“What’s the name of the man from apartment 3XX24J?” he asked Barnes.
“I’d have to research that,” Barnes said.
“And you’re sure the girl isn’t his wife?”
“I briefly saw stills of his wife. Fat, nasty—a shrew, from what we got off the video tape from the deck installed in their apartment. The standard 243 deck that’s in all those quasi-modern apartments.”
“What does he do for a living?”
Barnes peered up at the ceiling, licked his lower lip and said, “A tire regroover. At a used squib lot.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“Well, they take in a squib, let us say, and examination shows the tread almost worn off the tires. So he takes a hot iron and digs new, fake tread into what remains of the tire.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“No.”
“Well, it is now,” Gram said. “I just passed a law; make a note of that. Tire regrooving is a crime. It’s dangerous.”
“Yes, Council Chairman.” He scratched a note on his pad, thinking, We are about to be overwhelmed by alien beings and this is what Gram is thinking about: tire regrooving.
“You can’t overlook the minor items in the welter of the major ones,” Gram said, in answer to Barnes” thought.
“But at a time like this—”
“Make it a posted misdemeanor without delay,” Gram said. “See that every used squib lot gets printed—mark that: printed—word of it by Friday.”
“Why don’t we induce the aliens to land,” Barnes asked sardonically, “and then have this man dig into their tires so that when they try to roll along the ground-surface the tires pop and they’re killed in the resulting accident?”
“That reminds me of a story about the English,” Gram said. “During World War Two, the Italian government was terribly worried—and rightly so—about the English landing in Italy. So it was suggested that at each of the hotels where the English were staying they should be terribly overcharged. The English, see, would be too polite to complain; instead they’d leave—leave Italy entirely. Have you heard that story.”
“No,” Barnes said.
“We’re really in a hell of a mess,” Gram said. “Even though we killed Cordon and knocked out that 16th Avenue printing plant.”
“Correct, Council Chairman.”
“We’re not going to be able even to get all the Under Men, and these aliens may be like the Martians in H. G. Wells” THE WAR OF THE WORLDS; they’ll eat Switzerland in one big bite.”
“Let’s reserve further speculation until we actually encounter them,” Barnes said. From him, Gram picked up weary thoughts, thoughts of a long rest . . . and, at the same time, a realization that there was not going to be a rest, long or otherwise, for any of them.
“I’m sorry,” Gram said, in answer to Barnes” thoughts.
“It’s not your fault.”
Moodily, Gram said, “I ought to resign.”
“In favor of whom?”
“Let you double-domes find someone. Of your type.”
“This could be considered at a council.”
“Nope,” Gram said. “I’m not going to resign. There will be no council meeting to discuss it.”
He caught from Barnes a fleeting thought, quickly suppressed. Maybe there will be. If you can’t handle these aliens, plus the internal uprising.
Gram thought, They’ll have to kill me to get me out of office. Find some way to snuff me. And it’s hard to snuff telepaths.
But they’re probably looking for a way, he decided.
It was not a pleasant thought.
Chapter 15
Consciousness returned, and Nick Appleton found himself sprawled on a green floor. Green: the color of the pissers, the state police. He was in a PSS detention camp, probably a temporary one.
Raising his head, he squinted around him. Thirty, forty men, many with bandages, many cut and bleeding. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, he decided. And Charley—she would be with the women, raising her voice to bitch shrilly at her captors. She will put up a good fight, he realized; she will kick them in the testicles when they come to carry her off to the permanent relocation camps. I, of course, will never see her again, he thought. She glowed like stars; I loved her. Even for that little while. It’s as if I had a glimpse, saw past the curtain of mundane life, saw how and what I needed to be happy.
“You don’t happen to have any pain pills on you?” a youth next to him asked. “I’ve got a broken leg and it’s causing me one hell of a lot of fucking pain.”
“Sorry, no,” Nick said. He returned to his thoughts.
“Don’t sound pessimistic,” the youth said. “Don’t let the pissers get to you, inside.” He tapped his head.
“The knowledge that I may spend the rest of my life in a relocation camp on Luna or in southwestern Utah keeps me from smiling,” Nick said caustically.
“But,” the youth said, with a blissful, radiant smile, “you heard the news Provoni’s back, and with help.” His eyes shone, despite the pain of his leg. “There will be no more relocation camps. ‘The veil of the tent is rent, and the heavens shall roll up like a scroll.’ ”
“We’ve waited over two thousand years since that was written,” Nick said. “And it hasn’t happened yet.” He thought, Not one full day as an Under Man and behold! What has become of me.
A tall, lean man, squatting nearby, a deep and untreated gash about his right eye, said, “Do either of you know if they got the message from Provoni to any of the other printing plants?”
“Oh, sure.” The golden-haired youth’s eyes flamed up with trust and belief. “They knew at once; all our communications operator had to do was click a switch on.” He beamed at Nick and the tall, lean man. “Isn’t it wonderful?” he asked. “This; even this.” He indicated the others in the badly-lit, badly-ventilated cell. “It’s magnificent. It’s beautiful!”
“It turns you on?” Nick asked.
“I’m not familiar with the literature from previous centuries,” the youth said, dismissing with scorn Nick’s anachronism. “I can live with it! All this—it’s mine. Until Thors Provoni lands. He will land soon and the heavens will—”
An ununiformed police official came up to them, consulted a clipboard. “You’re the visitor to 3XX24J?” he asked Nick.
“I’m Nick Appleton,” Nick said.
“To us you’re a man who visited an apartment number at a certain time on a certain day. Hence you are 3XX24J, are you not?” Nick nodded. “Get up and come with me,” the police minion said, and started briskly away. Nick, with difficulty, managed to rise to a disfigured standing position; gradually he followed after the cop, wondering—with fear—what was happening.
As the cop unlocked the door of the cell—using a complex electronic wheel system, a spinning at great velocity of numbers—one of the men seated on the floor, his back against the wall, said to Nick, “Good luck, brother.”
The man beside that man lifted a transistor tab from his ear and said, “The news just came over the media. They’ve killed Cordon. They did it, they actually did it. ‘He died of a chronic liver ailment,’ they say, but it’s not that—Cordon didn’t have no liver complaint. They shot him.”
“Come on,” the cop said, and with surprising strength propelled him boldly through the aperture and outside the cell, which instantly relocked itself.
“Is it true about Cordon?” Nick asked the cop, the green pisser.