McArdle nodded and seemed to lose interest. “Your feet are not swollen or blistered, Gustad. You didn’t walk back from the Plains. How did you get here?”
Alvah took a deep breath. “We flew―on a passenger roc―as far as the Adirondacks. We didn’t want to alarm you by too much air traffic so near the City, so we joined a freight caravan there.”
McArdle’s stony face did not alter, but all the meaning went suddenly out of it. It was as if the man himself had stepped back and shut a door. The porter behind his chair swayed and looked as if he were about to faint. Alvah heard one of the guards draw in his breath sharply.
“Fthuh!” said McArdle abruptly, his face contorting. “Let’s get this over. What do you know about the military plans of the Muckfeet? Answer me fully. If I’m not satisfied that you do, I’ll have you worked over till I am satisfied.”
Alvah, who had been feeling something like St. George and something like a plucked chicken, discovered that anger could be a very comforting thing. “That’s what I came here to do, he said tightly. The Muckfeets’ military plans are about what you might have expected, after that lousy trick of yours. They know it wasn’t Chicago that raided them.”
McArdle started and made as if to rise. Then he sank back, staring fixedly at Alvah.
“They’ve had a gutful. They’re going to finish New York.”
“When?” said McArdle, biting the word off short.
“That depends on you. If you’re willing to be reasonable, they’ll wait long enough for you to dicker with them. Otherwise, if I’m not back in about an hour, the fun starts.”
McARDLE touched a stud, “Green alert” pressed the stud again and laced his fingers together on the desk. Hurry it up, he said to Alvah. Let’s have the rest.
I’m going to ask you to do something difficult, said Alvah. It’s this―think about what I’m telling you. You’re not thinking now, you’re just reacting―”
He heard a slight movement behind him, saw McArdle’s eyes flicker and his hand make a Not now gesture.
You’re in the same room with a man who’s turned Muckfoot and it disgusts you. You’ll be cured of that eventually ― you can be. I’m the proof―but all I want you to do now it put it aside and use your brains. Here are the facts. Your raiding parties got the shorts beat off them. I saw one of the fights―it lasted about twenty minutes. The Muckfeet could have polished off the Cities any time in the last thirty years. They haven’t done it till now, because―”
McArdle was beating time with his fingertips on the polished ebonite. He wasn’t really listening, Alvah saw, but there was nothing for it except to go ahead.
“―they had the problem of deconditioning and re-educating more than twenty million innocent people, or else letting them starve to death. Now they have the knowledge they need. They can―”
The terms, said McArdle. They’re going to close down this ― this reservation, Alvah said. They’ll satisfy you in any way you like that they can do it by force. If you help, it can be an orderly process in which no body gets hurt and everybody gets the best possible break. And they’ll keep the City intact as a museum. I talked them into that. Or, if they have to, they’ll take the place apart slab by slab.
MeArdie’s mouth was working violently. Take him out and kill him, for City’s sake! And, Morgan!” he called when Alvah and his guards were halfway to the door.
Yes, Mr. Manager.
When you’re through, dump him out the gate he came in.
IT was a pity about Wytak, Alvah’s brain was telling him frozenly. Wytak was a scoundrel or he could never have got where he was―had been―but he wasn’t afraid of a new idea. It might have been posssible to deal with Wytak.
“Where we going to do it?” the younger one asked nervously. He had been pale and sweating in the floater all the way across Middle Jersey.
“In the disinfecting chamber,” Morgan said, gesturing with his pistol. “Then we haul him straight out. In there, you.”
“Well, let’s get it over with, the younger one said. I’m sick.”
“You think I’m not sick?” said Morgan in a strained voice. He gave Alvah a final shove into the middle of the room and stood back, adjusting his gun.
Alvah found himself saying calmly, “Not that way. Morgan, unless you want to turn black and shrivel up a second after.
“What’s he talking about?” the boy whispered shakily.
“Nothing,” said Morgan. The hand with the gun moved indecisively.
“To puncture me,” Alvah warned, “you’ve got to puncture the suit. And I’ve been eating Muckfeet food for the last month and a half. I’m full of microorganisms―swarming with them. They’ll bloop out of me straight at you, Morgan.”
Both men jerked back, as if they had been stung. “I’m getting outa here!” said the boy, grabbing for the door stud.
Morgan blocked him. “Stay here!”
“What’re you going to do?” the younger one asked.
He swore briefly. “We’ll tell the O. D. Come on.”
The door closed and locked solidly behind them. Alvah looked to see if there was a way to double-lock it from his side, but there wasn’t. He tried the opposite door to make sure it was locked, which it was. Then he examined the disinfectant nozzles, wondering if they could be used to squirt corrosive in on him. He decided they probably couldn’t and, anyhow, he had no way to spike the nozzles. Then there was nothing to do but sit in the middle of the bare room and wait, which he did.
The next thing that happened was that he heard a faint far-off continuous noise through the almost soundproof door. He stood up and went over and put his ear against the door, and decided it was his imagination.
Then there was a noise, and he jumped back, his skin tingling all over, just before the door slid open. The sudden maniacal clangor of a bell swept Morgan into the room with it, wild-eyed, his cap missing, drooling from a corner of his mouth, his gun high in one white-knuckled fist.
“Glah!” said Morgan and pulled the trigger.
ALVAH’s heart went bonk hard against his ribs, and the room blurred. Then he realized that there hadn’t been any hiss of an ejected pellet. And he was still on his feet. And Morgan, with his mouth stretched open all the way back to the uvula, was standing there a yard away, staring at him and pulling the trigger repeatedly.
Alvah stepped forward half a pace and put a straight left squarely on the point of Morgan’s jaw. As the man fell, there were shrieks and running footsteps in the outer room. Somebody in Guard uniform plunged past the doorway, shouting incoherently, caromed off a wall, dwindled down a corridor. Then the room was full of leaping men in motley.
The first of them was Artie Brumbacher, almost unrecognizable because he was grinning from ear to ear. He handed Alvah a four-foot knobkerrie and a bulging skin bag and said, “Le’s go!”
The streets were full of grounded floaters and stalled surface cars. The bells had fallen silent, and so had the faint omnipresent vibration that was like silence itself until it was gone. Not a motor was turning in the Borough of Jersey. Occasional chittering sounds floated on the air, and muffled buzzings and other odd sounds, all against the background chorus of faraway shrieks that rose and fell.
At the corner of Middle Orange and Weehawken, opposite the Superior Court Building, they came upon a squad of Regulars who had thrown away their useless guns and picked up an odd lot of assorted bludgeons ― lengths of pipe, tripods and the like.
“Now you’ll see,” said Artie.