some out-of-the-way area where we won’t be seen? And begin operations slowly from there? You could move freely about, if the latter. You could see and enjoy your fields of wheat, your rows of Kansas corn; you could rest, take your pills, and, if you don’t mind my saying it, shave, bathe, get clean clothes; freshen yourself up. Whereas if we drop down in the middle of Times Square—’

‘It doesn’t matter whether we land in the middle of Times Square or in a Kansas pasture,’ Provoni said. ‘They’ll be
maintaining constant radar alert, looking for us. They may even attack us, or try to attack us, with ships of the line, before we even reach Earth. We can’t be inconspicuous, not with you weighing ninety or so tons. Our retrorockets will light up the sky like Roman candles.’