Time lapse: perhaps six minutes in all.
And the planet, Fomalhaut IX, revolved on.
Deep in thought as she sat in the comfortable leather, padded seat of the luxury taxi flapple, Freya Holm was startled by the sudden mechanical voice of the vehicle's articulation-circuit. "Sir or madam, I request your pardon, but a deterioration of my meta-battery forces me without choice to land for a quick-charge without delay.
Please give me oral permission as an acknowledgment of your willingness otherwise we will glide to destruct."
Looking down she saw the high-rise spires of New New York, the ring of city outside the inner, old kremlin of New York itself. Late for work, she said to herself, damn it. But — the flapple was correct; if its meta-battery, its sole power supply, were failing, to get out of the sky and on the surface at a repair station was mandatory; a long powerless glide would mean death in the form of collision with one of the tall commercial buildings below. "Yes," she agreed, resignedly, and groaned. And today was the day.
"Thank you, sir or madam." With sputtering power the flapple spiraled down until at last, under adequate control, it coasted to a rather rough but at least not dangerous halt at one of New New York's infinite flapple service stations.
A moment later uniformed service station men swarmed over the parked flapple, searching for — as one explained courteously to her — for the short which had depleted the meta-battery, good normally, the attendant told her cheerfully, for twenty years.
Opening the flapple door the attendant said, "May I check under the passenger's console, please? The wiring there; those circuits take a lot of hard use — the insulation may be rubbed off." He, a black man, seemed to her pleasant and alert and without hesitation she moved to the far side of the cab.
The attendant slid in, closed, then, the flapple door. "Moon and cow," he said, the current — and highly temporary — ident-code phrase of members of the police organization Lies Incorporated.
Taken by surprise Freya murmured, "Jack Horner. Who are you? I never ran into you before." He did not look like a field rep to her.
"A 'tween space pilot. I'm Al Dosker; I know you — you're Freya Holm." He was not smiling now; he was quiet, serious, and, as he sat beside her, perfunctorily running his fingers over the wiring of the passenger's control console he said, half chantingly, "I have no time, Freya, for small talk; I have five minutes at the most; I know where the short is because I sent this particular flapple taxi to pick you up. See?"
"I see," she said, and, within her mouth, bit on a false tooth; the tooth split and she tasted the bitter outer-layer of a plastic pilclass="underline" a container of Prussic acid, enough to kill her if this man proved to be from their antagonists. And, at her wrist, she wound her watch — actually winding a low-velocity homeostatic cyanide-tipped dart which she would control by the "watch" controls; it could either take out this man or, if others showed up, herself, in case of a failure of the oral poison. In any case she sat back rigid, waiting.
"You," Dosker said, "are Matson's mistress; you have access to him at any time; this I know — this is why I've approached you. Tonight, at six p.m. New New York time, Matson Glazer-Holliday will arrive at an outlet of Trails of Hoffman; carrying two heavy suitcases he will request permission to emigrate. He will pay his six poscreds, or seven, if his baggage is overweight, and then be teleported to Whale's Mouth. And at the same time, at every Telpor outlet throughout Terra, a total aggregate of roughly two thousand of his toughest veteran field reps will do the same."
She said nothing; she stared straight ahead. Within her purse an aud recorder captured all this, but heaven only knew for what.
Dosker said, "On the far side he, by deploying his veterans and the wep-equipment which they will assemble from components carried in their suitcases as 'personal articles,' will attempt a coup. Will halt emigration, make at once inoperative the Telpors, toss President Omar Jones — "
"So?" she said. "If I know this, why tell me?"
"Because," Dosker said, "I am going to Horst Bertold two hours before six. I believe that is usually considered four o'clock." His voice was icy, harsh. "I am an employee of Lies Incorporated but I did not join the organization to participate in a powerplay like this. On Terra, Matson G.-H. stands about where he ought to be: third in the pecking order. On Whale's Mouth — "
"And you want me," Freya said, "to do exactly what between now and four o'clock? Seven hours."
"Inform Matson that when he and the two thousand LI field reps arrive at the retail outlets of THL they will not be teleported but will be arrested and undoubtedly painlessly murdered. In the German manner."
"This," she said, "is what you want? Matson dead and them, those — " She gestured, gripping, clawing the air. "Bertold and Ferry and von Einem to run the corporate Terran-Whale's Mouth political-economic entity with no one to — "
"I don't want him to try."
"Listen," Freya said bitingly. "The coup that Mat-son expects to carry out at Whale's Mouth is based on his assumption that a home army of three hundred ignorant volunteers exists over there. I don't think you have to worry; the problem is that Mat actually believes the lies he sees on TV; he's actually incredibly primitive and naive. Do you think it's a Promised Land over there, with a tiny volunteer army, waiting for someone to come along with real force, aided by modern wep-technology, such as Mat possesses, to harvest for the asking? If this were so, do you honestly believe Bertold and Ferry would not have done it already?"
Dosker, disconcerted, eyed her hesitantly.
"I think," she said, "that Mat is making a mistake. Not because it's immoral but because he's going to discover that, once he's over there, he and his two thousand veterans, he'll be facing — " She broke off. "I don't know. But he won't succeed in any coup d'etat. Whoever runs Newcolonizedland will handle Mat; that's what terrifies me. Sure, I'd like him to stop; I'd be glad to tell him that one of his top employees who knows all the inside details about the coup is going to, at four p.m., tip off the authorities. I'll do everything in my power, Dosker, to get him to abandon the idea, to face the fact that he's wandering idiotically into a terminal trap. My reasons and yours may not — "
"What do you think," Dosker said, "is over there, Freya?"
"Death."
"For — everybody?" He stared at her. "Forty million? Why?"
"The days," she said, "of Gilbert and Sullivan and Jerome Kern are over. We're on a planet of seven billion. Whale's Mouth could do the job, but slowly, and there's a more efficient way, and every one of those in key posts in the UN, put in by Herr Horst Bertold, knows that way."
"No," Dosker said, his face an ugly, putty-colored gray. "That went out in 1945."
"Are you sure? Would you want to emigrate?"
He was silent. And then, stunning her, he said, "Yes."
"What? Why?"
Dosker said, "I will emigrate. Tonight at six, New New York time. With laser pistol in my left hand, and I'll kick them in the groin; I want to get at them, if that's what they're doing; I can't wait."
"You won't be able to do a thing. As soon as you emerge — "
"With my bare hands. I'll get one of them. Any one will do."
"Start here. Start with Horst Bertold."
He stared at her, then.
"We have the wep-techs," Freya said, and then ceased speaking as the flapple door was opened by another — cheerful — attendant.