Prescription for Chaos (53 page)

The general's voice cut in abruptly. "I've got the picture, Bugs. Thanks."

There was a click at Cardan's ear. He set the dead phone in its cradle and looked up at the men across the desk, bristling with guns. The powerfully-built, belligerent towhead stood directly in front of Cardan, and seemed to be the spokesman.

The door opened up, and Maclane came in, looking furious.

Cardan glanced at Maclane. "Don went off in the steam car, did he?"

"He whizzed right out of the parking lot as I was yelling to him to wait a minute."

"So you could run out with him, eh?"

"It's a free country," blazed Maclane. "You don't own me!"

There was a mutter of sympathy from the rest. Cardan was on his feet and had Maclane by the collar before he knew what had happened. "You fool, do you think I
want
to own you!" He gave him a shake, and let go. "Get out! Beat it, the lot of you!" He sat down, threw his dead cigar into the wastebasket, and pulled out a fresh one. When he looked up, they were all standing there, watching him pugnaciously.

He paused with the cigar in his hand and eyed them one-by-one. They looked back unflinchingly. "All right," he snarled. "Donovan has gone roaring off on his own, and you want to, too. Do you think
I
don't? But we've got something better here." He jerked a thumb at the circuits. "Mac was telling me he could influence the picture! When he left a minute ago, I discovered
I
could influence the picture. Do you know what that 'influencing the picture' means? What's the only way to move the image of an object on an ordinary TV screen without distorting the rest of the picture?"

Maclane, his eyes glinting, said, "Move the object itself in the studio."

"Right. And it seems to me exactly what happens here."

Smitty scowled. "So therefore, what?"

Cardan lit the cigar. "So therefore Mac can move a small light object down on that highway. So can I."

The big towhead said, "We'll never beat them by moving 'small light objects'! We've got to go down there and smash them!"

"What with?" said Cardan contemptuously.

"With what we've got. We can figure out what to do when we get there."

Cardan blew out a cloud of smoke. "If you think you're a one-man armored division, go ahead and try it. Maybe you can succeed where a paratroop battalion and nuclear missiles fail."

"All right, then, what
do
we do?"

"If you'll shut up for a minute, I'll tell you."

The towhead was watching him as if he had a bonfire lit behind each eye. Cardan blew a cloud of cigar smoke in his face, eyed the rest of the men, noted that all of them looked tense, and some appeared so keyed up as to be ready to spring at his throat any time. Cardan knocked the ash off his cigar and growled, "I don't know if you realize it or not, but one basic principle of either war or business competition is to hit your opponent's weak point. If you go charging out there with those guns, you're going to run against him where he's strong. Another basic principle is to do what your opponent doesn't expect, and isn't ready for, and get him off-balance. If you go after him head-on, you'll be doing exactly what he
does
expect, and he'll polish you off by simple routine. Now, if you want to go, go ahead."

The men glanced at each other uneasily. There was a brief silence. Smitty said, "What's your idea, Chief?"

Cardan glanced at their faces, saw they were all listening intently, and said, "It isn't just how much power a man has that counts. A lot depends on how he uses it, and where he brings it to bear. The armed forces have the power to flatten the opposition down at that highway, but they can't bring their power to bear. They're tied up. They've been hit by devices they can't strike back at. Now, what do you think that circuit there represents for our side?"

"Sure, but you said yourself, all you can do is move a little light object with it."

Cardan grinned. "That's all."

"But look, Chief—"

"Benjamin Franklin said, a couple of hundred years ago, 'There is no
little
enemy.'"

The men were squinting from Cardan to the circuit. Maclane scowled, and put his hands on the contacts.

Cardan said, "In the first world war, the British outnumbered the Turks in Palestine. But the Turks were dug into a system of trenches. The British couldn't bring their superiority to bear. Then Lawrence of Arabia went to work on the Turkish communications. Once he had these worn to a thread, the British threatened an attack in one direction, secretly switched their forces, and smashed through elsewhere. The British Army won the actual victory. But first Lawrence and the Arabs wore the opposition down and drove them to distraction."

The men all looked thoughtful. Smitty was massaging his chin with his hand. "We're like Lawrence, and the Armed Forces are like the British?"

"Exactly."

The towhead said curiously, "But if we can only move small light stuff, how does that help?"

Cardan said, "A pin is a very small light object. Do you know any man who can do efficient work with a little light pin stuck in him? And yet—he'd better do efficient work, with the Armed Forces closing in on him."

"H-m-m," said the towhead.

Maclane, his hands on the contacts of one of the sets, said, "Whatever we're going to do, Chief, we'd better hurry up and do it. They're setting up some kind of framework of long shiny rods on the highway. They're working as if they want to get it set up in a hurry."

Cardan snapped on the intercom.

"Miss Bowen, we're going to move down into subbasement. There's a switchboard down there, so we can keep in touch with the outside. The telephone lines are underground, so if worst come to worst, we should be able to keep in touch with the outside for quite a while. Are you willing?"

"Yes, sir."

Cardan looked up. "Let's go."

They went out the door in a rush, and headed downstairs.

The "subbasement," Cardan was thinking, was the reason for one of the worst squabbles he'd ever had with the major stockholders of the company. Every feature of it had infuriated them, from the massive, heavily-reinforced ceiling, to the small production facilities and self-contained water, sewage, and power supply. Why, the big stockholders demanded, should the profits of the company be sunk into this slab of masonry instead of turned back into useful production, or distributed in dividends?

In reply, Cardan mobilized the small stockholders, played the national anthem, waved the flag, puffed the Cold War into an imminent threat of missile and bombing attack, and scattered smoke, dust, and confusion in all directions. He squeezed through a violent stockholders meeting with a narrow margin of control and well-heeled opponents breathing fire and brimstone down his neck.

Cardan knew the subbasement was still spoken of acidly.

About the kindest name for it was "Cardan's Folly."

And Cardan knew that there was still a few diehards who automatically voted against everything they thought he wanted, just in commemoration of that subbasement fight. But he also know that the majority of the big stockholders were again behind him, with one reservation "So long as he doesn't want
another
bomb shelter."

As the massive doors slid back, Cardan eyed the subbasement approvingly, then walked in with the rest of the men.

Smitty, carrying one of the sets, said curiously, "Chief, why did you build this?"

"I thought we might need it."

"But why?"

"With people waving H-bombs and missiles around, what's wrong with having a hole to crawl into?"

"
I
think you had some kind of hunch."

Cardan shifted the cigar in his mouth, and blew out a noncommittal cloud of smoke. Overhead, the lights faded out, then snapped on more dimly. Someone called, "Power's been knocked out!"

Underfoot, there was a faint vibration as the subbasement generators began to turn over.

Cardan glanced around. Canned goods were regularly kept stored away down here, and now he noted a large pile of fresh groceries. "Good," he said approvingly, and gave directions for putting the food away.

Maclane, he saw, was at a table with a group of men huddled around a number of sets.

The towhead said, "What about these guns, Chief? We got the whole assortment—shotguns, rifles, air guns, CO
₂
guns. You ask for it, and we've got it. We even picked up a few of these slingshots that shoot ball bearings."

Cardan nodded approvingly. "Sort 'em out, with the right ammunition by each weapon. I think the CO
₂
guns and those slingshots are going to be the handiest."

"You figure we've got a siege coming up?"

"Not if I can help it," said Cardan. "But you never know."

The lights had now come on brightly once more, and Cardan again glanced at Maclane huddled with a little group at the sets. Everything seemed under control, so Cardan spent several minutes seeing that everyone was inside, and that the subbasement was sealed off from the rest of the building, then he activated the TV pickups that enabled the men inside to see what was going on outside the building. He set some men to watch the screens, had others practicing with the weapons, and made arrangements for them to change off later on. Miss Bowen told him that most phone lines out of Milford had been knocked out, but a roundabout route was apparently still in operation for emergency use. Cardan nodded, and put her to work with the groceries and canned goods, in a corner fitted with a large, awkwardly-arranged collection of outdated cooking appliances that struck Cardan as the ideal kitchen.

"Hey, Barbara," shouted Smitty, with a grin, "Suppose we're marooned down here—the last woman on Earth, plus umpteen men."

Barbara Bowen grinned and picked up a can. "There won't be too many left after I serve my first meal. How do you open this, anyway?"

Smitty winced, and then Cardan saw Maclane gesturing to him frantically.

"Look at this," said Maclane, and Cardan put on one of the headsets. Around the table were other circuits and other men wearing the headsets, but they vanished as Cardan abruptly saw a view down the highway from the north, the traffic jam of cars in front of him in the background, a large lattice of bright metal bars growing up on the highway directly in front of him, between his point of view and the jammed traffic, and large gray-faced men pacing back and forth holding the ends of cables that looped skyward to where floating pieces of machinery edged long bright rods into the growing lattice.

Maclane said, "It's now or never, Chief. That Lawrence of Arabia stuff sounded good upstairs, but we're up against trouble now. I've got an awful hunch that if they once get that grid completed, we aren't going to stop them, ever."

Cardan looked over the grid. To him, it appeared to be just a big metal framework. That it was being fitted together with great precision seemed clear enough, but what could it
do
? Then he noted the cables running out to the framework, and paused to consider. The thing
looked
harmless. But so did a live wire, or a stick of dynamite with the fuse burning short. He studied the tense concentrated expressions of the workers operating the control cables that ran up to the overhead machines that handled the long rods. Some of these creatures had a look that appeared to Cardan like barely-suppressed jubilation.

Maclane's voice said tensely, "I can't even budge one of those rods. I've tried to swing it when it's being lowered into place. But I can't move it at all."

Cardan growled, "You can get a good grip on something light, can't you?"

"Sure, but how will that stop them?"

"You see that cat-faced clod just guiding a beam into place?"

"I see him."

"He's got a good thick head of hair. Take hold of a few strands, fasten your attention on them, and
pull
."

"Yes," said Maclane thoughtfully. "Yes, now I get it."

Cardan glanced around at the hill sloping up to one side of the highway, the ditch carrying run-off water at the base of the hillside, and on the other side of the road, the flat lowland with the wrecked planes and downed power lines. Not finding just what he wanted, he continued to look around, and his gaze passed across the traffic jam of deserted cars, some overturned and still smoking, and one with its transmission smashed, and gears and roller bearings strewn over the pavement beside it.

Cardan centered his attention on this smashed transmission, and his viewpoint seemed to slide forward as he studied the roller bearings, and then dwelt minutely and exclusively on each one in turn. After a while he had much the feeling of a man who has examined the operation of a complex machine, one element at a time, and now sees the thing as a whole, and has a good idea what he can do with it. Then as Cardan focused his attention on them, one-by-one, the bearings began to roll.

For an instant, he felt the same startled sensation he had had years ago, when he first pressed the accelerator of a car, and it abruptly moved forward with him. Then he was no longer thinking of the uneasy unfamiliar sensation, but was concentrating wholly on what he wanted to do.

The bearings rolled together in a small heap. Then, like wasps rising from an underground nest, they began to lift into the air. Cardan sent them, fast and low, down the highway toward the huge grid.

Beside the grid, one of the cat-faced machine-operators abruptly slapped at the back of his head. Beside Cardan, Maclane made a low noise in his throat. The operator jerked again, and twisted around angrily. Several of the other operators opened their mouths to shout as the rod overhead began to teeter dangerously.

Cardan's bearings were approaching rapidly.

The operator spread one hand over the top of his head, and with the other on the controls steadied the rod-shaped beam. A small fistful of hair visible between his spread fingers straightened out abruptly. This time the alien did not jump, but quickly moved his hand further over to ease the pain. Overhead, the beam paused, then started down again. Several more strands of hair straightened out painfully. The beam overhead stopped again. The operator, obviously fighting to keep himself under control, moved his hand again, then once more carefully began to lower the beam. Apparently to get a better view of it as it lowered, he took a step backward.