"And if Ican move quickly enough."
"But you," she said calmly, "can. Taking your best men, with their equipment... unless — " She paused, licked her lip, as if puzzling out a purely academic problem.
Maddened, he said, "Unless what, goddam it?"
"They may identify your reps as they cross. And you. They may be ready. I can see it now." She laughed merrily. "You pay your poscreds, smile at the nice THL bald-headed, gargoyle-like New Whole Germany technicians who run those Telpors, you stand there while they subject your body to the field of the equipment... keep standing there innocently, fade away, reappear twenty-four light-years away at Whale's Mouth... and are lasered dead before you're even fully formed. It takes fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes, Mat, you would be helpless, half materialized both here and there. And all your field reps. And all their gear."
He glared at her.
"Thus," she said, "goes hubris."
"What's that?"
"The Greek word for 'pride.' For trying to rise above the station the gods have allocated you. Maybe the gods don't want you to seize control of Whale's Mouth, Matty darling. Maybe the gods don't want you to overreach your self."
"Hell," he said, "as long as I have to go across anyhow — "
"Sure; then why not take control? Push jovial, insipid Omar Jones aside? After all..." She stubbed out her cigarillo. "You'd be doomed to stay there anyhow; why live the ordinary life with the ordinary hoi polloi? Here, you're strong... but Horst Bertold and the UN, with Trails of Hoffman as their economic support, are stronger. Over there — " She shrugged, as if made weary by human aspirations — or human vanity. Over there it was simply a different situation.
No one, he realized, could compete if he managed to move, in one sudden swoop, his entire entourage and weaponry across... using, ironically, von Einem's own official retail stations themselves. He grinned at that; it amused him to think that THL would personally see to it that he and his veteran reps reached Newcolonizedland.
"And then in 2032," Freya said, "when Rachmael ben Applebaum, probably an unwashed, bearded, mumbling hebephrenic schizophrenic by then, shows up in his great and good ship the Omphalos, he'll discover it's a hell, there, exactly as he anticipated... but it'll be you who'll be running it. And I'll bet that will surprise him more than a little."
Nettled, he said, "I can't think about it any more. I'm going back to sleep." He removed his robe and slippers, got wearily into the bed, aware of his years; he felt old. Wasn't he too decrepit for something like this? Not getting into bed; lord, he wasn't too old to clamber in beside Freya Holm, not yet, anyhow. But too old for what Freya had proposed — what she had correctly, possibly even telepathically, ascertained from his unconscious mind. Yes, it was actually true.
He had, from Rachmael's initial vidphone call, at the back levels of his cognition-processes, pondered this, from the very beginning.
And this was his reason for assisting — or rather trying to assist — the morose, creditor-balloon-hounded Rachmael ben Applebaum.
He thought, according to published info there is a home army, so-called, at Whale's Mouth, of three hundred volunteer citizens. For use as a sort of national guard in case of a riot. Three hundred! And none of them professionals, with experience. It was a pastoral land, the ads explained. A G. of E. lacking a snake; since there was a super-abundance of everything for everyone, what was an army needed for? What have-not existed to envy what have? And what reason to try, by force, to seize his holdings?
I'll tell you, Matson Glazer-Holliday thought. The have-nots are here on this side. Myself and those who work for me; we're gradually, over the years, being ground down and overpowered by the true titans, by the UN and THL and —
The haves are across twenty-four light-years in the Fomalhaut system, at its ninth planet.
Mr. ben Applebaum, he thought to himself as he lay supine, drew, from reflex, Freya Holm against him, you will have quite a surprise when you get to Whale's Mouth.
It was a pity that he himself — and he intuited this with certitude — would not be alive at that date.
As to why not, however, his near-Psionic intuition told him nothing.
Beside him Freya moaned in her half-sleep, settled close to him, relaxed.
He, however, lay awake, staring into the nothingness. Deep in a new, hard thought. The like of which he had never experienced before.
6
The monitoring and recording-transmitting satellite, Prince Albert B-y, creaked out its first video signal, a transcript of the first video telescopic records which it had taken of the surface beneath it in over a decade. Portions of the long-inert network of minned parts failed; backup systems, however, took over, and some of these failed, too. But the signal, directed toward the Sol system twenty-four light-years away, was sent out.
And, on the surface of Fomalhaut IX, an eye winked. And from it a ground-to-air missile rose and in a period so slight that only the finest measuring devices could have detected a lapse-period at all, arrived at its target, the groaning carrot-shaped monitoring satellite which had, inoperative, silently existed — and hence harmlessly. Up to now.
The warhead of the missile detonated. And the Prince Albert B-y ceased to exist, soundlessly, because at its altitude there was no atmosphere to transmit the event in the dimension of noise.
And, at the same time on the surface below, a powerful transmitter accepted a tape run at enormous velocity; the signal, amplified by a row of cold, superbly built surge-gates, reached transmission level and was released; oddly, its frequency coincided with that of the signal just emitted by the now nonexistent satellite.
What would radiate from the two separate transmitters would blend in a cacophony of meaningless garble. Satisfied, the technicians operating the ground transmitter switched to more customary channels — and tasks.
The deliberately deranged combined signal sped across space toward the Sol system, beamed, in its mad confusion, at a planet which, when it received this, would possess nothing but a catfight of noise.
And the satellite, reduced to its molecular level by the warhead, would emit no more signals; its life was over.
The event, the first transmission by the satellite up unto the final scramble by the far more powerful surface transmitter, had consumed five minutes, including the flight — and demolition — of the missile: the missile and its priceless, elaborate, never-to-be-duplicated target.
— A target which, certain circles had long ago agreed in formal session, could be readily sacrificed, were the need to arise.
That need had arisen.
And the satellite was duly gone.
At the site of the missile-launching a helmeted soldier leisurely fitted a second g.-to-a. missile into the barn, attached both its anode and cathode terminals, made sure that the activating board was relocked — by the same key through which he had obtained official entry — and then he, too, returned to his customary chores.