The Transvection Machine (8 page)

Frost went to the ticket counter at the other end of the terminal and presented his newly acquired space travel card to a yawning blond girl. She glanced at it casualty and fed it into the computer at her elbow. There’d be a moment’s delay while an Earth check was completed, he knew, and he passed the time by engaging her in casual conversation. Presently the computer began blinking and sputtering, reporting that the card was not delinquent, not reported stolen, not registered to an exile, not defaced, and fully authorized for government use. The blond girl nodded and stamped out a ticket. “Have a good flight,” she told him. “I miss the old Earth myself.”

He gave her a grin and returned to the waiting room. The young man still slept in his chair, and Frost carefully worked just a corner of the card case back into his pocket. It might fall out, but he’d find it on the chair. Certainly it would never do to have him report a theft before blast-off time.

Frost smiled to himself as he considered yet another imperfection of the machine. The space travel computer did not care that two flights were charged to the same travel card, as long as that card was in good standing. They could speculate all they wanted as to how he’d managed to get off the planet, but no one would realize the truth until the computer spewed out its monthly bills. Perhaps, he thought with a chuckle, they might even think he’d gone home via the transvection machine. Or else defected once more to the mountains or the Russo-Chinese Colony.

Frost managed to doze a bit while waiting for blastoff. At seven-thirty he boarded the ship with the other passengers, receiving only a curt nod from the stewardess checking tickets. There would be no trouble with customs on the other end, either, since he was traveling on a government ticket. No trouble at all.

By eight o’clock Euler Frost was on his way back to Earth.

The man’s name was Graham Axman, and Frost hadn’t seen him since his arrest and exile ten years earlier. But Axman still occupied the same dingy office in a Washington slum, and he still looked much as Frost remembered him—with a small pointed beard and fiery eyes such as the devil himself might have envied.

“It’s good to have you back, Euler,” he said, speaking in the same rasping voice Frost remembered so well. Axman had been his first contact with the revolutionary group a decade before, the man who’d picked him up one evening in Paris and taken him to that man-made island in the Indian Ocean. He’d been in the process of reporting to Axman back in Washington at the time of his arrest.

“I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Earth,” Frost told him truthfully. “It looked awfully good coming in over the Pacific and the west coast.”

“It is good,” Axman said. “We’re trying to keep it that way. How old are you now, Euler?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Good! A good age! You have the wisdom of adulthood without the physical drawbacks of middle age.” Axman himself was barely past forty, and Frost wondered what his physical drawbacks might be. “No doubt you want to serve the organization once more?”

“Of course. More than ever.”

“Good, good! We have grown in this last decade. We have a name now, and members in fifty cities of the world.”

“A name?”

“A simple one, to be sure. We call ourselves HAND—Humans Against Neuter Domination. Man against machine.”

“A good name,” Frost agreed.

“A very good name.” Axman held out his own hands and turned them slowly over. “Hands built this world, made it what it is. Hands—and the ability to use them—are what make us superior to the apes. Are we to surrender all that to the machine—to a sexless, unfeeling monster of wires and transistors?”

“No,” Frost replied. He wet his lips and continued, “I think I can serve HAND. My father and a girl I loved died because of machines. I’ve returned to Earth in part to avenge their deaths.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“By killing a man. Vander Defoe.”

“The secretary of extra-terrestrial defense?”

“And the inventor of the transvection machine.”

Graham Axman let out his breath slowly. “Your goals run quite close to our own. We have mounted a campaign against the transvection machine ever since its first human test, when a girl was transported from here to Calcutta. Defoe is especially vulnerable because we understand only he and one other man know the full secrets of the device. The other man, Hubert Ganger, is out of the government now, so there’s a good chance that Vander Defoe’s death could mean the end of the entire project. It’s not yet far enough along for his assistants in the government laboratories to take it on without his guidance.”

Frost nodded. “Good.”

Axman hesitated and then said, “I have only recently come upon some special knowledge that may help us in our battle against the transvection machine, but there’s been no time to check it out. I must return to the Indian Ocean, to Plenish Island, and speak to someone there. In the meantime, the death of Vander Defoe can only be good for our cause.”

“I thought you’d approve.”

“When will you do it?”

“Today, tomorrow. No later.”

Axman’s eyes widened in amazement. “So soon! There are preparations to be made!”

“No preparations. I only need a weapon.”

“A laser gun, I suppose.”

But Frost shook his head. “Nothing so crude. I want time to escape. An anesthesia gun will do nicely.”

“An anesthesia gun?”

“One of the advantages of modern medicine is that injections can be given through the skin with an anesthesia gun, and the patient never feels a thing.”

“I see what you’re getting at.”

“A poison, slow but deadly. I give him a gentle bump on the street and inject him through the back of the hand or even through his pants leg. A few hours later, in his office, he drops dead.”

“Very clever. It’s something of a wonder no one ever thought of it before.”

Euler Frost smiled. “Maybe they have. They just haven’t been caught at it. Now, can you get me the gun and poison?”

“By tomorrow, surely.”

“By tomorrow.” Frost stood up and they shook hands. Axman gripped his for an extra instant, and there was meaning in the grip. Frost was a member of HAND now, a working member.

He could hardly wait till tomorrow.

Friday dawned bleak and rainy over Washington, despite a promise of a climate-controlled weekend. The wetness on his face felt good to Frost as he walked along Baltimore Street toward the Cabinet Wing of the New White House, reminding him there were still a few things the machines could fail at. He carefully drew the anesthesia gun from its holder beneath his raincloak and held it ready. This would be a day to remember, a day to repay that decade of exile on a foreign world.

He recognized Vander Defoe at once from his pictures, seeing him leave his electric car in the official parking lot and walk across the street in a black rain-cloak. Frost nodded to himself and started forward. The gun in his hand, hanging loosely at his side, was loaded with a full dose of an obscure industrial poison used to clean atomic reactors. Defoe would feel nothing, but he would be dead in six hours, his skin turned a lovely shade of purple.

He fell into step behind Defoe, bringing up the gun. Now, now … in just a minute … now …

“Mr. Defoe!”

It was a girl’s voice, a secretary’s morning greeting. She came running through the puddles to his side, blocking off Frost’s thrust. The anesthesia gun had to contact skin, or at least some thin fabric, to be effective, and now this girl was walking with him, snuggling close against the rain, unwittingly protecting him. Only his back offered an easy target, and this was covered by the raincloak.

Frost cursed softly and stopped following them. Bad luck. He could do nothing without making it obvious, and if Defoe became suspicious he might seek medical treatment and obtain an antidote for the poison. Frost must wait for another day, when Defoe might be alone, or without the protection of the bulky raincloak.

He crossed the street and walked quickly away, turning up his collar against the renewed fury of the rain.

C
RADER WAS UNHAPPY WITH
progress on the case. It was not going the way he liked to see them go. For one thing, after a day of careful investigation they were still not even certain that the computer had actually killed Vander Defoe. Staring out the window at the dredging scows in the harbor, he began to make a mental list of the possibilities. Granted the machine could do no wrong without human error or intent, he was left with no less than four likely avenues of investigation:

First, Secretary Defoe’s death could have been accidental, caused by negligence on the part of Nurse Simmons or others on the staff at Salk Memorial Hospital. He had a strong feeling such might be the case, simply because there was no outward evidence of murder, and yet, Earl’s questioning of the hospital people had failed to turn up anything concrete.

A second possibility was that a revolutionary group, like the one this man Frost belonged to, had planned and executed the assassination. It was certainly a likely possibility, and one to be investigated.

Third, the killing of Vander Defoe might be a purely personal crime, in which case suspicion would point to his estranged wife, Gretel, or to his former partner Hubert Ganger. Each could be said to have a strong motive—especially Ganger, if the rumors that Defoe had stolen the transvection machine from him should prove correct.

He punched up the vision-phone and got Maarten Tromp at the New White House. “Maarten, I’ve just been thinking about Defoe’s death.”

“Yes?” Tromp replied, speaking from his cluttered desk. On the wall behind him Crader could see a chart of world population increases since 2025. He had a sudden thought that perhaps enemy agents could be calling high government officials simply to see and photograph their offices on the vision-phone. But certainly the security people had thought of that one too.

“Well, I understand he was the only one in government familiar in full detail with the operation of the transvection machine.”

“That’s correct. The machine is still experimental, as you know. We’re having the damndest time trying to make sense out of his notes.”

“And if you can’t make sense of them?”

“What?” Tromp was frowning into the vision-phone.

“If you can’t make sense, does that mean the revolutionary groups are successful? That the transvection machine can’t be used?”

“Not at all,” Tromp replied. “If they killed Defoe for that, they’re out of luck. The president has already contacted Defoe’s former partner, Hubert Ganger, to stand by. He may be brought in to work with us on the machine. Why do you ask?”

“I’m trying to establish just who is profiting by Defoe’s death. The revolutionaries are, in a sense, but it’s likely right now that Hubert Ganger might well profit the most.”

“You could look at it that way,” Tromp agreed. “And I’ve already told you about his relationship with Mrs. Defoe.”

“Yes.” Crader was playing with a piece of flexible circuitry which had somehow found its way onto his desk. “Well,” he said, “could you let me know if the president decides to appoint Ganger to a government position? It might affect the course of our investigation.”

“Of course. I’ll keep you informed.”

“Thanks, Maarten.”

Crader broke the connection and sat staring at the flexible circuit. It was a type found in most computers these days, and he remembered that Judy had brought it in one day in connection with another case. Such a simple component—a bonding of metal and plastic—to cause such upheaval in the world. The computer had become the machine of the twenty-first century, the machine to rule men’s lives and single out their destinies. The computer recorded births and corrected childhood examination papers, issued driving licenses and mated lovers. It corrected income taxes and captured criminals, waged warfare and then performed operations on the wounded. Killed and saved, dominated and emancipated, almost in the same flicker of a circuit. Who was to decide whether they were good or bad? For Crader, there was no decision to be made. They provided his livelihood.

He tossed the circuit across the desk and thought about possibility number four—the most difficult of all. The killing of Vander Defoe might have been ordered by President McCurdy and carried out by Maarten Tromp, just as the Russo-Chinese had charged in their propaganda telecast. Certainly he did not doubt for a moment that Tromp would obey the president’s every wish, even as far as murder. He could not honestly see a motive for such an act on McCurdy’s part, but it would be worth looking into. And it might help explain why no surgeon had been found to operate on a cabinet member. Remembering the video cassettes he’d observed in Tromp’s office, he pressed the buzzer for Judy.

“Yes, Mr. Crader?” She came promptly to the door, wearing one of her better miniskirts over a blue body stocking. He wondered if she had a date that evening.

“Judy, phone up the video place and get me a cassette titled
Stage Illusions of Twentieth-Century Magicians
, will you? That’s a good girl!”

She glanced at him a bit oddly and then retreated. By now she was accustomed to his most bizarre requests, but there was always something new to surprise her.

Earlier in the day he’d studied holograms of the death scene, and he’d been struck by its resemblance to one of those stage settings of the old-time magicians. The great stainless steel tank that was the guts of the surgical computer’s in-hospital terminal could just as easily have been some unique device for sawing a lady in half. It made him think of Tromp’s video cassettes, and he decided to have a look at that one. It was probably a blind alley, but cases had been solved on less. He’d worry later about what to do if the president and Tromp really were involved.

Judy reappeared in twenty minutes, carrying a plastic cassette. “Looks interesting,” she observed, showing him the cover illustration of a scantily clad girl assistant about to be decapitated by a gaudy green guillotine while a smiling magician stood by her side.

“We’ll see,” he said with a grunt. “Have a chair and watch this with me.”