Poor Charles! Unwillingly, she thought what he would have done in the same circumstances. Of course, Charles compared unfavorably with Barchek, but that, she told herself, was again unfair, disloyal. Charles was a totally different man; he might not be good with spiders—she was sure he would be helpless—but in other spheres… .
Good God! What was she thinking! Charles was beyond question the most powerful human in the world—so what if he wasn’t a man of action? He could no more help his nature than she could. Or Barchek.
She tried to repress the inevitable follow-up: if Charles was so powerful, how was it that she, his wife—hell, no! That was unfair—forget it!
Cleo got up, glanced at herself in the mirror, looking critically for the first time since her arrival in ESC-1.
Yes: her hair was nice, but an awful mess. She’d really have to do something about it… .
Chapter Thirteen
Forbin decided to rely on his unfamiliar shorn head and the dark glasses, but kept the wig in his bag. Once clear of the airport, he did not anticipate much trouble in New York. It was a familiar city to him; he knew all about its hostile, impersonal bustle. New Yorkers didn’t want to know and had less curiosity about strangers than most. Forbin had always rated it the loneliest city in the world for a stranger; now he was glad.
His departure from St. John’s was uneventful. He took an evening flight, and although he watched for his interrogator of three—was it only three?—days ago, he saw no signs of him.
In flight he relaxed and let his mind go over the events of the last few hours. Fantastic… .
The scheduled flight time to New York was thirty minutes; the shuttle, under New York control five minutes after launch, was brought in on time. Neither Forbin nor any of the passengers thought twice about these entirely automated operations. Indeed, there would have been widespread alarm if human control had been attempted, even if the expertise existed, but it did not, had not, for over fifty years.
Forbin found himself thinking about this aspect of computers as his vehicle nosed into its appropriate slot in the triple-deck egg-box airport, named for Jason Y. Sutan. (Did ever a man, even the revered Sutan, have such a memorial?) The vast, flat-topped structure, like a strange gigantic beehive, spanned the Hudson from the Battery across to Jersey City and was second only in size to the Danubian Sluvotkin airport.
Within the vehicle, only the sharp rise in noise, despite the insulation, told him that they were in their part of the honeycomb; then the slight jolt as the machine married with the exit outlet in the floor, and blessed silence as the power was cut.
In some ways, he thought, all this would be hardly less fantastic to their forebears of a hundred years ago than his contact with Mars. While there was still the lunatic fringe, the successors to the flat-earthers, who resented bitterly the control of manufacturing, agriculture, transport, and a host of other activities by computers and their mechanical extensions, none of those boys explained how mankind could get by without them.
Forbin remembered, as a youth, visiting Sutan airport for the first time. He’d seen it often enough on TV, but that first real sight, the gray heat-stained steel hulls, all moving seemingly erratically; in fact, taking their part in a most intricate three-dimensional dance under the direction of a computer, a collection of electronic bits and pieces, yet those gray hulls nursed thousands of humans.
And nothing had changed in those thirty, thirty-five years. Why should it? The system worked and was safe. Why bother to build new craft, a new setup that, at best, could only clip minutes off even a long haul? Until matter-transference became a practical proposition—and that was a long, long way off—this would do.
Going down in the elevator from the bottom of the vehicle to the lower deck of the airport, Forbin contrived to face the smooth wall. Not that he need have bothered. Most passengers were coming into town for the evening and, bent on anticipated pleasure, had no time for their fellow travelers.
Then the well-remembered roadways. Powered by vanity, Forbin crossed over onto the fast belt, quietly glad he could still make it. With equally pleasing ease he decelerated and got off in midtown Manhattan, the old, preserved part of the city, emerging into the pink evening light close by Rockefeller Center.
As Father Forbin he had his own private suite in the UN complex which covered half of lower Manhattan, but this was hardly the time to use it. In any case, he preferred this old part, preserved as an area of outstanding interest and ancient beauty. He liked the quaint center, the funny little streets uncluttered by overhead air-car tracks, and the genuine old-time electric cars with their human drivers. Sure, it was a tourist trap, but he didn’t care. There were plenty of tourists around, mostly busy looking at the sights, some of them laughing, perhaps a little sadly, at what had been. Strangers themselves, they were too relaxed to study other strangers.
On Forty-third Street off Fifth Avenue he got a room on the twenty-sixth floor of a small hotel where the smell of old Manhattan—vanilla—was overlaid by an equally old smell, marihuana. Lord! How that took him back to his youth! Not that Forbin had ever gone for the weed except to satisfy his curiosity. His scientific mind, born at a time of staggering progress, had needed no extra stimulation. But the smell brought back those days, memories… . Relaxed, he smiled gently as a human porter—more tourist bait—took him up in the elevator. Ascending, he learned there was no room service food. He gave the woman a whole international unit—far too much—and asked if she could fix him something. He was tired after the journey, he said.
“Like how tired, mister?” She looked doubtfully at him and the unit. “You wanna meal anna drink, okay—you want anythin’ else?”
Forbin’s puzzled expression clearly tired the porter.
“Do I haveta spell it out—you wanna woman?” Forbin was shocked, for he was a very naive man.
“Er—no. Do I look that sort of man?”
“Mister, you’re all that sort of man!”
“So nowadays that’s all part of room service, is it?” They were in the room now.
She dumped his bag. “Look, mister, you give me a whole unit. You don’t sound foreign, and somehow I don’t see you visiting to see the ruins—so I ask myself—why? Mebbe you’re just shy about asking—a lotta older guys are—so I ask. If ya wanna screw, just say so. Ain’t nuttin’ to me, mister—unless ya wanna me to oblige you.”
Hastily, he assured her he only desired food and a drink. Mystified, the porter left, shaking her head. In this game you sure got ‘em.
Safely alone, Forbin smiled to himself. He’d enjoyed that brief contact. There was one sphere of human activity the computers hadn’t taken over! He was a little touched by the interest in his well-being shown by a complete stranger.
It never occurred to him that she was on a percentage.
But the unit wasn’t wasted, for supper was worth eating: fried chicken, a baked potato, old-fashioned, without a plastic wrapper, a bag of green salad, and two cubes of ultra-frozen bourbon.
Before bed, he drew back the curtain and looked out at the centerpiece of Old Manhattan, the Empire State. He had a lifelong affection for that ancient relic. Long ago, he’d gone up there with a girl… . Incredibly, once it had been the tallest building in the world and it still retained a certain cachet from its great days.
Not that he got anywhere with that girl; he was too slow, too shy. What was her name? She’d been beautiful. At least, he’d thought so; no doubt she was now a massive pillar of her local society. Did she remember him? That thought was typical of Forbin. Did she remember him? She was the biggest, most dreaded bore in Great Creek, Indiana; she never stopped remembering.
Forbin slept better than he had done on any night since Cleo had been taken from him. Breakfast was an improvement, too. Evidently New York State was well up to its relief quota. Feeling better physically, if not mentally, he left the hotel. The desk clerk looked at him a fraction longer than necessary, but it struck Forbin this might be due to some comment the porter had made. Anyway, nothing could be done about it, but it ruled out any attempt to stay there another night.
He felt safer moving; he wandered, seeking distraction from his mind in the city scene. To think of Cleo, of what he was doing, or attempting to do-no! There was enough of that in the early hours every morning. His reflection in a shop window showed how shabby his suit was. Seeing a handy automat, be bought a suit his size. Purple with yellow facings was not his idea of elegance, but in these surroundings he’d be less conspicuous in it.
Then he headed for Central Park. The morning was hot, humid, and getting hotter. The park was filling with aimless tourists and kids and dropouts, which even the most advanced social system could not eliminate. He prayed it would not be so crowded the next day. Forbin walked slowly. After St. John’s he was an old hand at clandestine meetings. There was no hurry, and he was sweating enough already. He headed in the general direction of the site, which he estimated was to the west of the ancient Alice in Wonderland bronze group.
Suddenly he sweated for a different reason. A temporary stand was being erected. It could be on the site. He also realized he hadn’t bought a map. In a very different frame of mind be headed out of the park. The sight of a kiosk selling guides and maps brought short-lived relief. None of the maps showed latitude and longitude.
He fought down rising panic and forced himself to sit in a sidewalk cafe, drink iced tea, and think. The only answer was the public library. To buy a cassette and projector was impracticable. Power would be needed, and any hotel would think a one-night guest, toting a projector, a very odd fish. Antique shops did sell books, but what chance was there of finding an atlas of Manhattan, bound to be very old, possibly inaccurate? It had to be the library, much as he disliked the idea. No better solution presented itself, and at least he knew where it was, a small, but important consolation.
In the old building on the very edge of the preserved area, nestling close to the cliff-like north wall of the UN complex, Forbin was lucky enough to find a myopic girl assistant, who evidently suffered from a permanent and severe cold. Although her watery eyes, magnified like goldfish in a bowl by her thick glasses, stared earnestly at him while he explained what he wanted, there was no flicker of recognition. When he had finished she blinked several times, and just to get it straight, she asked, “You want a large-scale map of mid-Manhattan with a lat. and long. grid—right?
“Right.”
“Right. ‘Scuse me.” She sniffed urgently and noisily. “Have to be sure I know what you want. Saves time.” One handkerchiefed hand dabbed at her reddened nose, the other punched a keyboard at surprising speed. She studied the results on her display, sniffing with abandon. “Best I can do is a one to one hundred thousand scale of the city—in sections. Okay?”
At his nod, she pressed the execute button. Within seconds a small cassette slid down a chute. Without even checking the label she pushed it across to him.
Forbin found a vacant projector and sat down, less conspicuous and more at ease in the familiar, studious calm. Rapidly he flicked through until he found the right section. He measured, using a pin and the back of an envelope, working with scientific care. The site was located west of the Alice group, but not as far as he had thought, fifty to sixty yards.
He returned the cassette, thanked the assistant, got a “y’r welcome” and a massive sniff and left, nearly running. He soon slowed down in the flattening heat of the street, got a cab, and rode silently and swiftly back to Central Park, racked by doubt and worry. If that damned stand was on the site… .
He refused to look at it, but headed straight for the Alice bronze. From there, on a westerly heading, he slowly paced out the distance. At forty yards he could no longer resist the compulsion to look ahead.
There was still a clear thirty yards before him.
The relief was enormous. The vital space was clear, and it would be the most impossible mischance for it to be taken over in the next twenty-four hours. In one way it was an advantage, for the stand effectively screened him on one side. The degree of his relief surprised him, and he sat on the grass, as far away as possible from others, to consider this state of mind. Did he really want to defeat Colossus? There was no clear-cut answer. It was true he desperately wanted to free Cleo, even more than he wanted her back, although there was a very fine distinction between the two.
This nightmarish operation—for him—was solely for Cleo. Until the St. John’s contact he had doubted everything: Martians, the possibility of communication, and even more, the chance that they could produce a counter to Colossus.
For a time his mind moved swiftly to that diversion. What possibly could anyone anywhere do? It was clear from the information they had wanted that it had to take the form of a message—but what?
He got back on the main line of thought, feeling a little happier. How could any message affect Colossus? It came to this; as long as he felt this was no more than a gesture that would show Cleo that, at least, he had tried… .
So he was only playing games to ease his conscience and to stand well in his wife’s eyes? The recurrent train of thought was unpalatable. He could not admit that it was true. Anyway—was it? Leave Cleo out of it for a minute; think of that poor young fool Jannsen, caught and executed in minutes for something so futile. Or these Emotional Centers: think of them.
That brought back Cleo, and the cold, factual Fellowship report which Blake had shown him. Horrifying, terrifying, and grotesque, but there could be no doubt about its authenticity. And there, once more, his thoughts petered out. Full circle.
He walked for a while, oblivious of the heat. To the north of the park, shimmering in the heat, the new life-complex called Haarlem. He’d seen somewhere that it had three hundred floors; people would live out their entire lives within it. It had, they said, everything, including the latest development in artificial sunshine areas. Inside, people would be sunbathing at a comfortable eighty degrees, and they could do that at any time, day or night.