The Transvection Machine (13 page)

“Nothing so crude,” Axman assured him. “You will be released very shortly, because I want you to deliver a personal message from HAND to President McCurdy.”

“Oh? Perhaps now a threat to kill Hubert Ganger, the other inventor of the Transvection Machine?”

Axman directed a glance at Euler Frost. “Didn’t you tell him HAND had nothing to do with that?”

Frost shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t believe me.”

Axman rose from his chair and walked around to stand behind the Chinese girl. “This is Gloria Chang,” he told Crader. “Forgive me for not introducing you earlier.” The girl merely smiled and said nothing. “Gloria is the reason we won’t kill Hubert Ganger, and she’s also the reason for our message to the president. I came halfway around the world just to meet her.”

“Oh?” Crader had to admit the man was a genius at arousing his curiosity.

“I want you tell the president she’s here. I want you to tell him Gloria Chang is one of us now. He’ll know what I mean.”

“I see,” Crader said, but he didn’t see at all. The girl’s name seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Had she been one of the nurses at Salk Memorial?

“Just tell him that, but tell him personally. I want to be certain he gets the message. And tell him he’ll be hearing more from us—but it’ll be action, not words.”

“You’re really planning to destroy the machines?”

Axman dropped his hands lightly on Gloria Chang’s shoulders, and she smiled up at him, showing a double row of perfect white teeth. “We’re going to make a start, at least. Tell President McCurdy that, and tell him about Gloria Chang.”

The seaman escorted him back to his hotel, not saying a word, and when he left Crader in the lobby the whole episode seemed suddenly like a half-remembered dream. He stood there surrounded by chattering tourists heading for the beaches or the casino, wondering if it had all been real.

As he was leaving the electronic elevator at his floor, he had yet another surprise awaiting him. Though he’d left her not fifteen minutes earlier at the other end of the island, Gloria Chang was just coming out of his room, dressed now in a white linen suit. She turned and smiled at him with her perfect teeth, then walked quickly through a sliding door across the hall.

“Wait!” he called out, hurrying after her. But when he reached the door and tried to follow, it would not open. It was a service elevator, already carrying her somewhere into the depths of the hotel.

He went into his room and looked around, but he could find nothing taken or left. Whatever she’d come for, there was no evidence of it.

Returning to America by sea-rail, Crader had a good deal of time to ponder the events on Plenish Island. He had been freed to carry a message back to President McCurdy, so obviously they thought this message would have a great and visible impact on the president. Could he believe Frost when the man told him he hadn’t killed Vander Defoe? Was the Chinese girl linked somehow to Defoe’s death? If she was, were they implying that President McCurdy would know this?

When he arrived at his New York office, he made an immediate check to see whether there might have been a nurse named Gloria Chang at Salk Memorial Hospital. But they’d never heard of her there. Next he checked the Federal Medical Center, but with the same result. Gloria Chang was unknown to them.

“Did you have a good trip?” Judy asked as he pondered at his desk.

“It was interesting, if nothing else. Any reports from Earl?”

“Not since yesterday. He’s still in Washington.”

Crader nodded. “Call Maarten Tromp and tell him I need to see the president this afternoon. It needn’t be a long meeting, but it should be as soon as possible.”

She nodded and left the office. He sat for another moment and then flipped on the vision-phone, pushing the buttons for Mike Sabin’s office. “Mike, I’m just back from Plenish.”

Sabin was full of youthful enthusiasm. “Did you capture Frost?”

Crader grinned. “I didn’t exactly capture him, but I suppose you might say I questioned him.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”

“One thing. See if there’s anything in our files, or anyone else’s files on a girl named Gloria Chang. She appears to be Chinese. Right now she’s on the island of Plenish, but she may have been in this country at one time.”

“I’ll get right on it, sir.”

Crader snapped off the vision-phone and started going through the accumulation of reports, mail, and video printouts that had reached his desk during his brief absence. There was a report of an unsuccessful investigation of pirated video cassettes, apparently being turned out after hours by an automated photo-duplicator in New Jersey. And there was a further report on the race track swindle that Jazine had promised to investigate. Somehow today it was all depressing to Carl Crader. He picked up another report at random and saw that someone was feeding false buy and sell orders to the SEXCO again. That was the Stock Exchange computer down on Wall Street, where he thought they’d solved all the problems.

Judy flashed his intercom light. “Sir, the president can see you for fifteen minutes at 3:30. Is that satisfactory?”

“It’ll have to be. If Earl reports in, tell him where I am and ask him to meet me there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And have the rocketcopter stand by.”

He frowned and picked up the New Jersey report again—about the pirated cassettes. One of the employees listed as having access to the machine was a fellow named Stefan Quaintress. It was an odd name, and he’d heard it before. He swung around in his chair to the microfilm files that filled the space between two windows behind his desk. Working fast, skimming through cases as they flashed on the screen, he finally came upon the one he wanted. A man named Quaintress had been convicted five years earlier of programming a BX-7809 unit to mail monthly checks to himself and several relatives. It appeared that Mr. Quaintress was out of prison and back at it. He conveyed the information to the CIB agent in charge of the investigation, and began to think that perhaps the day was not a total loss.

Twenty minutes later, he was on his way to Washington.

W
HEN HE REACHED JUDY
on the vision-phone, Earl was pleased to hear that Carl Crader had returned safely from Plenish. He’d been unaccountably worried during the past couple of days, wishing that he’d been allowed to go along and provide some muscle. Crader’s health was perfect, but the man was growing old. He’d already passed sixty—the age at which most government officials and bureau heads were happy to retire—and though he was going strong, Jazine still worried.

“He has an appointment with the president at 3:30,” Judy said. “He asked you to meet him there if you could.”

“Fine.” Earl glanced at his digital recorder and saw that it was 2:08. “I’ll be there. See you soon, Judy.”

He’d recovered from his confrontation with Gretel Defoe on the previous afternoon, and he only wished he could determine the meaning of it all. It was not the first time he’d found himself in bed with someone during the course of an investigation, but this gal had been different. Her love-making was wild and abandoned, her ramblings dense and unsatisfying. She seemed to be implying that Hubert Ganger was a fraud, but whether as a lover or a friend he did not know. He only hoped that Crader would be able to make something of it.

At 3:25 he crossed the wide avenue in front of the New White House and headed down the sidewalk toward the visitors’ gate. He was almost there when he spotted a familiar figure on the other side of the street. Bonnie Simmons, the nurse who’d attended Vander Defoe’s last moments of life, was hurrying along in the opposite direction, obviously bound for an appointment. There was something about the way she walked, the almost furtive haste of it, with her electric purse clutched close to her body, that caught Jazine’s interest. He crossed the street quickly and followed her.

She’d gone about three blocks, heading away from the New White House, when she came to the double-level expressway that connected this new section of Washington with the older part. The upper level was for electric cars only, with a lower level given over to the slower minibuses and trucks. She paused here, glancing around as if expecting to see someone she knew. Then she darted a glance over her shoulder, and Jazine had to duck into a factory doorway to avoid being seen.

It was a newer section of Washington, but already—only a few blocks from the president’s home—there were signs of the creeping decay which had affected so much of the older city in the late years of the twentieth century. Small automated factories, turning out everything from plastic home domes to stunted grass seed, had crowded into areas originally zoned for high-rise apartments. The racial troubles of the city’s past had subsided with the growing wave of intermarriage that had become so common, but new troubles had taken their place. The city was crowded, the highways were crowded, the nearby resorts were crowded. A massive population, plus more and more automation, had produced a shortened work week for many. The people in this area of Washington, like most of the nation’s large cities, spent four days a week at leisure—which often meant simply cluttering the expressways with their electric cars.

All this Jazine saw, and pondered, as he waited in the factory doorway. It was an odd neighborhood in which to find Nurse Simmons, unless she’d been heading for the New White House—which obviously wasn’t the case. He sneaked another look at her, just in time to see a little electric car come down the ramp and pull into a parking space. The short man who got out was dressed in a loose nonwoven coverall such as workers in the area factories often wore, especially around computers. But there was something different about this man, and at first Jazine couldn’t put his finger on it. He seemed vaguely familiar, and yet …

Jazine left his hiding place and walked quickly along the sidewalk, reaching the couple just as the man slipped his arm affectionately about Bonnie Simmons’s waist. “Good afternoon, Doctor Groton,” Jazine greeted him.

Groton, the doctor from Salk Memorial who’d signed Defoe’s death certificate, jerked around, startled at the sound of his name. His face was contorted into something like anger, and Jazine never knew if he took time to recognize him. Bonnie Simmons screamed and Groton’s fist shot out, catching Jazine full on the nose. The blow was so unexpected that he had no defense for it. Off balance, he felt Groton’s fists follow up quickly to his stomach and chin.

Then he went down, hitting the pavement hard.

P
RESIDENT MCCURDY LEANED BACK
in his chair and smiled at Crader. “You mean to tell me you were actually captured and kidnaped by these people?”

“That’s exactly what happened, sir,” Crader told him, feeling just a bit foolish about the whole affair. The president obviously was finding the adventure most amusing.

“Well, Carl, as long as you didn’t come to a bad end, I suppose we can have a laugh about it.”

Crader glanced sideways at Maarten Tromp, to see if he was sharing in the humor, but the presidential assistant merely sat there, seeming too stunned to speak. At last he interjected, “But this is a serious incident, Mr. President. Certainly Graham Axman should be barred from returning to this country.”

President McCurdy snorted. “The man’s a citizen. How do you go about barring him?”

“We’ll arrest him, then, and exile him to Venus. That’s what was done with Frost, after all.”

“By a previous administration,” McCurdy reminded them. “My administration has exiled no one, and I don’t intend to begin now. It’s too dangerous a practice, too easy a method for disposing of political enemies.” He meant the words as a rebuke to Tromp, and the man looked properly chastised.

“My reason for requesting this meeting,” Crader hurried on, aware that his allotted fifteen minutes was passing quickly, “is that the HAND people gave me a message for you, sir.”

“A message? For me?”

Crader nodded. “There was a Chinese girl at the house they took me to. She may be Frost’s or Axman’s mistress, but I couldn’t be sure. Her name is Gloria Chang, and Axman said to tell you she is one of them now. One of the HAND organization. I was to tell you personally.”

President McCurdy looked blank. “Gloria Chang? Do we know anyone named Gloria Chang, Maarten?”

“I’m sure we don’t, sir. I’ve never heard the name.”

“He said because of Gloria Chang, they would not kill Hubert Ganger.”

“What’s her connection with Ganger?” the president wondered. “This whole business is very strange.”

Crader had watched his face for some reaction to the name, but there truly had been none. If the president had ever known a Chinese girl named Gloria Chang, he’d forgotten her long ago. Now he merely glanced at his digital recorder and said, “Sorry, Carl, but I’ll have to leave you and Maarten to puzzle it out. I have the ambassador from African Federation waiting to see me.”

When they were alone, Tromp suggested, “Let’s go down to my office. The president might want to use this room.” Crader nodded and followed him once more down the sterile steel corridors to the wood-paneled office at the end. Tromp seemed more outgoing than usual, and asked, “Can I get you a drink? A bit of scotch, maybe?”

“No thanks,” Crader said. He rarely drank, and he didn’t want Tromp to think his friendship came that easily. He still shared Jazine’s feelings toward the man, but in a sense his dislike of Tromp was nothing personal. He’d worked through half a dozen administrations during his years as director of the CIB, and almost by definition the special assistant to the president had always been a man of smirking superiority and quiet disdain, overly protective of the chief executive he served, and unconcerned with the problems and responsibilities of others. Maarten Tromp, and his predecessors, served the president rather than the country. Whether they were right or wrong, Carl Crader could not say.

“What about this Chinese girl?” Tromp asked. “Did she have anything to say?”

“Not a word. But when they allowed me to return to my hotel, I had an odd experience. She was coming out of my room. I tried to stop her, but she got away.”