Prescription for Chaos (48 page)

Morgan took the crisp slip of paper, glanced over the policyholder's name and the policy number, and read:

"The aforenamed policyholder is hereby
guaranteed
against failure in his
effort to secure the degree of M.S. in physics
."

Morgan turned over the crisp pale-green paper with its interwoven design of eagles and starbursts. The back was blank.

Benvenuto leaned forward.

"Here is another."

Morgan read:

"The aforenamed policyholder is hereby
guaranteed
against loss of nerve if detected by the government involved, while engaged in espionage for the purpose of
locating and if possible freeing prisoners of war still held contrary to treaty obligations
."

Morgan stared at the name on this second policy.

"Is this real?"

"Absolutely."

"But—"

Benvenuto nodded. "There is no credential so convincing in some places as treason in another place. It follows that to be accepted
there
, one should appear a traitor here . . . Here is another of our policies."

Morgan didn't take it. "You're showing me too much. I don't have any need to know this."

"There is no possible harm in your seeing this. This is a somewhat different type of policy."

Morgan read:

"The aforenamed policyholder is hereby
assured
that he will effectively
defend himself if attacked by a street gang while carrying out his duties in or about the above-named address
."

"How," said Morgan, "could you possibly assure
that
?"

"By the same means," said Benvenuto, "that we can prevent a failure of nerve under torture, or any weakening of determination in the pursuit of any reasonable goal. We gather to ourselves
every unoccupied but capable man and woman
we can lay our hands on, and we use our receiving and transmitting equipment to stay in close touch with our policyholders. Our associates' skills and nerve are constantly on call, and they reach the policyholder by a route that no merely human opponent has yet shown any means to block."

Morgan stared. For an instant the possibilities dazzled him. Then abruptly he came back to earth.

"Wait, now—a fight against a
street gang—
"

"We have," said Benvenuto, "some combat veterans of unusual skill among our retirees. Are you aware that some organizations forcibly retire their men at
fifty
? Yet there are those in their fifties who can demolish the average thug of whatever age, and never breathe hard in the process."

"Some of this must be going over my head. How does
their
skill help your
policyholder
?"

"Why, Mr. Morgan," said Benvenuto, "
everyone
has at least a slight telepathic ability—and when that telepathic ability is sufficiently amplified by the apparatus that takes up most of this building, what do you suppose might happen then?"

The buzz was still in Eric Morgan's head as he turned, to see the three grinning tightly, coming for him. He had a brief sharp memory of the gym in the Prudent building, of the white-jacketed doctors and instructors, and of the exercise period imposed daily on every Prudent staff member, employee, or associate, and then that memory vanished as his hand automatically swung the cane up, and his other hand casually gripped the cane, near its lower end.

The voice, offhand and familiar, seemed to speak inside his head:

"
Jim here, Eric. Hyperventilate
."

Eric Morgan breathed deeply.

The voice spoke again, louder and closer, deeply content:

"
Just relax. It's all mine now!
"

Morgan suddenly felt a transformation—like a sudden change in body tone. For a glaring instant, he was a tiger, a killing machine, trained for one purpose.

The cane snapped upward, the edge striking under the nearest chin, erasing the grin, then it came down again, partially deflected by the upflung arm of the second assailant, and Morgan could feel the tight grin on his own face as the tip of the cane scraped down across the partly exposed flesh, and then he turned to ram the end of the cane into the third attacker's midsection.

Inside his head, the same voice murmured, "
Okay, Ito, it's your turn
."

"
Ah, so
," came the pleasant reply.

Eric Morgan, suddenly gasping for breath, could see in one swift glance the look of stunned shock on his attackers' faces. The first one to have reached him was in the process of being thrown back by a brutal blow under the chin. His fellow thug was bent nearly double by the vicious jab in the midsection. It was number three who now represented danger. His face blank with shock, he nevertheless had a tight grip on Eric's sleeve, just at the elbow.

Eric Morgan was conscious of a faint hiss, of the letting go of the cane, and then his arm swung up and back and down, and, as he felt his assailant's grip tighten, he brought his forearm up, pressing up against the caught elbow, and his assailant sucked in his breath and went over backwards.

Breathing deeply, Morgan studied the three dazed figures on the ground. The third, the least injured, was the first to try to rise. Suddenly there was the glint of a knife.

Inside Morgan's head, there was an indrawn hiss.

Morgan turned partly sideways.

His assailant yelled and lunged.

Morgan's right heel smashed against his opponent's knee. The knife whirled through the air. Morgan picked up the cane.

The voice spoke politely in Morgan's head:

"
Ricardo?
"

"
Thank you, Ito . . . H'm . . . Interesting . . .
"

Morgan's assailant screamed as the cane flashed out, striking to the groin, the chin, the abdomen, the neck, the side of the head—to display in quick succession the vulnerable points of a man.

On the ground, the second attacker rolled over to partly rise, looked with dazed eyes at Morgan, then sunk back down again. The first assailant hadn't moved since he'd hit the ground.

Morgan, breathing deeply, walked toward the lake.

In the
Times-News
building, a man in a striped pink shirt, sporting a handlebar moustache, shook his head glumly and spoke into the phone.

"It isn't
news
 . . . I know . . . 'Elderly Woman Breaks Mugger's Arm'—that would have been great stuff a few years ago. But it's going on all over, now . . . No, no, . . . Would
you
buy the paper because of that headline? . . . See? . . . How would
I
know what's behind it? But it isn't
news
 . . . Okay, thanks, anyway . . ."

At the police station, a bored patrolman jerked his thumb toward the door.

"Sarge, there's another three cases out here for the bandage man. They claim an old guy with a cane went for them in the park."

"What's the matter? Couldn't they run fast enough to get away?"

"The story is they were just running up the walk
past
him, and suddenly without warning he went berserk. You know how these misunderstandings will happen."

"H'm. You know the latest crime statistics show a
drop
? We got help from
somewhere
."

Popov mopped his forehead and sank into the soft leather chair.

"One more day like this, and I defect to Albania!"

Andrei Sakharov stolidly emptied the last of the bottle into the shot glass, and loosened his collar. He glanced at Popov and raised his eyebrows.

"What now?"

Popov banged his fist on the table.

"This bargaining is supposed to wear
them
down! I am dealing with one man only—and yet I have the impression I am contending with relays of them!"

Premier Alexis de Toqueville blinked in surprise, took a second look at the rough-hewn, reputedly uncultured Ambassador Griscom, and ran the ambassador's beautifully spoken phrases over in his mind.

"But," said the premier, in his own tongue, "you—euh—you speak French?"

Ambassador Griscom beamed, and innocently spread his hands.

"Et pourquoi pas?"

The premier glanced at his aide, Jacques Belfort. Belfort was already mentally groping through his dossier on Griscom, Arthur P., retired, former president the Griscom Bolt and Spring Co., born Springville, Iowa, educated the Springville Public School System, summoned from retirement by President Curtis, who had himself come out of retirement to upset three front runners of formidable reputation—all of them destroyed in those famous face-to-face debates.

Where
, Belfort demanded of himself,
had Griscom picked up that flawless freedom from accent?

Burton Rainey could feel the discouragement build up as he thought of anatomy, physiology, dissection, internship—the whole combined into one long grind stretching out into the distant future. How he wanted the
goal!
But—the process of reaching the goal—
that
was another thing! Would he be able to persist? Would he fold up under the pressure?
Could
he—?

Almost guiltily, he slid the little pale-green paper from his pocket, and partially unfolded it:

"The aforenamed policyholder is hereby
guaranteed
 . . ."

Ahh, that was reassuring! And it had worked so far. But was it real? Was it
really
real? Was it
really
real? In the long run, could it—?

The familiar growl sounded in his ear. But possibly he imagined it. Perhaps it was only a sublimated materialization of his desire. Possibly, by a process of autohypnosis, he himself could succeed—

"
Enough of that
," growled the mental voice. "
Let's hear those nerves again
."

"M'm," thought Rainey, "olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducent, facial, acoustic, glossopharyngeal, vagus, ah . . . accessory, hypoglossal."

"
Again. You hesitated
."

"Olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducent, facial, acoustic, glossopharyngeal, vagus, accessory, hypoglossal."

"
That's better. Keep at it
."

In the big building, its numerous rooms filled with capable people unobtrusively—
undetectably
—helping other able people elsewhere, Eric Morgan settled into the booth in the lunchroom, and gave his order. The waitress wrote rapidly and hurried off.

On the other side of the table, Benvenuto smiled and settled back.

"What do you think of the assurance business?"

"Well—for a strictly impartial judgment, the dollar is rising against the Swiss franc. That's good."

"But you have reservations?"

"When I hear," said Morgan, "that the dollar is rising against hospital insurance premiums, dentists' bills, and a bag of groceries,
then
I'll think we have a grip on the thing."

"M'm. Everything takes time. But, we have the right principle. You see, it is all embodied in those few short words you mentioned: 'Many hands make light labor.' But the youth is no longer expected to labor—he is too young. And the adult is forcibly retired. He is too old. And as the age of leaving school is raised, the retirement age is further lowered, so that between the increased burden and the decreased hands, the weight to be borne gets heavier, not lighter.

"And this," continued Benvenuto, "results from
not
following perfectly simply general principles. Unknown to itself, our civilization has been throwing away a large part of its own assets—the energy of its most unwearied people, and the insight of its most experienced people. We can—as an assurance company—strengthen the individual hands involved by reinforcing the individual's determination, lighten the weight of the burden by giving pause to our opponents and encouragement to our friends, and indirectly increase the number of hands that are permitted
to
bear the burden."

Eric Morgan smiled. "By enabling people to
un
retire?"

"If it is a waste to throw away an aluminum can with perfectly good metal in it, what sort of a waste is it to throw away the tempered will and insight of a lifetime's experience? No, if employers can be so foolish as that,
we
are not. We—"

The two men sat back as the waitress brought the order. As she left, Morgan smiled.

"They save metal, but
we
—"

Benvenuto nodded, and beamed.

"
We
save ability."

James Cardan saw the flash as he rounded the last horseshoe curve of his short cut on the way to the company plant near Milford.

Ahead of him, the gray morning sky lit up in a blue-white glare that outlined the bare trees of the forest, and reflected dazzlingly from the snowbanks melting by the roadside.

Cardan brought the car to a quick stop, set the parking brake, and glanced at his watch. He rapped the button that in this car rolled down the windows, then reached forward to snap on the radio. As the windows slid down, he could hear the diffuse roar of snow water rushing down a nearby ravine.

Ahead of him, the glow faded, to reveal a bright, slightly jagged line, like a stationary lightning bolt. Cardan located the bright center of the glow in the same direction as a large oak and a tall slender maple. Then the glow faded out, and abruptly the bright line was gone. Cardan glanced again at his watch, then turned down the radio, which had come on loudly and with a crackling of static. He twisted in his seat to see no other part of the sky lit by a glow like that he'd seen ahead.

There was a crash, as of heavy distant thunder, and Cardan looked at his watch. A little over thirty-one seconds had passed. Whatever had happened, it must have happened about six miles away.

The radio was now free of static, and playing dance music. Cardan switched from station to station, to find only music, local news, and road and weather reports. He frowned, shoved in the cigar lighter, and glanced out to study the oak and maple he'd lined up in the direction of the brightest part of the glow. What he wanted now was a compass, to find the direction of the bright glow.