The Fellowship of the Hand Read online

  “What did Friday have to offer?”

  Jazine repeated the conversation as best he could remember it. When he’d finished, Carl Crader said, “A secret election! That’s hardly likely.”

  “Remember how unlikely the transvection machine business was, chief? These are unlikely times. Hell, fifty years ago, the Venus Colony would have seemed unlikely too.”

  The mention of the Venus Colony reminded Crader of Stanley Ambrose. He’d meant to run a check on the man, just to see what he was up to back on earth. Perhaps, if there was anything to this election idea, he was the Ambrose of Blunt and Ambrose. “All right, Earl, we’ll look into it further. It certainly seems you’ve stumbled onto something, or they wouldn’t have tried to kill you. What did he look like—this man with the stunner?”

  “Slender, with an odd tattoo on his left cheek.” Jazine’s bandaged face clouded, as if he was trying to recapture some half-forgotten impression. “His hands were very powerful. I was stunned when he rolled me over that bridge railing, but I still had the impression of powerful hands.”

  Crader nodded. “I’ll run a computer check through Washington and see if they come up with anything.”

  “Maybe HAND is hiring assassins these days.”

  “It’s not their sort of crime,” Crader said. “Remember when Euler Frost tried to kill the secretary of extra-terrestrial defense? He used an anesthesia gun loaded with an industrial poison. Somehow that seems more HAND’s way than a stunner gun and a flip into a lion pit.”

  “That was HAND’s way in the past, before they blew up the computers at the Federal Medical Center. Who knows what their way is today?”

  A chime sounded on the wall behind Crader and a nurse’s recorded voice said, “This patient is under automated care control. Since visits are limited to fifteen minutes, we must request that you now leave.”

  “The machines again,” Crader said with a smile. He got to his feet. “Take it easy now, and don’t worry. I’ll get right onto this election business and see if there’s anything to it.”

  He left the hospital and took the moving sidewalk to the lot where his electric car was parked. At that moment he had every intention of following through on Earl Jazine’s investigation as soon as he returned to his office. But life isn’t always that simple.

  The offices of the Computer Investigation Bureau at the summit of the World Trade Center were in more than their usual state of confusion when he arrived. Judy had a sheaf of urgent printouts for him, and word that President McCurdy had phoned from the New White House.

  “Get the President,” Crader decided, because that always came first.

  In less than a minute he was facing President McCurdy on the vision-phone. “Carl, good to see you. What’s this I hear about one of your men being attacked?”

  “Earl Jazine, sir. You’ve met him in Washington. I just came from the hospital. He shouldn’t be laid up more than a few days.”

  “Yes, yes! But who did it? Is this more of HAND’S work?”

  “We don’t know, sir. We’re working on that.” Staring at the vigorous gray-haired man on the screen made Carl Crader feel old. In a young man’s world, Andrew Jackson McCurdy had survived to his fiftieth year. He was already older than the last three presidents had been when they left office, and now he was running for a third term. Somehow Crader did not want to tell him just then about what Earl had found in that election computer. Not until there was more information. No need of rousing all those sleeping dogs in Washington.

  “Well, we have another problem,” President McCurdy said, quickly changing the subject. A month before election, there were always many problems. Anything that might upset a sector of the electorate became a problem.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Radiation leakage out in Chicago. You should have a scan on it. The telenews has been playing it up all day.”

  “Computer-caused?”

  “I wouldn’t be calling on you if it wasn’t,” President McCurdy rapped back, just a bit testily. “Get right on it, will you? The people get in a panic whenever there’s radiation leakage.”

  “Yes, sir,” Crader replied, and the screen before him went blank. The President had broken the connection. Crader picked up the sheaf of printouts and tried to read through them, but the words kept blurring. Once again McCurdy had made him realize he was getting old. A few more years and they’d force him out at sixty-five. There was no more staying on till you were seventy-seven, as Hoover had done in the last century.

  “Judy!” he called into the intercom.

  “I’m here.” She appeared at his office door.

  “Judy, my eyes are tired. Give me a rundown on this Chicago radiation business, will you?”

  “Certainly.” She took the papers from his hand and asked, a bit too casually, “How’s Earl?”

  Crader had to smile. He’d forgotten to give her a report. “Concussion and some broken ribs, but he’ll be out of the hospital in a few days. He liked your flowers.”

  She blushed prettily. “They were from the office.”

  “Now then, what about Chicago?” He leaned back and closed his eyes, listening.

  “High radiation levels on the South Side, with no apparent source. The only industry nearby is Crossway Computers. They make these little deskpacks for accountants to use at home. But they insist there’s no radiation involved.”

  “What’s the power source of the deskpacks?”

  “Regular wall outlets, the same as adding machines a century ago. Not much progress there.”

  “But President McCurdy thought the radiation was computer-caused.”

  “Remember the radiation scandal of 2024?” Judy was great on history.

  “You were barely born then!” He opened his eyes long enough to admire her crossed legs, enticingly blue in the bodysuit which government employees had finally been allowed to wear on the job.

  “I read about it, though!” she countered defensively.

  “Do people still read?”

  “I do! Those video cassettes drive me up the wall after a while.”

  “Glad to hear it. Sometimes they affect me the same way. Now where were we?”

  “The scandal of 2024, when a radiation leak in the Lake Superior reactor almost canceled the federation of the United States and Canada. That one cost Abraham Burke a second term as president. I don’t suppose McCurdy wants history repeated.”

  “Anybody die in Chicago?”

  “Not yet, but three children are in critical condition. They all live in the neighborhood.”

  “What are the levels of Alpha-particle emissions?”

  She read him a series of figure, ending with the observation, “The measurements were all taken from the air. The radiation is almost certainly airborne.”

  “Does Crossway Computers have smokeless stacks?”

  “Of course! It’s the law. But you know that doesn’t screen out radiation, chief.”

  He opened his eyes once more. “Get me a screen-map of the area. Order it up on our map table.” He walked across the room to the flat table of frosted plastic, about the size of a skull-pool game. There, after only a moment’s wait, he saw a detailed photo-map of Chicago’s South Side.

  “This is the area of radiation,” Judy said, circling several blocks with a neon pencil. “The computer plant is here, near the center.”

  Crader grunted and studied the map. “Then the plant is not at fault.”

  “Why not?”

  “Prevailing winds are from the west. The radiation, if it’s airborne as you say, would tend to drift downwind. No, I think we’ll find its source over here, on the western edge of your circle.”

  “But there’s nothing there. No industry.”

  “What’s this building?” he asked, pointing to a white rectangle with a smokeless stack on top.

  Judy consulted the coordinate list. “Mains Brothers. A crematorium.”

  “Of course,” Crader said softly, letting out his breath. “
It had to be.”

  “Be what? It only burns bodies, and they’re not radioactive.”

  “Not usually, but in this case I’ll bet they are. Last year nearly a million Americans were implanted with heart and brain pacemakers powered by plutonium capsules. Theoretically, all crematoriums are supposed to check with the medical registry in Washington before burning a body, so that any such atomic device can be removed first. But in actual practice they sometimes slip up. It appears that the Mains Brothers have been slipping up a great deal.”

  “Here’s the reason,” Judy said, checking her coordinates again. “They’re only three blocks from the Sunnyside Rest Pavilion, and they’re getting all the old people who die—the ones most likely to have implanted pacemakers.”

  Crader flipped off the viewing table lights. “That’s it, then. Contact the Health Bureau in Washington and fill them in. It’s their baby now, not ours.”

  The day entangled Carl Crader in such a variety of tasks that it was late afternoon before he again remembered the election computer and the names of Blunt and Ambrose. He ran a check on his desk unit and found there were two Jason Blunts and four Stanley Ambroses in the master file:

  Jason Blunt, astronomer, New York City

  Jason Blunt, oilman, Gulf of Mexico

  Stanley Ambrose, space lawyer, Philadelphia

  Stanley Ambrose, clone biologist, Paris

  Stanley Ambrose, retired director of Venus Colony, Address Unknown

  Stanley Ambrose, naturalist, Polar Colony

  Crader scanned the list and sighed with frustration. “We need more information, Judy. If there was a secret election of some sort, the candidates could have been any of the men on this list—or any of a hundred other Blunts or Ambroses we know nothing about.”

  “But if thousands of people voted for them, even secretly, they must be well known,” Judy said.

  “True enough.” He pondered the list again. “Stanley Ambrose’s present address is unknown, according to this. In fact, I’ve heard nothing about him since he retired from the Venus Colony. That might be significant. If he’s gone with HAND or some other secret group, he may have dropped from sight.”

  “What about Jason Blunt? There are only two on the list.”

  “That might be easier to pin down, provided we can believe the computer that there are only two Jason Blunts well-known in public life.”

  “Our memory bank includes all listings in every major biographical reference work. Blunt is not that common a name.”

  “Very well. Let’s try the local Mr. Blunt first. The astronomer.”

  It took Judy only a few minutes to locate Blunt and put in a vision-phone call. She returned shaking her head. “He’s eighty-two years old and confined to a rest home upstate. I think we can cross him off the list.”

  Crader nodded. “That leaves Jason Blunt, the oilman. Know anything about him?”

  “I can find out.”

  He glanced at the digital wall clock. “It’s pretty late now, Judy, I suppose it can wait till tomorrow.”

  It had been a long day, and he could see she wasn’t about to argue with him. As she retreated to the outer office he spun around in his chair to gaze out at the Jersey flatlands and the distant Nixon International Jetport. The sun was low in the western sky, a reminder that autumn had begun and the long winter nights would soon be upon them. Crader wished that daylight could be controlled somehow, the way the climate was. He enjoyed the winters almost completely free of snow, and the summers when most showers came at night. This night, like many others, he’d putter a bit in his suburban garden. Perhaps he might even help his wife plant a new crop of winter flowers. If only there was a bit more daylight …

  “Mr. Crader, I thought you should see this.”

  He pulled himself back to the present and glanced up at Judy. Her face was white as she held an urgent message-form out to him. “It just came through.”

  He scanned the words quickly. “Computer engineer Harry Rogers slain in office. Unknown man hunted.”

  “Rogers?” He looked up quizzically.

  “Rogers was the man who first reported the irregularities with the FRIDAY-404 election computer. He’s the one Earl talked to.”

  “All right,” Crader said, suddenly decisive. “It looks as if we work late tonight after all. Get me that printout on Jason Blunt, and send Mike Sabin over to the hospital to stay with Earl. They just might have another try at him.”

  3 MASHA BLUNT

  HER NAME ORIGINALLY WAS Masha Konya, and she’d grown up in one of the thriving industrial cities of central Turkey. But she’d never been fully content there, not since she was twelve and a boy tried to rape her and she realized in a full flash of illumination that she was both beautiful and desirable.

  After that, the city of her childhood was too small for her. Masha left home before her fifteenth birthday and journeyed to New Istanbul, a gleaming city of towers and bridges that straddled the Bosporus like some twenty-first-century Colossus of Rhodes. She dreamed of dancing in the great golden pleasure mosques, where wealthy men from all over the world came to gamble and sin. This was to be the life for her—not the stifling regularity of an industrial city, where she might end her days with festering lungs and flabby thighs.

  The entrepreneurs of New Istanbul were quick to recognize Masha Konya’s charms. A man named Fizel arranged for her to study the nearly forgotten art of belly dancing, and by the time of her fifteenth birthday she was working nights in a little club called The Last Century, dancing and hustling drinks between numbers. That was where she met a man named Stevro and, later, Jason Blunt.

  In a very real sense, Stevro won Masha from Fizel one night over the gaming tables. They were playing electronic roulette for thousand-dollar chips, and when Fizel’s money ran short Stevro offered to stake him, in exchange for the young dancer Masha. In the heat of the moment Fizel agreed, certain he would win back his money and the girl. He didn’t, and that night after the last show Stevro collected his prize.

  Masha was fearful of Stevro at first. He was a bulky, jerky sort of man with a habit of smoking soilweed, a synthetic, mind-expanding drug much used in the Near East. Gazing down at Masha as she sat on the edge of the bed that first night, he said, “You are very beautiful, my dear. Very beautiful indeed.”

  She already knew what he wanted, and she started to remove her dancer’s costume. “I belonged to Fizel,” she said. “You had no right to take me.”

  He inhaled on the harsh little soilweed cigar, and his eyes seemed to glaze over a bit. At first she thought the drug was getting to him and that she would sleep alone at least for this night. But then as the last of her garments fell away he put down the cigar and stepped back to fully admire her naked beauty.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “And how old are you, my dear?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “How many men have you been with?”

  “A boy back home, and Fizel, and two of his customers. That is all.”

  “Are you wise in the ways of lovemaking? Do you know the functions of the solanum, and the electric lance, and the pigeon eggs?”

  “I … no,” she admitted. “It has always been the same, except for the last man. He wanted to beat me first, before we made love.”

  “I will teach you,” he said. “I will teach you all there is to know. And someday you will sail away on one of those big atomic yachts that harbor here. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will begin tomorrow.”

  He came to her then, very gently, as if he were handling valuable merchandise. He came to her, and took her in a way she had not known before.

  The very next day, strolling with Stevro along the docks where the big yachts berthed, she heard him begin his course of instruction.

  “You see, my dear, there are very wealthy men who own these ships. Some of them have made their money in space exploration, or in undersea oil wells. They are men of middle age, often already
married and divorced. They come here to New Istanbul to recapture their lost youth, most often in the arms of a young girl like yourself. But you have seen those pigs who work for Fizel. No rich man could bear the sight of them for more than a single night. You, my dear, you are different. To possess you, a man would even marry you.”

  “Marry?”

  Stevro nodded. “I am not training you to be some rich man’s mistress, my dear. I am training you for a wifely role.”

  And for a year Stevro did just that. She attended ballet classes and studied the space sciences by day, learning all there was to know about the life around them in the middle of the twenty-first century. (“Wealthy men are most interested in space,” Stevro explained.) Then by night he took over her education personally, initiating her in the many ways of love and lust, showing her how the beauty of her body could be used to please one man.

  “This,” he told her one night, “is solanum, a form of nightshade which can serve as a powerful aphrodisiac. When your husband is low, a bit of this will rouse his spirits without fail.”

  “I see,” she said, fingering the dusky powder.

  “And here is an electric lance. Have you ever seen one before?”

  “No.” She stared wide-eyed at the smooth plastic rod, imagining it penetrating her.

  “Male prostitutes sometimes use them. And nymphomaniacs, of course. The tip delivers a series of gentle electric shocks.”

  “How ghastly!”

  “In a sense it is, because it is one more mechanization of life. But you see, my dear, we must take advantage of these tools as long as they are offered to us. If the husband I choose for you is too elderly to perform with satisfaction, you might welcome a little help from the electric lance.”

  “Never! I would never marry such a man!”

  He sighed and lit another of his soilweed cigars. “How old are you now, Masha dear?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Yes, sixteen.” He stared out into space for a moment, as if calculating the rate of return on some investment. Then he said, “It is time we began looking for a husband.”