“Yeah, but … Look, I drove this kind of mission before. If you’re planning to hit them from here you—”
“Save it. I got what you wouldn’t believe.” The passenger clicked open his case and began to assemble something slim, and tapered and matt-black. “Pull over. I got to launch it from a dead stop.”
Obeying, the driver glanced in his mirror. His eyes widened.
“That little-bitty thing brings down a house?”
“Told you you wouldn’t believe it,” the passenger answered curtly. He lowered his window and leaned out.
“So what in the—?”
“None of your business!”
Then, relenting with a sigh: “Ah, what difference does it make? Classified—top secret—doesn’t matter since that bugger turned his worm loose. Tomorrow anybody can get at plans for this gadget. It’s called a kappa-bird. Ever hear the name?”
The driver frowned. “Believe I did. You got two other cars around the area, right?”
“Mm-hm. Giving a one-meter fix on the roof of the target.”
“But—hell, a whole house?”
“Instant firestorm. Hotter than the surface of the sun.” The passenger gave a wry chuckle. “Still want to be closer when she blows?”
The driver shook his head emphatically.
“Nor me. Okay, there she goes. Swing around, head south, don’t hurry.”
Later there was a bright reflection on the low gray cloud sealing in the city.
WELL DOCUMENTED
Dutifully, at each state border control post, Dr. Jake Treves presented a succession of documents to the inspectors: his own ID, his certificate of professional status, his permit as a research biologist to transport protected species interstate, and his manifest for this particular journey.
Upon which the dialogue developed in predictable patterns.
“You really got a mountain lion in this truck?”
“Mm-hm. Safely sedated, of course.”
“Say! I never saw a live mountain lion. Can I. …?”
“Sure.”
Invited to slide back the door over a peephole, the inspectors saw an elderly though still sleek male specimen of Felis concolor, drowsy but alert enough to curl his lip in annoyance.
Also they smelt a strong feline stench. From an aerosol can. Very useful to induce big cats to breed in captivity.
“Faugh! Sure hope for your sake you got air conditioning in your cab!”
And for getting up the nose of nosyparkers.
COUNCIL OF PERFECTION
For a while Bagheera had padded around Ted Horovitz’s moss-green office, searching for Natty Bumppo, whose trace-scent was everywhere, but all the adult dogs were still on perimeter patrol. Now he way lying contentedly at Kate’s side while she gently scratched him behind the ears. Occasionally he emitted a purr of satisfaction at having been reunited with her.
The problem of what to do when he discovered he was among more than a hundred dogs built to his own scale would have to wait.
Looking around the company of local people—Josh and Lorna Treves, Suzy Dellinger, Sweetwater, Brad Compton—Ted said briskly, “Now I know Nick and Kate got a lot of questions for us. Before we get into that area, any of you got questions for them? Keep ’em short, please. Yes, Sweetwater?”
“Nick, how long before they see through your doubletalk about a parthenogenetic worm?”
Nick spread his hands. “I’ve no idea. People like Aylwin Sullivan and his top aides probably suspect the truth already. What I’m banking on, though, is … Well, there are two factors. First, I really did write one worm that’s too tough for them to tackle. Second, from their point of view, whatever this new gimmick may be it’s doing precisely what a parthenogenetic worm would do if such a thing could be written. Now there’s a recherché theorem in n-value mean-path analysis which suggests that at some stage in the evolution of a data-net it must become possible to extract from that net functional programs that were never fed into it.”
“Hey, hey!” Brad Compton clapped his plump hands. “Neat, oh very neat! That’s what they call the virgin-birth theorem, isn’t it? And you’ve given them a nice subtle signpost to it!” He chuckled and clapped again.
“That’s the essence. Not original. I stole the idea. The western powers, back in World War II, pioneered the trick. They set their scientists to building devices which looked as though they absolutely must do something, put them in battered metal cases, took them out on a firing range and shot them up with captured enemy ammunition. Then they arranged for the things to be found by the Nazis. One such bit of nonsense could tie up a dozen top research personnel for weeks before they dared decide it wasn’t a brand-new secret weapon.”
A ripple of amusement ran around the group.
“In any case,” Nick added, “it won’t make much odds how soon they decide they’ve been misled. They’d still have to shut down the net to stop what’s happening, wouldn’t they?”
“No doubt of that,” Mayor Dellinger said crisply. “At latest count we have ninety-four sets of those Treasury files they changed the lock on, and over sixty of the FBI files, and—well, nothing that I know of has been copied to fewer than forty separate locations. And while the Fedcomps are tracing them we can be sure that people we don’t know about will be making copies in their turn.”
“People we’d better not know about,” Lorna Treves muttered. Her husband gave a vigorous nod.
“Yes, it’s a fraught situation. Granted, it’s what we always said we were preparing for, but … Oh well; the fact that it took us by surprise is just another example of Toffler’s Law, I guess: the future arrives too soon and in the wrong order. Nick, how long before they conclude Kate’s home was empty when they bombed it?”
“Again I can’t guess. I didn’t find time on the way here to stop off at a phone and inquire.”
That provoked another unison smile.
“In any case,” Ted put in, “I’ve been taking precautions. Right now, after the media showing of their press conference, Nick and Kate have about the most recognizable faces on the continent. So they’re going to be recognized. In one location after another and sometimes simultaneously. Oh, we can keep them hopping for several days.”
“Days,” Josh Treves echoed. “Well, I guess it’s all been computed.”
Brad nodded. “And, remember, we’re dipping the biggest cima pool in history.”
There was a pause. Kate stirred when she realized no one else was about to speak.
“Can I put a question, please?”
Ted waved her an invitation.
“It seems kind of silly, but … Oh, hell! I really want to know. And I think Nick does too.”
“Whatever it is,” Nick said dryly, “I agree. I’m still operating ninety percent on guesswork.”
“You want the story of Precipice?” Ted grunted. “Okay, I’ll tell it. But the rest of us better get back to work. Among other things the crisis is overextending the resources of Hearing Aid, and if we don’t cope …”
“Brad can stay too,” Sweetwater said, rising. “He just came off shift, and I won’t have him back after the last call he handled.”
“Rough?” Nick said sympathetically. The plump librarian swallowed hard and nodded.
“See you later,” Suzy Dellinger said, and led the way out.
Leaning back with his hands on his ample paunch and gazing at the shimmering green ceiling, Brad said, “Y’know, we wouldn’t be telling you this if you’d done as Polly Ryan suggested the day you arrived.”
“What do you mean?” Kate demanded.
“Come ask for a sight of our first edition of the ‘Disasterville U.S.A.’ series. How many of the monographs did your father have?”
“Why, the full set of twenty!”
“Which, of course, looked to him, as to everybody, like a nice round number. Our edition, though, contains a twenty-first. The one that no publisher would handle, no printer would set in type—the one that finally in desperation we printed ourselves and had ready for distribution, only one night a bomb went off in the shed where we’d stored our first ten thousand copies and they burned to ash. Obviously we were fighting a losing battle. So …” He sighed.