Gordon R. Dickson (18 page)

He got
up and moved quickly across the room to the door. He produced what seemed to be
a small duplicate of the clock-like mechanism Kil had seen on the inner surface
of the door to Mali's study, and pressed it against the crack between door and
jamb, where it stuck.

"That'll scramble anything," he
said with satisfaction. "And
there's no loopers
.
I checked. Find yourself a chair, like
I
said,
Kil. We got some talking to do."

Kil
dropped into a chair. Dekko came back and sat down opposite him.

"How'd you get away?"
Kil asked.

"This,"
Dekko poked his finger at the mask. "It never pays to run, Kil. It's
always better to stand still and look like something else. I made it over the
fence and changed in a ditch. Then walked, not ran to the nearest Terminal. So
now it's Uncle George until the pressure goes down."

A note of wryness in the last words make Kil look
more closely at him.

"I got you into something more than you
bargained for, didn't I?"

"Yes and no," Dekko smiled.
"I'd always wanted to take a crack at the O.T.L.—oh, found out what it
means, by the way.
Organizational Tacticians' League.
That's a mouthful to mean nothing, isn't it? Yeah, I always wanted to try them.
Nobody's fault they turned out tougher than I thought."

"But
now," Kil looked at him steadily, "you've come around to tell me you
can't have anything more to do with me."

"No," Dekko shook his head.
"Can't abandon a client.
Ruin my business reputation.
Just got to figure a way to get Mali off our necks besides finding
your wife, that's all."

"Mali
told me he thought you might be one of McElroy's men," said Kil, bluntly.

Dekko grinned merrily.

"Maybe
I am, Kil, maybe I am." His voice and face were perfectly opaque to any
clues hidden behind them. "Now don't try to fish me. I won't do you any
good, to start with. And to finish, I got my own reasons for what I do. All you
got to know is that I'm on your side."

"What can you do for me now?" said
Kil.

"I
can keep you alive," retorted the little man. "How close were you to
being viv meat less than an hour ago?"

Kil nodded.

"That's right—thanks."

"Nothing.
Now let's forget it and get down to
business."

He hunched forward in the chair. "From
what I can scrape up, your wife is hooked into something big.
Right?"
"Yes," said Kil.

"It's
something called The Project; and something else called Sub-E. Check?"

Kil nodded. Dekko looked thoughtful.

"I'll
tell you one thing, Kil," he said. "I didn't hear about those two
myself until just back a ways—me, who has to know everything for my job's sake.
Now just what would you suppose they'd be?"

Kil shook his head.

"I
don't know." He considered for a moment the possible effect of the
information on Dekko, before adding. "Mali wants to make sure it isn't
something that can stop him. He's planning to try and take control of Files and
the world away from the Police."

"Oh?
What all did he say?" asked Dekko, and Kil told him everything that had
been done and said from the moment of his capture until his escape. When he had
finished, Dekko twisted his lips humorlessly.

"That
twist," he commented. "He's as bad as his sister. They're both
scrambled eggs."

A
memory of something he had seen flashed out of the storehouse of Kil's trained
mind.

"You're
wrong about that part of it," he said. "I got a look at his Key. It's
class A."

"Down
one for you," replied Dekko, promptly. "Don't you know about that
part of it? Mali couldn't run that O.T.L. of his without some way to beat the
residence check. In that outfit, they trade Keys."

Kil stared.

"Trade Keys?
They can't do that."

"Why
not?" said Dekko, "if they got someone willing to trade with them?
There's
all kinds of kick societies. Some of them trade
more'n Keys. But to get back to it here—there's this Project and the O.T.L.
wants it. They think they got a wire to it through you to your wife?"

"Yes,"
Kil drew a deep breath. "And I think perhaps they're right."

"She's in it, you mean?"

"Ellen?
Yes—I think so." On sudden impulse, Kil found himself telling Dekko about
the latest visit from the old man. When he was finished the little man nodded
gravely.

"It
all ties in then," he said. He nodded as if to himself and then looked
sharply at Kil. "That brings us to what I've got to tell you. You've got
an invitation."

"Invitation?"

"To a talk with Mali.
No wires.
Everything out in the open."

Kil looked at him in astonishment.

"How—"
he said; and fumbled. "I thought you were hiding out from Mali."

Dekko laughed silently.

"Do
me, Kill" he said. "Mali didn't have to meet me face to face to let
me know this. He just spread the word around where he knew I'd find it."

"What word?" Kil was still bewildered.

"The word that he wanted to talk with you.
He's made up his mind he can't make you help
him unless you want to. So he'd like to try offering you enough to make it
worthwhile for you to help him."

"No!" said Kil, violently.
"I'll see him—"

"Hold
on, Kil," Dekko checked him.
"Anything wrong with
getting him off your neck if it's possible?
And he may offer you
something you'd want."

"He can't offer me Ellen. That's all I
want."

"No,
but maybe he could offer to help you get her back. That'd be worth something,
wouldn't it?"

"Maybe," said Kil, yielding only
slightly.

"All right.
Let's sit back again and add up what we've got. Now, as I see it—"
Dekko's dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully, shrewdly, his thin, hungry face
contrasting almost ludicrously with the fake paunchiness of his disguised body
below it, like a knife blade protruding from a suety lump of fat. "We've
got a three way pull for power here. We got the Police trying to hold the lid
on, same as always. We got the O.T.L. trying to push the lid off and' climb up
on top where the Sticks are now. And we got this Project bunch with plans
nobody knows, but something powerful everybody wants, sort of sitting pat in
the background. How's that sound to you?"

"Yes.
That's it," said Kil. "At least, that's the way it looks to me,
too."

"Now,
your wife's mixed up with this third bunch, this Project. That's clear. And
Mali thinks maybe you can find her and by sticking with you, he can locate the
Project when you do.
All right.
Now, two questions.
How does Mali think you can find her when you haven't been able to so
far?" Dekko stared sharply at Kil.

"I
told you that. He thinks that in the five years we were married I picked up
enough information from Ellen without realizing it, to lead us to the Project,
or tell us what it is."

"What do you think?"

"Maybe,"
said Kil, grimly. "Anyway I'm trying." He made an attempt to explain
something of the memnonic techniques involved, but they were clearly outside
Dekko's sphere of knowledge.

"Let
that part slide," said the little man, at last. "I'll take your word
for it. Maybe you can do it. Now, the question is, if that's the situation, is
it a good idea to see Mali after all?"

"I
might learn something from him," said Kil. He rubbed his chin. "The
hell of it is, right now I don't know. I haven't any idea of what I
ought
to be looking for in these memories."

"Nobody else knows either, looks
like," said Dekko. "That's true."

"Well,"
Dekko got to his feet and slipped the face mask back into position. At once, he
seemed again a stranger, and it was hard to believe the familiar voice coming
from such a patent unknown. "You catch some rest. It'll take a little
while to wire a contact with Mali. I'll see if I can't get him back here by
noon tomorrow.
All right?"

Kil
nodded and stood up.

"Don't
take any chances you don't have to," he said.

"Do
me!" The pudgy features grinned at him. "You think I lived the last
thirty years on luck?"

Dekko—or
Uncle George, rather—went toward the door. Kil followed and opened it for him.

"Wait—" said Kil, suddenly, as the
little man was about to leave. "You said two questions. What's the
other?"

"Oh,
that—" Dekko looked up at him. "Just, that if this Sub-E the
Project's got is so much a thing as everybody thinks it
is,
how come the Project hasn't been using it for its own wants before this? Or is
it?"

It
was, Kil realized, a good question.
A very good question
indeed.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Kil
awoke feeling rested, but puzzled. Dekko's
last question of the night before was still swimming annoyingly around in his
head. It was something that had not occurred to him at all before; but now it
clung to the focal spot of his attention. Why indeed, if this mysterious
Project had the power everyone seemed to giving it credit for having, hadn't
it taken an active hand in the goings on, before this? Why had the old man only
reasoned with him, Kil, instead of taking definite action to stop him? Was it
because of Ellen? -

The
more Kil pondered it, the more the unreasoning conviction began to grow on him
that the situation as he saw it was only bits and pieces of something much
bigger out of sight.
Something of which the Police, the O.T
.L.,
the Project, himself, Ellen,
Dekko, and all the rest were only parts.
He had the feeling of being
advanced and withdrawn according to some obscure master plan, by a sort of
monster fate. He searched through a strange shadow land of mighty and hidden
purposes. Even now, sitting here in this hotel suite, there seemed to come to
him a weird sense of contact, of interlocking purpose with people elsewhere,
everywhere, in the city, in the world, in the . . .

In the . . . ? His mind groped into
nothingness.

He
was still reaching out for he knew not what, when Dekko arrived. The little man
looked at him with sharp curiosity.

"Morning," he said. "What's on
your mind?"

"I don't know," Kil said slowly. He
sat up in the chair and noticed abruptly that Dekko was once more undisguised.
"What happened to Uncle George?"

"I'm
part of your deal with Mali for a talk.
Simple enough.
Anything new crop up since last night?"

Kil shook his head. "Mali's coming here
to see me, is he?"

"Any
minute—" the doorbell chimed.
"Right on the dot.
I knew he was just behind me." Dekko got up and went across the room to
open the door. Mali came in, followed by Melee. It was a shock to Kil to see
her with him. She did not speak to Kil, but looked at him with silent eyes out
of a face that was all the more beautiful for its unusual paleness.

"Hello,
Kil," said Mali, cheerfully. He ignored Dekko.
"Nice
of you to agree to see us."

"Sit down," said Kil.

They
took chairs. Mali, directly before Kil; Melee, a little back as if she would
hold herself outside the sphere of their conversation. Mali smiled.

"You
surprised us all by running off," he said. "How on earth did you
manage it? Breaking conditioning like that is supposed to be just about
impossible."

His
voice was warm and eager, his face almost admiring. It was as if he was
congratulating Kil on some extraordinary and laudable accomplishment, in the
spirit of true sportsmanship.