The Fellowship of the Hand (8 page)

“I thought Ambrose did away with the penal aspects while he was there.”

“I’m the living proof that he didn’t! The Venus Colony has become our Siberia. Instead of sending families there like the Russo-Chinese do, we deport criminals and political prisoners.”

“Axman broke the law. You’re damned lucky you’re not in prison with him.”

Euler Frost stood there, weighing his next words. Finally he spoke. “We have to get him out, Earl.”

“Out?”

“Out of prison. You have to help me get him out, like you helped me tonight.”

“Hey, wait a minute! That business tonight was one thing, but helping a federal prisoner to escape is something else! You seem to forget whose side I’m on!”

“I was hoping you were on HAND’s side.”

“Well, I’m not. I could arrest you for just talking about helping Axman escape. The only reason I’ve gone along with you this far is because you saved my life in that damned salt mine!”

“Since you owe me a life, give me Graham Axman’s.”

Earl Jazine shook his head. “It’s not mine to give.”

Frost looked almost sad. “Very well,” he said, “then I’ll do it without you.”

“I may have to prevent that.”

Jazine moved forward, around the bed, as Euler Frost’s hand came out of his bag. He was holding a stunner. “I’m sorry about this.”

“Hell,” Jazine barked, “not twice in one week!” He launched himself across the bed at Frost, and he was half in the air when the stunner caught him in the side. He felt the thud of the concussion against his body, felt the instant of pain on his already broken ribs, and went down hard.

When he came to, a half hour later, Euler Frost was gone. He established that fact and then simply stayed where he was on the floor. For a long time he was afraid to move his body, afraid of feeling the stab of pain in his broken ribs. Finally, after another quarter hour, he slowly propped himself up on one arm and used the bed to pull himself up the rest of the way. He felt like hell, but no further damage seemed to have been done to his ribs.

He started to phone New York, and then realized the office would be closed now. The best thing he could do would be to warn the prison where Axman was being held, and then hop the next jetliner back home. He placed a call to the warden at the Federal Correctional Institute in Kansas City. The deputy warden was on duty at that hour, and his face on the vision-phone screen was bored and disinterested. He noted the information and promised Jazine that no one would be escaping from his prison that night or any other night.

Feeling that he’d done all he could, Jazine checked out of the hotel and flew back to New York.

The next day was Friday, and he found Carl Crader in the office quite early, running over some reports with Sabin and a new man from the commerce unit. Jazine chatted with Judy until he was free, and then ran rapidly through his experiences since leaving the hospital.

Crader listened in silence, and only spoke at the end. “Do you have the pictures?”

“Pictures?” Jazine had almost forgotten about them. “Oh, sure—you mean of Stanley Ambrose and his letter to Milly Norris.”

Crader took the prints and spread them out on his desk. He seemed to be searching for something, but Jazine couldn’t imagine what. Finally he said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“What, chief?”

“Much of what you’ve told me jibes with my own experiences with Jason Blunt. He admitted the existence of a secret organization, and even admitted the election part of it. He flew me to Utah to inspect an underground computer complex that would make your mouth water. But the way Blunt tells it, his group is a benefit to the nation, not a threat.”

“Was it a benefit when they kidnapped me and tried to kill me in that salt mine?”

“That’s just the trouble,” Crader said.

“What trouble?”

“These pictures.”

“What about them?” Jazine walked to the desk and peered down at the prints.

“Well, you had the camera in your pocket when you were imprisoned in the radioactive salt mine, right?”

“Yes, but …”

“Earl, if that salt mine had been radioactive, it would have fogged the film in your camera. Since the prints show no fogging, it means there was no radioactivity. You were never in danger in that salt mine. Euler Frost rescued you from nothing at all. The whole kidnapping and rescue was an elaborate HAND plot.”

J
AZINE SAT DOWN. “I
can’t believe it, chief.”

“The facts speak for themselves, Earl. Euler Frost lied about following you there. He lied about rescuing you. If you stop to think about it, why should these masked men kidnap you, drive you an hour away, talk about a trial, and then send you down the chute into a salt mine? It sounds more like one of those old lodge initiations than a serious attempt at murder. True assassins would have finished the job when they had you naked in that woman’s bed.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that part!” Jazine complained.

“He used you, Earl. Frost used you.”

“For what?”

“To get into that Chicago office building. And to spring Axman from jail. When he saw you wouldn’t go that far, he used his stunner on you.”

“Yeah.”

“What I don’t know is where that leaves us. Since Frost lied to you about one thing, did he lie to you about everything? Did I get the straight story from Jason Blunt after all?”

“What about the attack on me at the zooitorium? That was no joke!”

“True enough. Nor was the murder of Rogers. But which side is the tattooed man on?” Crader thought for a moment and then answered his own question. “Not HAND’s, certainly, because if they were so anxious to kill you a few days ago, they’d have finished the job when they had you a prisoner.”

“All right,” Jazine agreed. “So what do we do now?”

“Report to President McCurdy,” Carl Crader said promptly. “As yet he knows nothing about this secret election business, nor does he know about Jason Blunt’s underground computer complex. I also have something of a message for him, from Blunt.”

“The President’s not going to like it,” Jazine predicted.

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

“He’s especially not going to like all this tampering with the FRIDAY-404 computer, just four weeks before election day.”

Crader knew that Earl had a good point. President McCurdy, running for reelection against the former governor of Ontario, would be concerned that the affair might raise questions about the accuracy of the computerized tally. “All right, Earl, let’s tackle that problem before it even arises. Can you get Lawrence Friday to fly to Washington with us this afternoon and help reassure the President?”

“I can get him if he’s willing to leave his animals.” Jazine reached for the vision-phone. “But this time I’ll try calling him. No more trips to the zooitorium for me!”

“Ask him to be here at one. We’ll take the rocket-copter down. With luck he’ll be back by four.”

“Right.”

Crader buzzed for Judy. “Phone the New White House, Judy. Try to clear a one thirty appointment with the President for myself, Earl, and Lawrence Friday. Tell them it’s urgent.”

Crader had never met Lawrence Friday before, though he recognized the slender, stoop-shouldered man at once from his holograms. “Sorry to take you away from your animals,” he said by way of greeting.

“No, no.” Friday waved away the apology. “It was a slow day anyway. And one doesn’t get a summons to the New White House every day.”

The flight from the top of the World Trade Center to the copter pad at the New White House took just twenty-five minutes, which was good time. They were kept waiting only a few moments before being ushered down the sterile steel corridors to the presidential lounge. Though the bombproof nature of the building had been necessitated by the bombing of the original White House in 2018, the metal walls still reminded Crader unpleasantly of Jason Blunt’s underground city.

President Andrew Jackson McCurdy was a man of the people. Like his famous namesake two centuries earlier, he ruled the party with an iron fist and was a vigorous spokesman for the wishes of the voters. And yet, for all of that, there was something almost wise and fatherly about President McCurdy. He had just enough gray in his hair to contrast sharply with the string of boyish chief executives who’d preceded him, just enough fire in his speech to excite the voters one more time.

“How are you, Carl?” he asked, stepping forward to greet them. “Good to see you again. And Earl … And Professor Friday, I believe. I’ve been an admirer of your work for some time.”

“Thank you, sir,” Friday replied.

“I hope you’re going to get me reelected next month!”

“I hope so too. The FRIDAY-404 is ready for those returns!”

“Good, good. Now, Carl—just what was so urgent?”

They sat down and Crader began. “You aren’t going to like this, sir.”

“Try me.”

“The FRIDAY-404 system has been used by a private group to hold some sort of election. The balloting took place last week—on October first—involving upwards of eighty thousand persons throughout the USAC and overseas.”

“What? What are you talking about, Carl?”

“A secret election.”

“For what?”

“Possibly for a shadow government to replace the legal government of the USAC.”

“But how could such a thing be? How could they gain access to the system?”

“They didn’t gain access to each individual voting machine, of course, but they did manage to tie into the regional relay stations, and through them to the orbiting satellite we use. The data on the secret election apparently was then fed back to earth to their own computers. A random signal managed to reach the FRIDAY system, though, and it was discovered before it could be erased. That’s how we found out about it.”

President McCurdy scratched his nose. It was obvious he still didn’t believe a word of it. “Who were the candidates in this so-called election?”

“Jason Blunt, the millionaire oilman, and Stanley Ambrose, former director of the Venus Colony.”

“Ambrose! I wouldn’t put anything past Jason Blunt—but Ambrose! Does he admit his part in this?”

“We haven’t been able to locate him, sir. He seems to have disappeared since returning from Venus last year.”

“Disappeared?” The President pondered that. “And what about Jason Blunt?”

“He admits the existence of this group, but claims there is no intention to overthrow the government. He took me on a tour of an underground computer complex in Utah.” Crader described the place in detail.

“I’ll find out who sold that site to them, you can be damn sure!”

“I understand it was disposed of as surplus government property, purchased by one of Blunt’s firms for the underground storage of natural gas.”

“We’ll see about that.” McCurdy puzzled over it a moment and then asked, “If their computer complex is as big as you say, why did they need to tie into the FRIDAY system for their secret election?”

“Perhaps only to show us the extent of their power,” Crader surmised, but he wasn’t fully satisfied with that explanation.

“Anything else?”

“Blunt sent you a message. He said the future belongs to those with the largest computers.”

“Sounds like a threat to me,” McCurdy said after a moment’s thought.

“Perhaps,” Crader conceded.

“I know Blunt. He backed my opponent four years ago.”

“Is he backing Thomas Wallace this time?”

“Not that I know of. Until your news I thought he was sitting this election out.”

“His computers predict a narrow victory for you next month.”

“That’s generous of him!” President McCurdy snorted. Then, perhaps remembering that Friday was present, he shifted to a more statesmanlike attitude. “But tell me, Professor Friday, is there any possibility that this tampering with your election computer could affect the results of next month’s contest?”

It was the question Crader had known would be asked, and the professor was ready. “There’s nothing to worry about, sir. As with any type of computer, the magnetic tapes and memory cells can be cleared through a simple operation. It won’t interfere with the election in any way.”

But the President was far from satisfied. “Nevertheless, doesn’t the very ease with which these interlopers gained access to the FRIDAY-404 system cast a cloud over it? Suppose I should win the election next month by a few million votes, and suppose my opponent then suggests that the computer system was tampered with, through the unauthorized insertion of fraudulent votes? He could point to this happening to bolster his case.”

Lawrence Friday shook his head. “The two events are entirely different. In this case last week, the unguarded voting machines and computer circuits were used to relay results of a private election to a central office in Chicago. Next month’s voting will be entirely different. There’ll be the usual poll watchers, plus continuous monitoring of the skysphere satellite and a constant check of the readouts. The votes are cast at a predictable rate, depending upon the hour of the day and the number of states having open polls. If, say, there was a sudden surge of three million votes within a minute around two o’clock, we’d know something was wrong because not that many people vote at midday. Likewise, if any fraudulent votes were fed into the system a few at a time we’d discover it too, because the running totals for the candidates are constantly checked against the votes cast all around the country. Your votes plus Thomas Wallace’s votes have to equal the total votes cast, and there’s no possibility of cheating.”

“You explain it very well,” President McCurdy said, somewhat relieved.

Friday hurried on to offer more reassuring details, and at the end of another half hour the President was satisfied. He got to his feet and shook hands all around. “Carl, I hope you’ll keep on this matter involving Jason Blunt. I’ve never had any great admiration for the man, and I wouldn’t be surprised at anything he attempted.”

“We’re continuing our investigation, sir. Earl and I are handling it personally. We’re also checking any possible involvement by HAND.”

“HAND! I thought their leader was in prison!”