"Put her on."
"Why?"
"So I can get a look at her, that's why."
The sunny, uncomplicated face of a young girl, light-complexioned, with oddly astringent, watchful eyes and a tautly pursed mouth, appeared on the vid-screen. The girl looked scared and—tough. Wow, Pete thought. And you deliberately brought this lad back? Can you handle her? I doubt if I could, he decided. She looks difficult.
But that's right, Pete remembered. You like difficult women. It's part of your perverse make-up.
When Lars' features reappeared Pete said, "Maren will disembowel you, you realize. No cover story is going to fool Maren, with or without that telepathic gadget she wears illegally."
Lars said woodenly, "I don't expect to fool Maren. But I frankly don't care. I really think, Pete, that these creatures, whatever they are and wherever they came from, these satellite-builders, have us."
Pete was silent. He did not see fit to argue; he agreed.
Lars said. "On the vidphone when I talked to Nitz he said something strange. Something about an old war veteran: I couldn't make it out. It had to do with a weapon, though; he asked me if I had ever heard of a device called a T.W.G. I said no. Have you?"
"No," Pete said. "There's absolutely no such thing, weaponwise. KACH would have said."
"Maybe not," Lars said. "So long." He broke the connection at his end; the screen splintered out.
24
Security, Lars discovered when he landed, had been even further augmented; it took over an hour for him to obtain clearance. In the end it required personal, face-to-face recognition of who he was and what he had come for on the part of a long-time, trusted Board assistant. And then he was on his way down, descending to join what might well turn out to be, he realized, the final convocation of UN-W Natsec at its intact fullness.
The last decisions were now being made.
In the middle of his discourse General Nitz took a moment, unexpectedly, to single out Lars and speak to him directly. "You missed a lot, due to your being away at Iceland. Not your fault. But something, as I indicated to you on the phone, has come up." General Nitz nodded to a junior officer who at once snapped on an intrinsic, homeo-programmed, vid aud scanner with a thirty-inch screen, parked in one corner of the room, at the opposite corner from the instrument which linked the Board, when desired, with Marshal Paponovich and the SeRKeb in New Moscow.
The set warmed up.
An ancient man appeared on it. He was thin, wearing the patched remnants of some peculiar military uniform. Hesitantly he said, "...and then we clobbered them. They didn't expect that; they were having it easy."
Bending, at General Nitz' signal, the junior officer stopped the Ampex aud-vid tape; the image froze, the sound ceased.
"I wanted you to get a look at him," General Nitz said to Lars. "Ricardo Hastings. Veteran of a war that took place sixty-some years ago... in his view of it, at least. All this time, for months, years perhaps, this old man has been sitting every day on a bench in the public park just outside the surface installations of the citadel, trying to get someone to listen to him. Finally someone did. In time? Maybe. Maybe not We'll see. It depends on what his brain, and our examination has already disclosed that he suffers from senile dementia, still contains by way of memory. Specifically, memory of the weapon which he serviced during the Big War." Lars said, "The Time Warpage Generator."
"There is little doubt," General Nitz said, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall behind him, professor-wise, "that it was through the action, perhaps accumulative and residual, of this weapon, of his constant proximity to it, especially to defective versions of it, that he wound up, in a way we don't understand, back here. In what, for him, is almost a century in the past. He is far too senile to notice; he simply does not understand. But that hardly matters. The 'Big War' which for him took place years ago, when he was a young man, we have already established to be the war we are currently engaged in. Ricardo Hastings has already been able to tell us the nature and origin of our enemy; from him we've finally learned something, at long last, about the aliens."
"And you hope," Lars said, "to obtain from him the weapon which got to them."
"We hope," Nitz said, "for anything we can get."
"Turn him over to Pete Freid," Lars said.
General Nitz cupped his ear inquiringly.
"The hell with this talk," Lars said. "Get him to Lanferman Associates; get their engineers started working."
"Suppose he dies."
"Suppose he doesn't. How long do you think it takes a man like Pete Freid to turn a rough idea into specs from which a prototype can be made? He's a genius. He could take a child's drawing of a cat and tell you if the organism depicted covered its excretion or walked away and left it lying there. I have Pete Freid reading over back-issues of The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan. Let's stop that and start him on Ricardo Hastings."
Nitz said, "I talked to Freid. I—"
"I know you did," Lars said. "But the hell with talk. Get Hastings to California or better yet get Pete here. You don't need me; you don't need anyone in this room. You need him. In fact I'm leaving." He rose to his feet. "I'm stepping out of this. So long, until you start Freid on this Hastings matter." He at that point started, strode, toward the door.
"Perhaps," General Nitz said, "we will try you out on Hastings first. And then bring in Freid. While Freid is on his way here—"
"It takes only twenty minutes," Lars said, "or less to get a man from California to Festung Washington, D.C."
"But Lars. I'm sorry. The old man is senile. Do you literally, actually, know what that means? It appears to be almost impossible to establish a verbal bridge to him. So please, from the remains of his mind that are not accessible in the ordinary, normal—"
"Fine," Lars said, deciding on the spot. "But I want Freid notified first. Now." He pointed to the vid-phone at Nitz' end of the table.
Nitz picked up the phone, gave the order, hung the phone up.
"One more thing," Lars said. "I'm not alone now."
Nitz eyed him.
"I have Lilo Topchev with me," Lars said.
"Will she work? Can she do her job here with us?"
"Why not? The talent's there. As much as there ever was in me."
"All right." Nitz decided. "I'll have both of you taken into the hospital at Bethesda where the old man is. Pick her up. You can both go into that odd, beyond-my-comprehension trance-state. And meanwhile Freid is on his way."
"Fine," Lars said, satisfied.
Nitz managed to smile. "For a prima donna you talk tough."
"I talk tough," Lars said, "not because I'm a prima donna but because I'm too scared to wait. I'm too afraid they'll get us while we're not talking tough."
25
By government high-velocity hopper, piloted by a bored, heavy-set professional sergeant named Irving Blaufard, Lars raced back to New York and Mr. Lars, Incorporated.
"This dame," Sergeant Blaufard said. "Is she that Soviet weapons fashion designer? You know, the one?"
"Yes," Lars said.
"And she 'coated?"
"Yep."
"Wowie," Sergeant Blaufard said, impressed.
The hopper, stone-like, dropped to the roof of the Mr. Lars, Incorporated, building, the small structure among towering colossi. "Sure a little place you got there, sir," said Sergeant Blaufard. "I mean, is the rest of it subsurface?"
"Afraid not," Lars said stoically.
"Well, I guess you don't need no great lot of hardware."
The hopper—expertly handled—landed on the familiar roof field. Lars jumped forth, sprinted to the constantly moving down-ramp, and a moment later was striding up the corridor toward his office.
As he started to open the office door Henry Morris appeared from the normally-locked side-exit. "Maren's in the building."
Lars stared at him, his hand on the doorknob.
"That's right," Henry nodded. "Somehow, maybe through KACH, she found out about Topchev coming back from Iceland with you. Maybe KVB agents in Paris tipped her off in vengeance. God only knows."
"Has she got to Lilo yet?"
"No. We intercepted her in the outer public lobby."
"Who's holding onto her?"
"Bill and Ed McEntyre, from the drafting department. But she's really sore. You wouldn't believe it was the same girl, Lars. Honest. She's unrecognizable."
Lars opened his office door. At the far end, by the window, alone in the room, stood Lilo, gazing out at New York.
"You ready to go?" Lars said.
Lilo, without turning, said, "I heard; I have terribly good hearing. Your mistress is here, isn't she? I knew this would happen. That is what I foresaw."
The intercom on Lars' desk buzzed and his secretary Miss Grabhorn, this time with panic, not with disdain, said, "Mr. Lars, Ed McEntyre says that Miss Faine got away from him and Bill Manfretti and she's out of the pub-lob and she's heading for your office."
"Okay," Lars said; he grabbed Lilo by the arm, propelled her out of the office and along the corridor to the nearest up-ramp. She came ragdoll-like, passively; he felt as if he were lugging a light-weight simulacrum devoid of life or motivation, a weirdly unpleasant feeling. Did Lilo not care any longer, or was this just too much for her? No time to explore the psychological ramifications of her inertness; he got her to the ramp and onto it and the two of them ascended, back up toward the roof with its field and waiting government hopper.
As he and Lilo emerged onto the roof, stepped from the up-ramp, a figure manifested itself at the up-terminus of the building's one alternate up-ramp, and it was Maren Faine.
As Henry Morris had said, she was difficult to recognize. She wore her high-fashion Venusian wubfur ankle-length cloak, high heels, a small hat with lace, large, hand-wrought earrings and, oddly, no make-up, not even lipstick. Her face had a lusterless, straw-like quality. A hint almost of the sepulcher, as if death had ridden with her across the Atlantic from Paris and then up here now to the roof; death perched in her eyes, gazing out fat-birdlike and impassive but with guileful determination.
"Hi," Lars said.
"Hello, Lars," Maren said, measuredly. "Hello, Miss Topchev."
No one spoke for a moment. He could not recall ever having felt so uncomfortable in his entire life.
"What say, Maren?" he said.
Maren said, "They called me direct from Bulganingrad. Someone at SeRKeb or acting for it. I didn't believe it until I checked with KACH."
She smiled, and then she reached into her mail-pouch-style purse which hung from her shoulder by its black leather strap.
The gun that Maren brought forth was positively the smallest that he had ever seen.
The first thought that entered his mind was that the damn thing was a toy, a gag; she had won it in a nickel gum machine. He stared at it, trying to make it out more exactly and remembering that he was after all a weapons expert, and then it came to him that it was genuine. Italian-made to fit into women's purses.
Beside him Lilo said, "What is your name?" Her tone, addressed to Maren, was polite, rational, even kindly; it astonished him and he turned to gape at her.
There was always something new to be learned about people. Lilo completely floored him; at this critical moment, as she and he faced Maren's tiny dangerous weapon, Lilo Topchev had become lady-like and mature, as socially graceful as if she had entered a party in which the most fashionable cogs abounded. She had risen to the occasion and it was, it seemed to him, a vindication of the quality, the essence, of the stuff of humanity itself. No one could ever again convince him that a human being was simply an animal that walked upright and carried a pocket handkerchief and could distinguish Thursday from Friday or whatever the criterion was... even Ol' Orville's definition, cribbed from Shakespeare, was revealed for what it was, an insulting and cynical vacuity. What a feeling, Lars thought, not only to love this girl but also to admire her.
"I'm Maren Faine," Maren said, matter-of-factly. She was not impressed.
Lilo hopefully extended her hand, evidently as a sign of friendship. "I am very glad," she began, "and I think we can—"
Raising the tiny gun, Maren fired.
The filth-encrusted and yet clean-shiny little gadget expelled what once would have been certified as a dum-dum cartridge, in its primordial state of technological development.
But the cartridge had evolved over the years. It still possessed the essential ingredient—that of exploding when it contacted its target—but in addition it did more. Its fragments continued to detonate, reaping an endless harvest that spread out over the body of the victim and everything near him.
Lars dropped, fell away instinctually, turned his face and cringed; the animal in him huddled in a fetal posture, knees drawn up, head tucked down, arms wrapped about himself, knowing there was nothing he could do for Lilo. That was over, over forever. Centuries could pass like drops of water, unceasing, and Lilo Topchev would never reappear in the cycles and fortunes of man.
Lars was thinking to himself like some logical machine built to compute and analyze coolly, despite the outside environment: I did not design this, not this weapon. This predates me. This is old, an ancient monster. This is all the inherited evil, carried here out from the past, carted to the doorstep of my life and deposited, flung to demolish everything I hold dear, need, desire to protect. All wiped out, just by the pressure of the first finger against a metal switch which is part of a mechanism so small that you could actually swallow it, devour it in an attempt to cancel out its existence in an act of oral greed—the greed by life for life.
But nothing would cancel it now.
He shut his eyes and remained where he was, not caring if Maren chose to fire again, this time at him. If he felt anything at all it was a desire, a yearning that Maren would shoot him.