Our Friends From Frolix 8 (23 page)

‘Yes,’ Bob Grizwald, another of the endless gnat-army of TV newscasters said, ‘Provoni is in for a disappointment. No one, repeat: no one, will be allowed near his ship.’

‘That laser cannon mounted on the roof of the Shafter Building may give him a welcome,’ the first newscaster said; Nick had not picked up his name, but it didn’t matter – they were interchangeable men, all smooth, all buttoned down, unable to lose their poise no matter what calamity occurred. The only emotion which they allowed themselves to express was an occasional wry smile. They were doing this now.

Charley said, ‘I hope Provoni wipes out New York.’

‘And seventy million Old Men?’ Nick asked.

Ed Woodman said, ‘You’re too savage, Charlotte. If the aliens have come to destroy the cities, they’ll destroy the Old Men rather than the New Men out there in the country on those floating sky-rafts. That would hardly coincide with Provoni’s wishes. No, it’s not cities they want –
it’s the apparatus.
The thing that governs.’

Nick said to him, ‘If you were a New Man, Ed, would you be nervous right now?’

‘I’d be nervous’ Ed said, ‘if that laser cannon doesn’t hurt him. In fact I’d be nervous anyhow. But not nervous
like a New Man, no, indeed not. If I were a New Man or an Unusual, and I saw that laser beam bounce off Provoni, I’d find a ditch to hide in; I wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough. They probably don’t feel that way: they’ve ruled for so long, held power for so long, that heading for a ditch, literally and physically, wouldn’t enter their minds.’

‘If they gave all the news,’ Elka said severely, ‘they’d mention how many New Men and Unusuals have been leaving New York during the last eight or nine hours. You can see, look.’ She pointed out the window. The skyscraper was blackened by a sea of dots. Airborne squibs radiating out from the downtown section of the city: their old and familiar stamping grounds.

‘Turning now to other news,’ the newscaster said, ‘it has been officially reported that the noted New Man theoretician and builder of the Great Ear, the first electronic telepathic entity, Amos Ild, has been appointed by Council Chairman Gram to a special post. “Advisor to the Council Chairman”, it is designated. Word from the enormous Federal Building in Washington—’

Ed Woodman shut the set off.

‘Why did you do that?’ Elka asked, slender and tall in her inflated balloon trousers and fishnet drawstring blouse, her tawny red hair tumbling down the back of her neck. In some ways, Nick had noted, she resembled Charley. They had been friends, he was informed, back into school years; back to something like the As level, which was virtually infancy.

‘Amos Ild,’ Woodman said. ‘There is a really strange one. I’ve been interested in him for years; Christ, he’s considered one of the three or four brightest men in the whole Sol System.
Nobody
understands his thinking, except perhaps the one or two in the same class – near the same class, I mean – with him. He’s’ – he gestured – ‘a screwball.’

‘But we can’t tell,’ Elka said. ‘We can’t follow their neutrologics.’

‘But if other New Men can’t understand him—’

‘Einstein was the same way with his Unified Field Theory,’ Nick said.

‘Einstein’s Unified Field Theory was understood theoretically, but it took twenty years to
prove
it.’

‘Well, when Great Ear comes on, we’ll know about Ild,’ Elka said.

‘We’ll know about him before that,’ Ed said. ‘We’ll know as we watch the government make decisions in this Provoni crisis.’

‘You never were an Under Man,’ Nick said to Ed.

‘Afraid not. Too gutless.’

‘Does it make you want to fight?’ Charley asked, coming over to infuse herself into their conversation.

‘Fight? Against the government? Against the PSS and the military?’

‘With help on our side,’ Nick said. ‘The help of the non-terrestrials. Such as Provoni is bringing – or so he claims.’

‘He probably is,’ Ed Woodman said. ‘There’s no point in returning to Earth empty-handed.’

‘Get your coat,’ Charley said to Nick. ‘We’re flying to Times Square. Either that or we’re through with each other.’ She got her own coat, her rawhide leather jacket, marched to the apartment door, opened it, stood.

Ed Woodman said, ‘Well, you can fly into the area, and a PSS or army ‘copter will grapple you and drag you down. And they’ll run Nick’s name through their computers and come up with the fact that the black pissers have him on their snuff-list. So they’ll shoot him, and you can come on back here.’

Rotating, as if on an axis, Charley reentered the apartment, hung up her coat. Her full lips protruded in a grim pout, but she yielded to the logic. After all, this was why they were hiding out here, staying with friends of hers she hadn’t seen in two years.

‘I don’t understand,’ Charley said. ‘Why did they want to kill Nick? If it had been me – and we thought it was, all of us – I could understand that, because that old goat was trying to get me into one of those “infirmary” beds for convalescing girls… but Nick – he let you go when he had you earlier. He didn’t feel the need of killing you then; you just walked out of the building, as free as the air we breathe.’

‘I think I know,’ Elka Woodman said. ‘He could stand her leaving him per se, but he knew where she was going: back to you. And he was right; you were.’

‘I saw her and Denny,’ Nick said. ‘If Denny—’ He decided not to finish the sentence. If Denny were alive, she’d be with him, not me, he thought. And that did not please him, in a sense. But anyhow the opportunity for him was there, and many a man before, in such situations, had moved to take advantage of it. It was part of the expertly waged battle of sexual possessiveness, the ‘look who I get to lay’ syndrome, carried to its logical conclusion: the opposition is snuffed. Poor Denny, he thought. Denny was so sure that if they once got into the Purple Sea Cow he could get away, get all three of them away. Maybe he could have. They would never know because they had decided not to be lured back by the Cow; as far as he and Charley knew, it remained on the roof field of the apartment building, where Denny had left it.

It was too dangerous to go back. They had fled on foot, lost themselves in the crowds of Old Men and releasees from the camps; New York, in the last couple of days, had become a mass of humanity which rolled, tide-like, toward Times Square, broke on the rocks which were the PSS and army barricades, and then fell back.

Or were flown off, God knew where. After all, Willis Gram had only promised to open the old camps – he hadn’t promised not to build new ones.

Charley asked aggressively, ‘We
are
going to watch on TV, aren’t we?’

‘Sure,’ Ed Woodman said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together between his knees. ‘Missing it is out of the question; they’ve got TV cameras on every roof in that region. Let’s upon this occasion hope Provoni doesn’t decide to grab the airways again.’

‘I hope he does,’ Elka said. ‘I want to hear him talk.’

‘He’ll be on the air,’ Nick said. He was positive of it. ‘We’ll see everything, hear everything. But not as arranged by the networks.’

‘Isn’t there a law against cutting into TV transmissions?’ Elka said. ‘I mean, didn’t he break the law when he cut off all the other TV stations and telecast from his ship?’

“Oh, God,’ Charley said, giggling, her hand over her eyes. ‘Don’t mind me, but it’s too funny. Provoni returns after ten years with a monster from another star system to save us, and he’s arrested for tampering with people’s TV reception. That’s how they can get rid of him; that makes him a wanted felon!’

It is now, Nick thought, less than an hour and a half.

And all this time, he realized, as the
Gray Dinosaur
approaches Earth, they’re lobbing missiles at it. They’ve stopped mentioning it to the public: they know the missiles aren’t doing any good. But there’s a
mathematical
chance that a missile will somehow penetrate the ship’s shield, no matter what kind it is, that the creature ‘in which the ship is wrapped’ will become tired or in some way inoperative – perhaps only for an instant, but in that instant even a small missile could probably completely knock out
Dinosaur.

At least the government is trying, he said to himself grimly. As well they damn sure ought to be.

‘Turn the TV back on,’ Charley said.

Ed Woodman did so.

On the screen an old inter-stellar ship, its retrojets sputtering, was lowering itself in the dead center of Times Square. An antiquated ship, pitted, corroded, with jagged metal pieces brustiling: the remains of once-functioning sensory apparatus.

‘He fooled them!’ Ed Woodman said. ‘He’s an hour and a half early! Do they have their laser cannon ready to fire? God, he’s got their timing off! They bought the thirty-two hour story absolutely.’

Police ‘copters and squibs hurried away like dancing gnats, avoiding the blast of the retrojets. On the ground, PSS occifers and soldiers scurried away, scrambling for cover.

‘The laser beam,’ Ed Woodman said in a monotone, his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Where is it?’

‘You want it to show up?’ Elka demanded.

‘They’ll get it going sooner or later,’ Ed said. ‘Let the test come now. Jesus, the poor bastards; they must be scurrying around the roof of the Shafter Building like ants.’

From the roof of the Shafter Building, a red beam of force bored straight at the now parked ship. Over the TV they could hear its furious whine as it wound up, higher and higher in intensity. It must be almost on full now, Nick thought. And – the ship remained intact.

Something huge and ugly materialized about the ship and he knew what it was. They were seeing the alien being. Like a snail, he thought. It rippled slightly, extended two pseudopodia, oozed more directly into the path of the laser beam… as the beam bored at it, it became larger and more palpable.
It’s feeding on the beam
, he realized.
The longer they keep the beam on it the stronger it will become.

The TV newscaster, for one time in his life disconcerted, blurted out, ‘It seems to thrive on the laser beam.’

His companion put in, ‘A creature from another star system, impossible to believe, but there it is. It must weigh thousands of tons; it’s engulfed the ship—’

The hatch of the ship slid aside.

Thors Provoni, wearing a gray underwear-like garment, emerged, helmetless, weaponless.

The laser beam, redirected by the technicians operating it, moved until it focused on Provoni.

Nothing happened. Provoni remained unaffected.

Nick, peering, saw a web-like tent structure imposed over Provoni. From the alien. The laser people were out of luck.

‘It wasn’t a bluff’ Elka said quietly. ‘He did bring back a creature with him.’

‘And it has great power,’ Ed said huskily. ‘Do you realize the strength of that laser beam? Calculated in ergs—’

To Nick, Charley said, ‘What are they going to do now? Now that the laser beam didn’t work?’

In mid-sentence the newscaster was abruptly cut off. There, standing beside his ship, Thors Provoni lifted a microphone to his lips. ‘Hello,’ he said, and his voice issued from the TV set; Provoni did not trust the networks, obviously:
once again he had taken over the many channels, but this time their audio portion only. The video image still emanated from network cameras.

Nick said, ‘Hello, Provoni. It’s been a long trip.’

‘His name,’ Provoni said into his microphone, ‘is Morgo Rahn Wilc. I want to talk to you about him in detail. First this. He is ancient. He is telepathic. He is my friend.’

Nick walked away from the TV set, went into the bathroom and got some pills down from the cabinet; he chose a pair of phenmetrazine hydrochloride tablets, swallowed them, then added one twenty-five milligram tablet of chlordiazepoxide hydrochloride. His hands, he discovered, were shaking; he had trouble holding the glass of water and then he had trouble getting the pills down.

At the door of the bathroom Charley appeared. ‘I need something. What do you recommend?’

‘Phenmetrazine and chlordiazepoxide,’ he said. ‘Fifty milligrams of the former; twenty-five of the latter.’

‘That’s swellers and shrinkers together,’ she said.

‘But a good combination; the chlordiazepoxide intensifies the capacity of the cerebral cortex, while the phenmetrazine stimulates the thalamus, giving a general overall brain-metabolism boost.’

Nodding, she took the pills which he recommended.

Shaking his head, Ed Woodman entered the bathroom, took several pills from the rows of bottles. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘They just can’t kill him; he just won’t die. And that thing eats energy; they’re just pumping it full of juice every passing second, the stupid bastards. He’ll be the size of Brooklyn in another half hour; it’s like pumping up an infinitely large balloon with no popping point.’

On the TV, Thors Provoni was saying, ‘—I never saw his world. He met me in deep space; he was on patrol and picked
up automatic radio signals my ship was emanating. There, in deep space, he rebuilt my ship, consulting telepathically with his brothers on Frolix 8, and was given permission to accompany me back here. He is only one of many. I think he can do what we must do. If he can’t, there are a hundred more like him waiting one light year away. In ships capable of passing through by hyperspace. So, if necessary, they could be here in a very short time.’

‘Now there he’s bluffing.’ Ed Woodman said. ‘If they can travel through hyperspace, Provoni and this thing would have done so; as it is, they came through regular space, but using a supra-C drive, of course.’

‘But,’ Nick said, ‘he used
his
ship, the
Gray Dinosaur.
Their ships might be built for hyperspace;
Dinosaur
isn’t.’

‘Then you believe him?’ Elka asked.

‘Yes,’ Nick said.

‘I believe him,’ Ed Woodman said, ‘but he is a showman. This business of appearing eight hours before expected – it threw everybody off, and was undoubtedly deliberate. And he has been standing there letting them laser him with billions of volts of power. And his “friend”, Morgo something; he’s got him out and visible, to impress us.’ He added acidly, ‘And I am impressed.’