‘You are so right,’ said Kathryn Pender.
‘No, no - not on your local level,’ Garrick explained quickly. ‘After all - what are a few thousand robots, a few hundred million dollars’ worth of equipment? We could resupply this area in a week.’
‘And in a week,’ boomed Roosenburg, ‘Trumie would have us cleaned out again!’
Garrick nodded. That’s the trouble,’ he admitted. ‘He doesn’t seem to have a stopping point. Yet - we can’t refuse his orders. Speaking as a psychist, that would set a very bad precedent. It would put ideas in the minds of a lot of persons - minds that, in some cases, might not be reliably stable in the absence of a stable, certain source of everything they need, on request. If we say ‘no’ to Trumie, we open the door on some mighty dark corners of the human mind. Covetousness. Greed. Pride of possession -’
‘So what are you going to do?’ cried Kathryn Pender.
Garrick said resentfully, ‘The only thing there is to do. I’m going to look over Trumie’s folder again. And then I’m going to North Guardian Island.’
5
Roger Garrick was all too aware of the fact that he was only twenty-four.
It didn’t make a great deal of difference. The oldest and wisest psychist in Area Control’s wide sphere might have been doubtful of success in as thorny a job as the one ahead.
They started out at daybreak. Vapour was rising from the sea about them, and the little battery motor of their launch whined softly beneath the keelson. Garrick sat patting the little box that contained their invasion equipment, while the girl steered. The workshops of Fisherman’s Island had been all night making some of the things in that box - not because they were so difficult to make, but because it had been a bad night. Big things were going on at North Guardian; twice the power had been out entirely for nearly an hour, as the demand on the lines from North Guardian took all the power the system could deliver.
The sun was well up as they came within hailing distance of the Navy Yard.
Robots were hard at work; the Yard was bustling with activity. An overhead travelling crane, eight feet tall, laboriously lowered a prefabricated fighting top onto an eleven-foot aircraft carrier. A motor torpedo boat - full sized, this one was, not to scale - rocked at anchor just before the bow of their launch. Kathryn steered around it, ignoring the hail from the robot-lieutenant-j.g. at its rail.
She glanced at Garrick over her shoulder, her face taut. ‘It’s – it’s all mixed up.’
Garrick nodded. The battleships were model-sized, the small boats full scale. In the city beyond the Yard, the pinnacle of the Empire State Building barely cleared the Pentagon, next door.
A soaring suspension bridge leaped out from the shore a quarter of a mile away, and stopped short a thousand yards out, over empty water.
It was easy enough to understand - even for a psychist just out of school, on his first real assignment. Trumie was trying to run a world singlehanded, and where there were gaps in his conception of what his world should be, the results showed. ‘Get me battleships!’ he ordered his robot supply clerks; and they found the only battleships there were in the world to copy, the child-sized, toy-scaled play battleships that still delighted kids. ‘Get me an Air Force!’ And a thousand model bombers were hastily put together. ‘Build me a bridge!’ But perhaps he had forgotten to say to where.
‘Come on, Garrick!’
He shook his head and focused on the world around him. Kathryn Pender was standing on a grey steel stage, the mooring line from their launch secured to what looked like a coast-defence cannon - but only about four feet long. Garrick picked up his little box and leaped up to the stage beside her. She turned to look at the city…
“Hold on a second.’ He was opening the box, taking out two little cardboard placards. He turned her by the shoulder and, with pins from the box, attached one of the cards to her back. ‘Now me,’ he said, turning his back to her.
She read the placard dubiously:
I
AM A
SPY!
‘Garrick,’ she began, ‘you’re sure you know what you’re doing-‘
‘Put it on!’ She shrugged and pinned it to the folds of his jacket.
Side by side, they entered the citadel of the enemy.
According to the fisherman-robot, Trumie lived in a gingerbread castle south of the Pentagon. Most of the robots got no chance to enter it. The city outside the castle was Trumie’s kingdom, and he roamed about it, overseeing, changing, destroying, rebuilding. But inside the castle was his Private Place; the only robots that had both an inside - and outside-the-castle existence were his two bodyguards.
‘That,’ said Garrick, ‘must be the Private Place.’
It was a gingerbread castle, all right. The ‘gingerbread’ was stonework, gargoyles and columns; there was a moat and a drawbridge, and there were robot guards with crooked little rifles, wearing tunics and fur shakos three feet tall. The drawbridge was up and the guards at stiff attention.
‘Let’s reconnoitre,’ said Garrick. He was unpleasantly conscious of the fact that every robot they passed - and they had passed thousands - had turned to look at the signs on their backs. Yet - it was right, wasn’t it? There was no hope of avoiding observation in any event. The only hope was to fit somehow into the pattern - and spies would certainly be a part of the pattern. Wouldn’t they?
Garrick turned his back on doubts and led the way around the gingerbread palace.
The only entrance was the drawbridge.
They stopped out of sight of the ramrod-stiff guards. Garrick said: ‘We’ll go in. As soon as we get inside, you put on your costume.’ He handed her the box. ‘You know what to do. All you have to do is keep him quiet for a while and let me talk to him.’
The girl said doubtfully, ‘Garrick. Is this going to work?’
Garrick exploded: ‘How the devil do I know? I had Trumie’s dossier to work with. I know everything that happened to him when he was a kid - when this trouble started. But to reach him, to talk to the boy inside the man - that takes a long time, Kathryn. And we don’t have a long time. So…’
He took her elbow and marched her towards the guards. ‘So you know what to do,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ breathed Kathryn Pender, looking very small and very young.
They marched down the wide white pavement, past the motionless guards…
Something was coming towards them. Kathryn held back. ‘Come on!’ Garrick muttered.
‘No, look!’ she whispered. ‘Is that - is that Trumie?’
He looked.
It was Trumie, larger than life. It was Anderson Trumie, the entire human population of the most-congested-island-for-its-population in the world. On one side of him was a tall dark figure, on the other side a squat dark figure, helping him along. They looked at his face and it was horror, drowned in fat. The bloated cheeks shook damply, wet with tears. The eyes looked out with fright on the world he had made.
Trumie and his bodyguards rolled up to them and past. And then Anderson Trumie stopped.
He turned the blubbery head, and read the sign on the back of the girl. I am a spy. Panting heavily, clutching the shoulder of the Crockett-robot, he stared wildly at her.
Garrick cleared his throat. This far his plan had gone, and then there was a gap. There had to be a gap. Trumie’s history, in the folder that Roosenburg had supplied, had told him how to reach the man. But a link was missing. Here was the subject, and here was the psychist who could cure him; and it was up to Garrick to start the cure.