Speaking into the proper microphone before him, Gram said, “Thank you, major. You can leave now. You have nothing else to do. By the way—what is your name?”
“Wade Ellis,” the major said.
“A citation will be made up for you,” Gram said, and broke the circuit. Wade Ellis, he thought. It’s done. He felt . . . what? Relief? Obviously. God, he thought; how simple it was. You order a soldier, who you’ve never seen before, whose name you didn’t even know, to go snuff one of the most influential men on Earth. And he does!
It created, in his brain, an appalling imaginary conversation. The interchange would go like this:
Person A: Hi, my name’s Willis Gram.
Person B: My name’s Jack Kvetck.
Person A: I see you’re a major in the army.
Person B: You bet your bird.
Person A: Say, Major Kvetck, would you snuff someone for me? I forget his name . . . wait I’ll look through this stack of papers.
And so forth.
The door of the room flew open; Police Director Lloyd Barnes rushed in, red-faced with anger and disbelief. “You just now—”
“I know,” Gram said. “Do you have to tell me? Do you think I don’t know?”
“Then it really was your order, as the barracks commander at the prison said.”
“Yep,” he said, stoically.
“How does it feel?”
“Look,” Gram said. “A second message came through from Provoni. It specifically states that he is bringing an unTerran life form with him. This isn’t speculation, this is fact.”
“You just don’t feel you can handle Cordon and Provoni at the same time,” Barnes said with fury.
“You bet your ass! That’s right!” Gram said fiercely; he waggled a finger at Barnes. “In fact, that’s it in a nutshell. So don’t give me a hard time about it; it was necessary. Could you—all of you double-domed super-evolved New Men—have coped with the two of them here on Earth, working together? The answer is no.”
“The answer,” said Barnes, “would have been a dignified execution, with all the protocols observed.”
“And while we’re giving him his last meal and all that, some irradiant fish-like gigantic entity lands in Cleveland and snatches up every Unusual and New and goes snuffffff. Right?”
After a pause Barnes said, “Do you plan to declare a planet-wide emergency?”
“Mayday?”
“Yes. In the most extreme sense.”
Gram pondered. “No. We’ll alert the military, the police, then key News and Unusuals—they have a right to know what the actual situation is. But nothing to the frigging rabble, all those Old Men and Under Men.” But, he thought, the 16th Avenue printing plant will tell them anyway. No matter how quickly we attack it. All they have to do is flash the messages from Provoni to slave transmitters and lesser printing plants . . . which, hell, they’ve undoubtedly already done.
“The commando team, Green A, backed by B and C, are on their way to the 16th Avenue printing plant,” Barnes said. “I thought you’d like to know.” He inspected his wristwatch. “In roughly half an hour they’ll assault the first line of defense of the plant. We’ve arranged closed-circuit TV coverage, so you can watch.”
“Thanks.”
“You mean that ironically?”
“No, no,” Gram said. “I mean what I say; I said thanks and I mean thanks.” His voice rose. “Does everything have a hidden meaning? Are we a bunch of bomb-plotters sneaking about in the dark, using code words? Is that it? Or are we a government?”
Barnes said, “We’re a legal, functioning government. Faced by sedition within and invasion from without. We’re taking protective measures in both directions. For example, we can station ships of the line deep in space, where they can reach Provoni’s ship with their missiles as it re-enters the Sol System. We can—”
“That’s the military’s decision, not yours. I’ll have the Ultimate Peace Council of Chiefs assemble in the Red Room”—he checked his own watch, an Omega—“at three this afternoon.” He pressed a button on his desk.
“Yes sir.”
“I want the Chiefs to assemble in the Red Room at three this afternoon,” Gram said. “Class A priority.” He turned his attention back to Barnes.
“We’ll round up as many Under Men as we can,” Barnes said.
“Fine,” Gram said.
“Do I have permission to bomb their other printing plants? At least the ones that we know of?”
“Fine,” Gram said.
“You still sound sardonic,” Barnes said uncertainly.
“I’m just terribly, terribly pissed off,” Gram said. “How can a human being instigate a situation in which nonhuman life forms—aw, the hell with it.” He lapsed into silence. Barnes waited for a time, then reached to turn on one of the TV screens facing Gram.
The screen showed weapons-police firing miniaturized missiles at a rexeroid door. Smoke, and armed police, were everywhere.
“They’re not in yet,” Gram said. “Rexeroid—that’s a tough substance.”
“They just now started.”
The rexeroid door disintegrated into molten streams that burst into the air in the form of flaming pellets, like Martian sky birds. Clack-clack-clack came the sound of firing, by the police and by what now appeared to be uniformed soldiers within. The police, taken by surprise, scurried for cover, then tossed paralysis gas grenades and the like. The smoke tended to obscure everything, but gradually it became apparent that the police were moving ahead.
“Get the bastards,” Gram said, as a two-man bazooka team let go directly at the line of soldiers within. The bazooka shell zoomed past the soldiers and exploded within the great clot of printing machinery within. “There go the presses,” Glam said, feeling glee. “Well, that’s that.”
The police had now infiltrated into the central chamber of the printing plant itself. The TV camera followed them, focusing on a battle in cameo between two green-clad police and three gray-clad soldiers.
The noise level dropped. Fewer weapons were being fired, and fewer people could be seen moving. The police were beginning to round up press personnel, meanwhile still trading pistol shots with the few Under Man soldiers alive and armed.
Chapter 13
In the small, private room which the press personnel had given them, Nick Appleton and Charley sat rigidly, neither speaking; mute, they listened to the sounds of fighting, and to himself Nick thought, No seventy-two hour sanctuary after all. Not for us, not one bit. It’s all over now.
Charley rubbed her sensual lips, then, abruptly, bit the back of her hand. “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus!” she shouted, on her feet in an animal-like stance. “We don’t have a chance!”
Nick said nothing.
“Speak!” Charley snarled, her face ugly with impotent rage. “Say something! Blame me because I brought you here, say anything—don’t just sit there staring at the frigging floor.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said, lying. But there was no point in blaming her; she had no way of knowing that the police would all at once attack the printing plant. After all, it had never happened before. She had merely extrapolated from known facts. The printing plant was a refuge; many people had come here and gone.
The authorities knew all the time, Nick thought. They’re doing this now because of the news about Provoni’s return. Cordon. God, he thought, God in heaven, they probably killed him right away. The signal of Provoni’s return has set off a carefully planned, complex blitz, planet-wide, by the establishment. They’re probably rounding up every New Man they’ve got a file on. And it all has to be done—the printing plants bombed, the Under Men rounded up, Eric Cordon killed—before Provoni gets here. It forced their hand; it brought out their actual physical heavy cannon.