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LIES, INC. -- CHAPTER TWO |
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"Syn-cof?" the receptionist asked sympathetically. "Or Martian fnikjuice tea, while you wait?" Rachmael ben Applebaum, getting out a genuine Tampa, Florida Garcia y Vega cigarillo, said, "I'll just sit, thanks." He lit the cigar, waited. For Miss Freya Holm. He wondered what she looked like. If she was as pretty as the receptionist -- A soft voice said, almost timidly, "Mr. ben Applebaum? I'm Miss Holm. If you'll come into my office --" She held the door open, and she was perfection; his Garcia y Vega cigarillo dwindled, neglected in the ashtray as he rose to his feet. She, no more than twenty, chitin-black long hair that hung freely down her shoulders, teeth white as the glossy bond of the expensive UN info mags ... he stared at her, at the small girl in the gold-spray bodice and shorts and sandals, with the single camellia over her left ear, stared and thought, And this is my police protection. "Sure." Numbly, he passed her, entered her small, contemporarily furnished office; in one glance he saw artifacts from the extinct cultures of six planets. "But Miss Holm," he said, then, candidly. "Maybe your employers didn't explain; there's pressure here. I've got one of the most powerful economic syndromes in the Sol system after me. Trails of Hoffman --" "THL," Miss Holm said, seating herself at her desk and touching the on of her aud-recorder, "is the owner of Dr. Sepp von Einem's teleportation construct and hence monopolistically has made obsolete the hyper-see liners and freighters of Applebaum Enterprise." On her desk before her she had a folio, which she consulted. "You see, Mr. Rachmael ben Applebaum --" She glanced up. "I wish to keep you in data-reference distinct from your father, the late Maury Applebaum. So may I call you Rachmael?" "Y-yes," he said, nettled by her coolness, her small, firm poise -- and the folio which lay before her; long before he had consulted Listening Instructional Educational Services -- or, as the pop mind called it in UN-egged-on derision, Lies Incorporated -- the police agency had gathered, with its many monitors, the totality of information pertaining to him and to the collapse from abrupt technological obsolescence of the once formidable Applebaum Enterprise. And -- "Your late father," Freya Holm said, "died evidently at his own instigation. Officially the UN police list it as Selbstmort ... suicide. We however --" She paused, consulting the folio. "Hmmm." Rachmael said, "I'm not satisfied, but I'm resigned." After all, he could not bring back his heavy, red-faced, near-sighted and highly over-taxed father. Selbstmort, in the official German of the UN, or not. "Miss Holm," he began, but she cut him off, gently. "Rachmael, the Telpor electronic entity of Dr. Sepp von Einem, researched and paid for, developed in the several interplan labs of Trails of Hoffman, could do nothing else than bring chaos to the drayage industry. Theodoric Ferry, who is chairman of the board of THL, must have known this when he financed Dr. von Einem at his Schweinfort labs where the Telpor ..." Her voice faded. Rachmael ben Applebaum sat with a circle of friends around a superior person, very wise and ancient. They called him Abba, which meant Daddy. When Abba spoke the entire settlement listened, and as best they could the individuals committed to memory what Abba told them. Because what that ancient person told them had an absolute quality to it; Abba had not originated in the settlement, but knew things which no one else knew, and he guided them all. "... breakthrough occurred," Abba said in his low, gentle voice. "And yet THL owned -- outside of your father's -- the largest single holding of the now-defunct Applebaum Enterprise. Therefore, my little ones, know this: Trails of Hoffman Limited deliberately ruined a corporation which it had major investments in ... and this, I admit, has seemed strange to us." The wise, elderly Abba faded out. Freya Holm glanced up alertly, tossed back her mass of black hair. "And now they hound you for restitution; correct?" Rachmael blinked; he managed to nod mutely. Quietly, Miss Holm asked, "How long did it take a passenger liner of your father's corporation to reach Whale's Mouth with a load of, say, five hundred colonists, plus their personal effects?" After a tormented pause he said, "We -- never even tried. Years. Even at hyper-see." The girl, across from him, still waited, wanting to hear him say it. "With our flagship transport," he said, "eighteen years." "And with Dr. von Einem's teleportation instrument --" "Fifteen minutes," he said harshly. And Whale's Mouth, the number IX planet of the Fomalhaut system, was to date the sole planet discovered either by manned or unmanned observers which was truly habitable -- truly a second Terra. Eighteen years ... and even deep-sleep would not help, for such a prolonged period; aging, although slowed down, although consciousness was dimmed, still occurred. Alpha and Prox; that had been all right; that had been short enough. But Fomalhaut, at twenty-four light years -- "We just couldn't compete," he said. "We simply could not carry colonists that far." "Would you have tried, without von Einem's Telpor break through?" Rachmael said, "My father --" "Was thinking about it." She nodded. "But then he died and it was too late and now you've had to sell virtually all your ships to meet note-payment due-dates. Now, from us, Rachmael. You wanted ...?" "I still own," he said, "our fastest, newest, biggest ship, the Omphalos. She's never been sold, no matter how great the pressure THL has put on me, within and outside the UN courts." He hesitated, then said it. "I want to go to Whale's Mouth. By ship. Not by Dr. von Einem's Telpor. And by my own ship, by what we meant to be our --" He broke off. "I want to take her all the way to Fomalhaut, on an eighteen-year voyage -- alone. And when I arrive at Whale's Mouth I'll prove --" "Yes?" Freya said. "Prove what, Rachmael?" As he sat there, formulating his answer, he saw again the tender, intelligent shape of Abba; but Abba did not look human. A fur of darkness and complexity covered Abba and as the wise one spoke his voice seemed shrill and eerie. Remnants of the dream, Rachmael realized; coming back at me in my waking state. Abba said, "There lies a wonderful place. In it lies very fine food. In it lies ... in it lies ... lies." The last word lingered in Rachmael's mind. Lies. Across from him the girl waited for him to answer. "Lies," he said. "Something about lies." "Oh, the name they give us." Freya laughed. A pun, he thought. The two words sound the same, spelled the same, but mean different things. "That we could have done it," Rachmael said. "Had von Einem not come along with that teleportation thing, that --" He gestured and felt, within him, impotent fury. And still the word lingered in his mind, traced there by Abba, who was wise but who was not human. Lies. Freya said, "Telpor is one of the most vital discoveries in human history, Rachmael. Teleportation, from one star-system to another. Twenty-four light-years in fifteen minutes. When you reach Whale's Mouth by the Omphalos, I for instance will be --" She calculated. "Forty-three years old." He was silent. "What," Freya asked in a soft voice, "would you accomplish by your trip?" He thought, This is Lies Incorporated that I am sitting here talking to. The last people in the world I should be talking to. I may have been programmed by them to come here, programmed subliminally, in my sleep, my dreams ... which explains the word lies. Presently Freya said, reading from her folio, "You have, for six months now, been thoroughly checking out the Omphalos at a concealed -- even from us -- launch field and maintenance dock on Luna. She is now considered ready for the inter-system flight. Trails of Hoffman has tried, through the courts, to attach her, to claim her as their legal property; this you have managed to fight. So far. But now --" "My lawyers tell me," Rachmael said, "that three days stand between me and THL seizing the Omphalos." "You can't blast off within three days?" "The deep-sleep equipment. It's a week from being readied." He let out his breath raggedly. "A subsidiary of THL manufactures vital components. They've been-held up." Freya nodded. "And your coming here is to request us to pick up the Omphalos, with one of our veteran pilots, disappear with her for at least a week, until she's ready for the flight to Fomalhaut. Correct?" "That's it," he said, and sat waiting. After a pause Freya said, "You can't pilot the ship yourself?" "I'm not good enough to lose her," Rachmael said. "They'd find me. But yours -- one of your top- line pilots." He did not look directly at her; it meant too much. "You can pay our fee of --" "Nothing." "'Nothing'?" "I have absolutely no funds. Later, as I continue to liquidate the assets of the corporation, possibly I --" Freya said, "There's a note here from my employer, Mr. Glazer-Holliday. He observes that you're poscredless. His instructions to us --" She read the note, silently. "However, we're to cooperate with you." "Why?" "My employer doesn't say. We have been aware of your financial helplessness for some time." Glancing up at him she said, "We will okay the dispatch of an experienced pilot who will take --" "Then you expect me to come here." She gazed at him. "Did you suggest that I come here?" he said. "Because to be honest with you I do not trust Lies Incorporated." "Well, we lie a lot." She smiled. "But you can save the Omphalos." "Probably. Our pilot -- and he will be one of our best -- will take the Omphalos off where THL, where even the UN agents acting for the Secretary General, Herr Horst Bertold, won't find her." "Probably," he echoed. "This our man can do," Freya continued, "while you manage, if you can, to obtain the final components of the deep-sleep equipment. But I doubt if you'll obtain those components, Rachmael. There's an additional memo here to that effect, too. You're correct: Theodoric Ferry sits on its board of directors, too, and this is all legal, this monopoly which the firm possesses." Her smile was bitter. "UN sanctioned." He was silent. Obviously it was hopeless; no matter how long the Lies Incorporated professional and ultra-veteran space pilot kept the huge liner the Omphalos lost between planets, the components would be "held up unavoidably," as the invoices, marked back-order, would read. "I think," Freya said presently, "that your problem is not the mere obtaining of deep-sleep components. That can be handled; there are ways ... we, for instance, can -- although this will cost you a good deal of money eventually -- pick them up on the black market. Your problem, Rachmael --" "I know," he said. His problem was not how to get to the Fomalhaut system, to its ninth planet, Whale's Mouth which -- Again the furred body phased in, the superimposition. "There it lies," Abba said. "Lies ... lies ... lies." Damn double exposure of reality, Rachmael said to himself; he blinked. What is this, a reality dysfunction of some kind? Or something coming from his right hemisphere to his left, some vital information available to the right which it now urged on the left? -- which was Terra's sole thriving colony world. In fact his problem was not the eighteen-year voyage at all. His problem was -- "Why go at all?" Abba intoned, the vast animal figure to whom they all looked for the dispensation of wisdom. "When Dr. von Einem's Telpor construct, available at a nominal cost through any of Trails of Hoffman's many retail outlets on Terra --" Yes, yes, Rachmael thought irritably. "-- makes the trip a mere fifteen-minute minor journey, and within financial reach of even the most modest, income-wise speaking, Terran family?" Abba smiled his tender smile. "Consider that, dear son." Aloud, Rachmael said, "Freya, the trip by Telpor to Whale's Mouth -- it sounds fine." And forty million Terran citizens had taken advantage of it. And the aud and vid reports returning -- via the Telpor construct -- all told glowingly of a world not overcrowded, of tall grass, of odd but benign animals, of new and lovely cities built by robot-assists taken across at UN-expense to Whale's Mouth. "But --" "But," Freya said, who was now combined with Abba into one tender and wise entity, huge and furry and pretty, "the peculiar fact is that it's a one-way trip." Instantly he nodded. "Yes, that's it." "Sure it is," Freya-Abba said as with a single voice. "No one can come back," Rachmael said. The double entity smiled in a cunning way, a sly way. "That is easily explained, my son. The Sol system is located at the axis of the universe." "What the hell does that mean?" Rachmael said. "The recession of the extra-galactic nebulae demonstrate von Einem's Theorem One that --" The voice turned into garbled noise, and the double impositions blurred, as if a locking control had gotten twisted; the entire image became warped and deformed, and then, suddenly, the double figure facing him was upside down. "There must," Rachmael continued, as best he could, considering that he was now talking to a dual entity which was upside down, "out of those forty million people, be a few who want to return. But the TV and 'pape reports say they're all actually totally ecstatically happy. You've seen the endless TV shows, life at Newcolonizedland. It's --" The upside-down figure belched. "Lies," it said. "What?" Rachmael said. "Too perfect, Rachmael?" The figure slowly rotated until it became right-side up, and then Abba faded out; only the girl remained. "Statistically, malcontents must exist. Why do we never hear of them? And we can't go and take a look." Because, if you went by Telpor to Whale's Mouth and saw, you were there, as they were, to stay. So if you did find malcontents -- what could you do for them? Because you could not take them back; you could only join them. And he had the intuition that somehow this just wouldn't be of much use. Even the UN left Newcolonizedland alone, the countless UN welfare agencies, the personnel and bureaus newly set up by the present Secretary General Horst Bertold, from New Whole Germany: the largest political entity in Europe -- even they stopped at the Telpor gates. Neues Einige Deutschland ... NED. Far more powerful than the mangy, dwindling French Empire or the UK -- they were pale remnants of the past. And New Whole Germany -- as the election to UN Secretary General of Horst Bertold showed -- was the Wave of the Future ... as the Germans themselves liked to phrase it. "So in other words," Freya said, "you'd take an empty passenger liner to the Fomalhaut system, spend eighteen years in transit, you, the sole unteleported man, among the seven billion citizens of Terra, with the idea -- or should I say, the hope? -- that when you arrive finally at Whale's Mouth, in the year 2032, you'll find a passenger complement, five hundred or so unhappy souls who want out? And so you then can resume commercial operations ... von Einem takes them there in fifteen minutes and then eighteen years later you return them to Terra, back home to the Sol system." "Yes," he said fiercely. "Plus another eighteen years -- for them -- too -- for the flight back. For you thirty-six years in all. You'd return to Terra in the year --" She calculated. "2050 AD. I'd be sixty-one years old; Theodoric Ferry, even Horst Bertold, would be dead; perhaps Trails of Hoffman Limited wouldn't even exist, anymore ... certainly Dr. Sepp von Einem would be dead years ago; let's see: he's in his eighties now. No, he'd never live to see you reach Whale's Mouth, let alone return. So if all this is to make him feel bad --" "Is it insane?" Rachmael said. "To believe, first, that some unhappy persons must be stuck at Whale's Mouth ... and yet we're not hearing, via THL's monopoly of all info media, all energy; passing back this way. And second --" "And second," Freya said, "to want to spend eighteen years of your life in getting there to rescue them." Professional, intent, she eyed him. "Is this idealism? Or is this vengeance against Dr. von Einem because of his Telpor construct that made your family's liners and commercial carriers obsolete for inter-system travel? After all, if you do manage to leave in the Omphalos, it'll be big news, a novelty; it'll be fully covered on TV and in the 'papes, here on Terra; even the UN won't be able to squelch the story -- the first, sole, manned vessel to go to Fomalhaut, not just one of those old-time instrument packages. Why, you'd be a time capsule; we'd all be waiting for you to arrive first there and then, in 2050, back here." "A time capsule," he said, "like the one fired off at Whale's Mouth. Which never arrived here on Terra." She shrugged. "Passed Terra by, was attracted by the sun's gravitational field; was swallowed up unnoticed." "Unnoticed by any tracking station? Out of over six thousand separate monitoring devices in orbit in the Sol system none detected the time capsule when it arrived?" Frowning, Freya said, "What do you mean to imply, Rachmael?" "This time capsule," Rachmael said, "from Whale's Mouth, the launching of which we watched years ago on TV -- it wasn't detected by our tracking stations because it never arrived. And it never arrived, Miss Holm, because despite those crowd scenes it was never sent. "You mean what we saw on TV --" "The vid signals, via Telpor," Rachmael said, "which showed the happy masses at Whale's Mouth cheering at the vast public launching ceremony of the time capsule -- were fakes. I've run and rerun recordings of them; the crowd noise is spurious." Reaching into his cloak he brought out a seven-inch reel of iron oxide Ampex and tape; he tossed it onto her desk. "Play it back. Carefully. There were no people cheering. And for a good reason. Because no time capsule, containing quaint artifacts from the Fomalhaut ancient civilizations, was launched from Whale's Mouth." "But --" She stared at him in disbelief, then picked up the aud tape, held the reel uncertainly. "Why?" "I don't know," Rachmael said. "But when the Omphalos reaches the Fomalhaut system and Whale's Mouth and I see Newcolonizedland, I'll know." And, he thought, I don't think I'll find ten or sixty malcontents out of forty million ... by that time, of course, it'll be something like a billion colonists. I'll find -- He ended the thought abruptly. He did not know. But eventually he would know. In the little matter of eighteen years. |