The Crack In Space (7 page)

Tito Cravelli leveled the laser rifle and said, ‘My intention is not to kill both of you but merely one of you. That’ll leave the other with half a dead brain, one dead eye, and a deteriorating body attached to him. I don’t think you’d appreciate that. Can you threaten me with anything equally dreadful? I seriously doubt it.’

After a pause one of them—he did not know which—said, ‘What—do you want?’ The face was twisting and livid, the two eyes, not in unison, staring, one of them at Tito, the other at his laser rifle.

‘Come in and close the door,’ Tito Cravelli said.

‘Why?’ George Walt demanded. ‘What’s this all about, anyhow?’

‘Just come on in,’ Tito said, and waited.

The mutants entered. The door shut after them and they stood facing him, still gripping the three lengths of metal piping. ‘This is George,’ the head said presently. ‘Who are you? Let’s be reasonable; if you’re dissatisfied with the service you’ve received from this woman—no, can’t you see this is a strong-arm robbery?’ the head interrupted itself as the other brother took control of the vocal apparatus. ‘He’s here to rob us; he brought that weapon with him, didn’t he?’

‘You’re going to get in touch with Verne Engel,’ Tito said. ‘And he’s going to get in touch with his gunsel, Herbert Lackmore. Together you’re going to call this Lackmore back in. We’ll do it from your office; obviously we can’t call from this woman’s crib.’ To Francy he said, ‘You go ahead of them, lead the way. Start now, please. There’s no excess of time.’ Within him his pyloric valve began to writhe in spasms; he gritted his teeth and for an instant shut his eyes.

A length of piping whistled past his head.

Tito Cravelli fired the laser rifle at George Walt. One of the two bodies sagged, hit in the shoulder; it was wounded but not dead. ‘You see?’ Cravelli said. ‘It would be terrible for the one of you that survived.’

‘Yes,’ the head said, bobbing up and down in a grotesque pumpkin-like fit of nodding. ‘We’ll work with you, whoever you are. We’ll call Engel; we can get this all straightened out. Please.’ Both eyes, each fixed on a different spot, bulged in glazed fear. The right one, on the same side as the laser-wound, had become opaque with pain.

‘Good enough,’ Tito Cravelli said. He thought, I may be Attorney General yet. Herding them with his laser rifle, he moved George Walt toward the door.

SEVEN

The weapon which Herb Lackmore had been provided with contained a costly replica of the encephalic wave-pattern of James Briskin. He needed merely to place it within a few miles of Briskin, screw in the handle and then, with a switch, detonate it.

It was a mechanism, he decided, which supplied little, if any, personal satisfaction. However, at least it would do the job and that, in the long run, was all that counted. And certainly it insured his personal escape, or at least greatly aided it.

At this moment, nine o’clock at night, Jim Briskin sat upstairs in a room at the Galton Plaza Hotel, in Chicago, conferring with aides and idea-men; pickets of CLEAN, parading before the notably first class hotel, had seen him enter and had conveyed the word to Lackmore.

I’ll do it at exactly nine-fifteen, Lackmore decided. He sat in the back of a rented wheel, the mechanism assembled beside him; it was no larger than a football but rather heavy. It hummed faintly, off-key.

I wonder where the funds for this apparatus appeared from, he wondered. Because these items cost a hell of a lot, or so I’ve read.

He was, a few minutes later, just making the final preparatory adjustments when two dark, massive, upright shapes materialized along the nocturnal sidewalk close beside the wheel. The shapes appeared to be wearing green and silver uniforms which sparkled faintly, like moonlight.

Cautiously, with a near-Psionic sense of suspicions, Lackmore rolled down the wheel window. ‘What do you want?’ he asked the two Clean members.

‘Get out,’ one of them said brusquely.

‘Why?’ Lackmore froze, did not budge. Could not.

‘There’s been an alteration of plans. Engel just now buzzed us on the portable seek-com. You’re to give that boulder back to us.’

‘No,’ Lackmore said. Obviously, the CLEAN movement had at the last moment sold out; he did not know exactly why, but there it was. The assassination would not take place as planned—that was all he knew, all he cared about. Rapidly, he began to screw the handle in.

‘Engel says to forget it!’ the other CLEAN man shouted. ‘Don’t you understand?’

‘I understand,’ Lackmore said, and groped for the detonating switch.

The door of his wheel popped open. One of the CLEAN men grabbed him by the collar, yanked him from the back seat and dragged him kicking and thrashing from the wheel and out onto the sidewalk. The other snatched up the boulder, the expensive weapon, from him and swiftly, expertly, unscrewed the detonating handle.

Lackmore bit and fought. He did not give up.

It did him no good. The CLEAN man with the boulder had already disappeared into the night darkness; along with the weapon he had vanished—the boulder, and all of Lackmore’s tireless, busy, brooding plans, had gone.

‘I’ll kill you,’ Lackmore panted futilely, struggling with the fat, powerful CLEAN man who had hold of him.

‘You’ll kill nobody, fella,’ the CLEAN man answered, and increased his pressure on Lackmore’s throat.

It was not an even fight; Herb Lackmore had no chance. He had sat at a government desk, stood idly behind a counter too many years.

Calmly, with clear enjoyment, the CLEAN man made mincemeat out of him.

For someone supposedly devoted to the cult of non-violence, it was amazing how good he was at it.

From the two mutants’ plush, Titan elk-beetle fuzz carpeted office, Tito Cravelli vidphoned Jim Briskin at the Galton Plaza Hotel in Chicago. ‘Are you all right?’ he inquired. One of the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite’s nurses was engaged in attempting futilely to bind up the injured brother with a dermofax pack; she worked silently, as Cravelli held the laser rifle and Francy stood by the office door with a pistol which Tito had located in the brothers’ desk.

‘I’m all right,’ Briskin said, puzzled. He evidently could see around Tito, past him to George Walt.

Tito said, ‘I’ve got a snake by the tail here, and I can’t let go. You have any suggestions? I’ve prevented your assassination, but how the heck am I going to get out of here?’ He was beginning to become really worried.

After meditating, Briskin said, ‘I could ask the Chicago police  . . .’ ,

‘Niddy,’ Cravelli said, in derision. ‘They wouldn’t come.’ He knew that for a certainty. ‘They have no jurisdiction up here; that’s been tested countless times—this isn’t part of the United States, even, let alone Chicago.’

Briskin said, ‘All right. I can send some party volunteers up to help you. They’ll go where I say. We have a few who’ve clashed on the streets with Engel’s organization; they might know exactly what to do.’

‘That’s more like it,’ Cravelli said, relieved. But his stomach was still killing him; he could scarcely stand the pain and he wondered if there were any way he could obtain a glass of milk. ‘The tension’s getting me down, he said. ‘And I haven’t had my dinner. They’ll have to get up here pretty soon, or frankly I’m going to fold up. I thought of taking George Walt off the satellite entirely, but I’m afraid I’d never get them to the launch field. We’d have to pass too many Golden Door employees on the way.’

‘You’re directly over N’York now,’ Jim Briskin said. ‘So it won’t take too long to get a few people there. How many do you want?’

‘Certainly at least a hopper-load. Actually, all you can spare. You don’t want to lose your future Attorney General, do you?’

‘Not especially.’ Briskin seemed calm, but his dark eyes were bright. He plucked at his great handlebar mustache, then, pondering. ‘Maybe I’ll come along,’ he decided.

‘Why?’

‘To make sure you get away.’

‘It’s up to you,’ Cravelli said. ‘But I don’t recommend it. Things are somewhat hot, up here. Do you know any girls at the satellite who could lead you through to George Walt’s office?’

‘No,’ Jim Briskin said. And then a peculiar expression appeared on his face. ‘Wait. I know one. She was down here in Chicago today but perhaps she’s gone back up again.’

‘Probably has,’ Cravelli said. ‘They flit back and forth like lightning bugs. Take a chance on it, anyhow. I’ll see you. And watch your step.’ He rang off at that point.

As he started to board the big jet-bus, which was filled with R-L volunteers, Jim Briskin found himself facing two familiar figures.

‘You can’t go to the satellite,’ Sal Heim said, stopping him. Beside him Patricia stood somberly in her long coat, shivering in the evening wind that drew in off the lakes. ‘It’s too dangerous  . . . I know George Walt better than you do—remember ? After all, I had you figured for a business deal with them; that was to be my contribution.’

Pat said, ‘If you go there, Jim, you’ll never come back. I know it. Stay here with me.’ She caught hold of his arm, but he tugged loose.

‘I have to go,’ he told her. ‘My gunsel is there and I have to get him away; he’s done too much for me just to leave him there.’

‘I’ll go instead of you,’ Sal Heim said.

‘Thanks.’ It was a good offer, well meant. But—he had to repay Tito Cravelli for what he’d done; obviously he had to see that Tito got safely away from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. It was as simple as that. ‘The best I can offer you,’ he said, ‘is the opportunity to ride along.’ He meant it ironically.

‘All right,’ Sal said, nodding. ‘I’ll come with you.’ To Pat he said, ‘but you stay down below here. If we get back, we should be showing up right away—or not at all. Come on, Jim.’ He climbed the steps into the jet-bus, joining the others already there.

‘Take care of yourself,’ Pat said to Jim Briskin.

‘What did you think of my speech?’ he asked her.

‘I was in the tub; I only heard part of it. But I think it was the best you ever made. Sal said so, too, and he heard it all. Now he knows he made a terrific mistake; he should have stuck with you.’

‘Too bad he didn’t,’ Jim said.

‘You wouldn’t say something along the lines of "better late than  . . ."’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Better late than never.’ Turning, he followed Sal Heim onto the jet-bus. He had said it, but it was not true. Too much had happened; too late was too late. He and Sal had split forever. And both of them knew it  . . . or rather, feared it. And sought instinctively for a new rapprochement without having any idea how it could be done.

As the jet-bus whirled upward in brisk ascent, Sal leaned over and said, ‘You’ve accomplished a lot since I saw you last, Jim. I want to congratulate you. And I’m not being ironic. Hardly that.’

‘Thanks,’ Jim Briskin said, briefly.

‘But you’ll never forgive me for handing you my resignation when I did, will you? Well, I can’t really blame you.’ Sal was silent, then.

‘You could have been Secretary of State,’ Jim said.

Sal nodded. ‘But that’s the way the fifty yarrow stalks fall. Anyhow, I hope you win, Jim. I know you will, after that speech; that certainly was a masterpiece of promising everything to everybody—a billion gold chickens in a billion gold pots. Needless to say I think you’ll make a superb president. One we all can be proud of.’ He grinned warmly. ‘Or am I making you sick?’

The Moments of Bliss satellite lay directly ahead of them; in the center of the breast-shaped landing field the winking pink nipple guided their vehicle to its landing, a mammary invitation beckoning to all. The principle of Yin, out in space, inflated to cosmic proportions.

‘It’s a wonder George Walt can perambulate,’ Jim said. ‘Joined at the base of the skull, the way they are. Must be damned awkward.’

‘What’s your point?’ Sal sounded tense and irritable now.

Jim Briskin said, ‘No particular point. But you’d think one would have sacrificed the other long ago, for purpose of utility.’

‘Have you ever actually seen them?’

‘No.’ He had never even been to the satellite.

‘They’re fond of each other,’ Sal Heim said.

The jet-bus began to settle on to the landing field of the satellite; the spin of the satellite provided its constant magnetic flux, sufficient to hold smaller objects to it, and Jim Briskin thought, That’s where we made our mistake. We should never have allowed this place to become attractive—in any sense whatsoever. It was feeble wit, but the best he could manage under the circumstances. Maybe Pat’s right, he realized. Maybe I—and Sal Heim—will never return from this place. It was not the sort of thought he enjoyed thinking; the Golden Door satellite was not at all the kind of place he wanted to wind up. Ironic that I should be going here now, for the first time, under these circumstances, he said to himself.

The doors of the jet-bus slid back as the bus rolled to a halt.

‘Here we are,’ Sal Heim said, and got quickly to his feet. ‘And here we go.’ Along with the party volunteers he moved towards the nearest exit. Jim Briskin, after a moment, followed.

At the entrance gate the pretty, dark-haired, unclad attendant on duty smiled a white-tooth smile at them and said, ‘Your tickets, please.’

‘We’re all new here,’ Sal Heim said to her, getting out his wallet. ‘We’ll pay in cash.’

‘Are there any girls you wish to visit in particular?’ the attendant asked, as she rang the money up on her register.

Jim Briskin said, ‘A girl named Sparky Rivers.’

‘ALL OF YOU?’ The attendant blinked, then shrugged her bare shoulders urbanely. ‘All right, gentlemen. De gustibus non disputandum est. Gate three. Watch your step and don’t jostle, please. She’s in room 395.’ She pointed toward gate three and the group moved in that direction.

Ahead, beyond gate three, Jim Briskin saw rows of gilded, shining doors; over some lights glowed and he understood that those were empty at the moment of customers. And, on each door, he saw the curious animated pic of the girl within; the pics called, enticed, whined at them as they approached each in turn, searching for room 395.

‘Hi there!’

‘Hello, big fellow.’

‘Could you hurry? I’m waiting  . . .’

‘Well, how are you?’

Sal Heim said, ‘It’s down this way. But you don’t need her, Jim; I can take you to their office.’

Can I trust you? Jim Briskin asked himself silently. ‘All right,’ he said. And hoped it was a wise choice.

‘This elevator,’ Sal said. ‘Press the button marked C.’ He entered the elevator; the rest of the group followed, crowding in after him, as many as could make it. More than half the group remained outside in the corridor. ‘You follow us,’ Sal instructed them. ‘As soon as you can.’

Jim- touched the C button and the elevator door shut soundlessly. ‘I’m depressed,’ he said to Sal. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘It’s this place,’ Sal said. ‘It isn’t your style at all, Jim. Now, if you were a necktie or a flatware or a poriferous vobile salesman, you’d like it. You’d be up here every day, health permitting.’

‘I don’t believe so,’ Jim said. ‘No matter what line of work I was in.’ It went against everything ethical—and esthetic—in his makeup.

The elevator door slid back.

‘Here we are,’ Sal said. ‘This is George Walt’s private office.’ He spoke matter of factly. ‘Hello, George Walt,’ he said, and stepped out of the elevator.

The two mutants sat at their big cherrywood desk in their specially constructed wide couch. One of the bodies sagged like a limp sack and one eye had become fused-over and empty, lolling as it focussed on nothing.

In a shrill voice the head said, ‘He’s dying. I think he’s even dead; you know he’s dead.’ The active eye fixed malignantly on Tito Cravelli, who stood with his laser rifle, on the far side of the office. In despair, one of the living hands poked at the dangling, inert arm of its companion body. ‘Say something!’ the head screeched. With immense difficulty the living body struggled to its feet; now its silent companion flopped against it and in horror it pushed the burdening lifeless sack away.

A faint spasm of life stirred the dangling sack; it was not quite dead. And, on the face of the uninjured brother, wild hope appeared. At once it tottered grotesquely toward the door.

‘Run!’ the head bleated, and clumsily groped for escape. ‘You can make it!’ it urged its still-living companion. The four-legged, scrambling joint creature bowled over the surprised volunteers at the door; together they all went down in a floundering heap, the mutant among them, squealing in panic as the injured body buried the other beneath it, struggling to rise.