The Telenizer, Don Thompson [first color ebook reader txt] 📗

him. You let me worry about that. You've got to.... You say they were beaming telenosis on Maxwell? How the devil did they get his wave-band so soon?"

"You can worry about that one, too," I told him.

"Okay. Never mind. Where are you now? Never mind that either. Just stay there. Call the nearest police station and have them send someone after you. Get in a nice snug cell and stay put. We'll take care of Grogan and Maxwell. Okay, now. Don't waste any time."

We hung up together. Then I quickly dialed the operator and asked for the nearest sectional police station.

When the face of the desk sergeant flashed on the screen, I told him, "My name is Earl Langston. My life is in immediate danger. I'm in a vp booth near the Pacific Street entrance, number four, of Underhill's department store, second level."

"Stay where you are," the sergeant replied. "We'll have someone after you in ten or fifteen minutes."

In a surprisingly short time, an overweight, gray-uniformed policeman with a face like a bulldog rapped at the door of the booth.

I stood up and opened the door.

"Earl Langston?" he asked. I nodded and followed him to an elevator. We went up to the third level and then through a maze of aisles and departments before going out a door that opened on a parking lot.

The policeman led me to an unmarked auto and opened the back door for me. Two dogs barked at my heels as we walked to the vehicle. I shooed them off before I closed the door.

I leaned back on the soft cushions with a sigh and set the heavy defense mech on the edge of the seat beside me, still holding the handle loosely with one hand.

The motor purred as we moved slowly out of the parking lot and into the street.

I paid no attention to where we were going. Just breathed another sigh and closed my eyes. At last, I could begin to relax. In just a few minutes, now, I'd be safe. I hadn't realized how tense I was. My neck muscles ached and my stomach slipped slowly from my chest cavity back down to where it belonged.

It seemed a long time ago that I had abandoned Maxwell to Grogan's thugs.... What had happened to him since then? How long ago had it been? Only half an hour? Not much longer, anyway.

Now again I had time to think, and this time I did think. I began to ask myself questions—to wonder about certain things.

How had Grogan learned Maxwell's wave-band so soon?

What was Grogan doing with a telenizer in the first place, and what was he up to? Just personal revenge against me?

How did I know for sure that it was Grogan?

That question startled me. I opened my eyes and sat up straight. In moving so suddenly, my hand knocked over the defense mech and it thudded to the floor. As I bent quickly to pick it up, it started clicking again.

Several things occurred to me at once, then, and my stomach wadded itself into a tight ball and shot up again to press against my heart. My neck and back muscles tightened.

The first thing that struck me, I think, was that the defense mech had started clicking again. It had been clicking before.... As Maxwell and I left the bar, the defense mech had begun clicking steadily. Then—sometime—it had stopped. Probably when I hit Scarface with it. But I hadn't noticed. And for thirty minutes—closer to forty-five, now....

There was no particular sequence to the flood of realizations that rushed my consciousness next and left me feeling weak and shaky.

The desk sergeant had said ten minutes. The policeman had gotten there in less than five. We were driving, not through side streets toward a police station, but along a high-speed lane of a main thoroughfare, away from the city. Two dogs had yapped at my heels. The "police" vehicle was unmarked—unusual if not illegal.

When I looked at the driver, he was not, of course, a policeman.

He was one of Grogan's bodyguards—the one into whose arms I had thrown Maxwell not long ago.

He was staring straight ahead at the road, his spread-nosed face composed. He hadn't noticed anything.

I took a deep breath and leaned back again, half-closing my eyes. But I did not relax. The clicking of the defense mech seemed thunderous to me, but if the driver heard it, he gave no indication. Perhaps it would have meant nothing to him if he did hear it.

I tried to think of the problem at hand, but my mind refused to cooperate. It kept rushing back to events of the recent past and demanding reasons and explanations.

When the defense mech faltered and quietly stopped clicking, I was aware of it this time. My first impulse was to hit it with my hand and try to make it work again, but I restrained myself.

I controlled my thoughts firmly, holding them tight and shaping them carefully in my mind before letting them go.

The driver was again a policeman in the gray police uniform. We were once more driving slowly through city streets instead of speeding along a highway. Two dogs ran beside the auto, barking—the same two dogs that I had shooed before I closed the door.

I formed my thoughts: I know who you are. It's no secret any more. But why? What are you trying to do?

There was no reply.

It could mean one of two things. Either he simply didn't want to answer, or else he wasn't on the machine in person but was playing an impression-tape on my wave-band. I tried again.

You're licked, you know. Already you're licked. Even if my call to Newell was nothing but a telenosis dream—even if no one knows anything about this but me, you're still licked—

No reply. None of any kind. I'd expected at least to get a sinister chuckle, or a flood of horrors. But there was nothing more nor less than what there had been—the policeman driving through quiet city streets, and the dogs barking.

Then it was just a recording, prepared in advance. My mind was not being followed in person. Not right now.

But that was no help and no assurance. I still didn't dare get out of the car. Or knock the driver over the head and take over the car myself. At ninety miles an hour, and with a visual impression of moving slowly along city streets, that would be a sure form of suicide.

Or would it?

Apparently I had no choice but to wait until we arrived at our destination and then do what I could—which might not be much.

Lord, if I could make another vp call before we got there!

Careful, though. Even with no operator at the telenizer, I had to watch out for thought leakage. My thoughts were surely being recorded, and certain kinds of thoughts might trigger automatic precautionary measures.

I gave the defense mech a hard bang with my hand. It clicked twice. I got a brief glimpse of the highway flashing past and the lights of other vehicles.

Then the clicking stopped, and we were back in town, crawling along. I hit the defense mech again, a series of lighter blows, and it obediently clicked and this time continued clicking; and we were on the highway again.

Making an effort to control my breathing and to muffle the sound of my rapidly pounding heart, I leaned forward and examined the controls of the auto intently.

There was a phone. Not a visiphone, of course, but a phone nonetheless. A means of communication. There was also a luminous radar dial that might or might not mean automatic controls.

Which might or might not be in operation.

I concentrated on the hands and feet of the driver. Neither moved perceptibly. The course of the vehicle was straight and constant, though, so that didn't prove anything.

"Hey, where in hell is this police station?" I asked.

With a slight backward-turning motion of his head, the driver replied, "Almost there. Just a few minutes now."

As his head moved, his hands moved the wheel a bare fraction. The auto did not swerve.

I took a deep breath and hit the driver on the side of the head with my doubled right fist as hard as I could. He slumped, and I hit him again. His hands slid from the wheel ... and the car continued on its course.

I clambered into the front seat with the driver.

As I lifted the mike, the auto started slowing down, and I thought for a moment it wasn't electronically controlled after all. That was a horrible moment, and I clutched at the wheel instinctively, but the car still did not swerve.

So I quit worrying about that and dialed the number.

The conversation, once I had the call through, took quite a little while. I had to convince the man that I was serious. While I was talking, arguing frantically, the auto was slowing almost to a stop, maneuvering over to the turning lane on the right, making the turn and following a narrow road that crossed under the highway.

The urgency of my voice must have been pretty convincing, because the voice on the other end finally said, "Well, I'll do what I can, Mr. Langston, but it'll take time. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. And so help me, if this is a joke—"

"It's no joke," I pleaded. "Believe me, it isn't. Please make it as fast as you can. Civilization may be at stake." On that deliberately ominous note, I hung up.

Immediately I began thinking of the things I should have done, the machinery I should have set in motion instead of the one thing I had done. By all means, I ought to have notified the police directly. My notion that telenosis influenced all the police desk sergeants in town was hysterical, baseless. Well, I could call back, even now—

But I couldn't.

The car was moving at a relatively slow speed—but still over fifty miles an hour, on a narrow unpaved, downgrade road. Through the side window I saw dark trees and shadowy brush gliding by.

And then through the window I saw lighted storefronts, mail boxes, a few vague pedestrians on smooth sidewalks, and two dogs running tirelessly beside the car, barking as they ran....

Repeated pounding on the heavy black box did not restore reality.

Now I did not dare use the phone again or even think about it. I was sitting beside the driver, and the driver was sitting erect at the wheel.

On a sudden, stupid impulse, I struck at the driver's head, and my hand went through it without touching anything. I groped with my hand until I felt the man's limp head where my eyes said his shoulder was.

With a suppressed shudder, I drew my hand away and sat back in the seat to wait. It couldn't be long now.

The car turned a corner and continued at a much slower pace. It went perhaps a hundred yards before it pulled to the curb and stopped. Across the street I saw the police station. The entrance looked like any other store or business entrance, but a marquee-sign above the entrance read: "Section 4 Police Station."

The driver sat motionless behind the wheel. He would not move, I knew, until....

I shrugged, picked up the defense mech, and opened the door.

Pedestrians walked by along the sidewalk, and autos glided in both directions on the street. Dogs yapped at my heels. I ignored them. They did not exist.

But I knew the police station did exist.

I walked directly toward the entrance—a long kitty-corner across the street. When a powerfully humming auto headed toward me, I closed my eyes and braced myself and continued walking.

It is not a pleasant sensation to be run down by a car—even a dream-car with no substance.

My skin was prickly and my palms moist. I could feel the blood pounding in my head.

The door to the police station was open. A short flight of stairs went up to another door that was closed. I did not ring the bell, but opened the door and stepped into the reception room.

The room was empty except for the uniformed policeman sitting at the radio bank on the other side of the railing with his back to me. He wore earphones.

As the door clicked shut, the policeman turned in his swivel chair to face me.

"Hello, Langston, we've been expecting you," he said.

It was Isaac Grogan.

I smiled and replied with calmness that amazed me:

"Yes, I daresay you have, Zan Matl Blekeke."

Maxwell and I were alone in the small, bare, brightly lighted but windowless room.

Blekeke had spent a half-hour after my arrival trying to find out how much I knew. But after my initial shocker—letting him know that I recognized him—I had kept