Ballroom of the Skies

Five

The girl with the brown hair and the pale and luminous gray eyes had watched the tall figure of Dake Lorin as he boarded the bus. She stood on the corner as the bus lumbered down the block. She fished in her blouse pocket for a cigarette, drew it out of the pack between two fingers, and hung it in the corner of her mouth, lit it with a casual, vulgar snap of the cheap lighter. Smoke drifted up along the smooth brown cheek. She stood there in her cheap tight yellow dress. Chippy on the make. As good a cover as Miguel Larner had been able to devise for her.

And he had been thorough, in his remote, time-tested way, making her open her innermost screens for the hypno-fix of the cover story. You’re Karen Voss. You’re twenty-four.

Miguel had taped the fix from the fading brain of the actual Karen Voss. Thorough Miguel. A year back he had taken a job as a night orderly in a big hospital, smuggled the recorder in, and taken tapes off the ones on the way out of life. Better, he claimed, than inventing the cover. And it was better. It steamed the facts indelibly onto your brain patterns. No problem of learning how to stand, talk, walk or spit. And it gave Miguel a library of cover stories to apply when needed. Miguel’s efficiency kept the staff down. And it overburdened the existing personnel, she thought bitterly.

She gave a drifter the cold eye, and wrinkled her nose at the reek of prono that followed him down the street. Observation first. She looked along the street slowly and found only three probables. Chances were they’d used only one Stage Two agent on this. And if the hospital was hot to get at the autopsy, he’d be jackrabbit busy making the technicians see brain convolutions where there were none. Lorin would be out from under until they picked him up again.

Observation first, and then, with screens drawn tight, a quick probe at the possibles. She tried the old lady first, the dawdling window-shopper. The probe sank deep, with none of that almost metallic ping of probe against agent screen. The old lady winced and rubbed her temple. Same with the taxi driver fiddling with the motor. That was a soft mind. Babyfood mush. She hit it almost too hard. The man dropped the wrench with a clang and his knees sagged. He straightened up slowly and rubbed his eyes. She hit the third one, the man leafing through the magazine on the far corner. A good firm mind, that one. But no ping. No screens. The impact gave him a quick frown. The man took off his glasses and held them up to the light, put them back on again.

Karen Voss didn’t like the next step. This was the moment when they could punish you, knock you frothing and epileptic to the sidewalk, crunching your own bones with the muscle spasms that were the penalty for carelessness.

She lifted the outer screen, with all the caution of a kid peeking under a circus tent. With it up, you had a receptivity, but not enough. You had to get all four up, one after the other, and stand there naked. The time lag in receptivity of the potential gave them time to hit you with a full broadside.

One... two... three... four. All up. Naked in the daylight. Naked brain-stuff itching at the thought of the plunge. She attuned herself slowly up through the bands. She began receiving in the middle range. As she suspected, a Stage Two. But distant. A good hundred yards away. And only one. She brought him into closer focus, yet remaining too remote for detection. No need. He had his hands full. She could tell by the rhythm that he was producing illusion for three, or possibly four earthlings. Get any more on the scene and he might yelp for help, and as the help might come in the form of a Stage Three, Karen decided she’d better move.

Fourthreetwoone. Clack. All back and down and tight and trim. All armor in place. Now the bus. Three blocks away. Four. She dropped her cigarette, stamped daintily on it, and walked with chippy hip-switch to the corner, bland-eyed and arrogant. She wore the Pack B on the inside of her wide stiff belt. It was handiest there. She could casually hook one thumb inside the belt and work the three tiny knurled wheels. Same Senarian principle as the space cubes and the parent web, limited by the speed of thought. But even the Senarians couldn’t give you anything but a primer version. Any more than they could repair anything beyond the simplest circuits in that huge satellite brain that circled their old home planet, and was such a shrine to the heart planets. And that brain, built by the Senarians’ remotest ancestors had given them the parent web and the Pack B too many thousand years ago to count.

She could remember the manual you got at Training T when they broke you in on the Pack B. “The Pack B must be considered as a device to focus and concentrate the power of thought. Practice in visualization is highly important in utilization of Pack B. The student will carefully examine each detail of a selected portion of the game field. The student will then walk one hundred paces from that spot. The student will imagine himself standing on that selected spot with all the power of concentration and visualization. The first wheel, marked (1) in the illustration, reduces the effective value of the mass of the student to a minus power. The second wheel, marked (2), must be set for the desired range. Set the second wheel first. Visualize. Turn the first wheel one-half revolution clockwise. Turn the third wheel, marked (3), one click. If visualization is strong enough the third, or selector wheel, will reinstate effective mass at the point of visualization. After practice this can become an almost instantaneous factor. The effective range is ten thousand yards. This same principle activates the parent web and the space cubes, though in that instance, the visualization, being generated by the parent web, is of such a high order, and the power source is so great, that there are no effective limits to the range. The speed of thought is the final barrier. Beyond that any further acceleration would be contra-temporal.”

But of course one could not go about among the earthlings appearing and disappearing. It would upset them. Miguel became furious if you didn’t use the utmost caution. Get away from prying eyes when you make the jump. You have two seconds of relative invisibility at the new location. So use those two seconds to make certain you are not observed, and if there’s a chance, click it again to select the departure point and try again.

She moved into a sheltering doorway, made certain no one could see her, and then visualized herself standing on a corner watching the bus lumbering toward her a half block away. She brought into sharp focus the details of the bus.

Two, one, three. A twisty little wrench in the head, and there’s the bus, heading for you. She looked around quickly. One man in range. To him she would be the faintest silvery shimmer. She stepped behind a post, felt the quick flooding weight. She patted her brown hair, favored the man with an insolent look of appraisal. Stuffy Miguel would have frowned at that post routine. The man looked faintly startled at not having noticed her before, probably.

She pulled herself up onto the bus, dropped her fare in the box and went back, pleased to see that Lorin was sitting by himself. She eased down beside him with a pleased little sigh. Poor bewildered earthling. A good somber strength in that face. Good level mouth on him. Suddenly she remembered a very ordinary trick that she had almost overlooked. She probed quickly and lightly, felt no screen. She sighed again.

Illusions for the big man. It would take illusions to get him back to Miguel without risk of interception. Too bad direct control was so readily detectable, so obvious that anyone could catch it with just the first screen down, and catch it a mile away or more.

Trouble with illusions, they made the earthlings crack so easily. And Miguel wanted him intact. The bus speakers droned their inevitable commercials. And this lad had already had a liberal dosage of illusion.

She cast about for a reasonable idea, something that wouldn’t disrupt the other passengers. She saw a vast fat man pull himself aboard, come down the aisle sweating and puffing. The sudden hard jolt against her outermost screen shocked her. The brain made its lightning calculation of probability. She pulled all screens tight, probed the fat man. In the same split second as the hard expected “ping” occurred, she slid the stud on the catch of her handbag — a fraction of a second too late. He had blanketed her, and she retaliated quickly. Deadlock. Neither of them could yell for help now. She turned casually. He had taken the seat behind them. She looked into his bland eyes.

This time, she realized with sinking heart, they had miscalculated badly. Miguel Larner, in spite of the Branson fiasco, had thought he could retrieve it with the assignment of two Stage Two agents. So far she could count five that Shard had assigned.

The fat man tried a probe again. Apparently he thought she was a Stage One, who could be broken down. It reduced her respect for him, but that respect returned immediately as she realized he had used it as a feint, that he was busy on an illusion. A very respectable illusion. A uniformed policeman angrily waving the bus into a side street. It was almost real enough to deceive her. She thought quickly. Block the side street with something.

A blow crashed against the back of her head. As she fell forward off the seat, she cursed her own stupidity in not thinking of a definite physical attack, the most elementary move, and therefore one of the cleverest. Though consciousness slipped a bit, she held the screens tight, recovered. Lorin was helping her up.

“That fat guy hit me in the back of the head, mister!”

Lorin turned. “What’s the idea, friend?”

This time Karen Voss was ready with the illusion. The fat fist struck Dake Lorin in the face so quickly that Karen guessed Dake had no chance to notice that the fat man’s arms had stayed at his sides. She was pleased to note that Lorin had beautiful reflexes. The fat man’s head snapped back and he crumpled in the seat. She probed deeply and viciously, realizing with satisfaction that Shard would be minus one Stage Two agent until probe wounds healed, in six months. She had broken through the first two screens.

She saw a chance to simplify things. Illusion made the fat man’s head flop over at a crazy angle. This could be done with artistry. She gave the passengers a loud male voice. “Hey, you killed him!”

She took the stunned Lorin by the arm. “Come on, let’s get off this thing. There’s going to be trouble.”

She yanked the cord and pushed at Lorin, followed him to the front of the bus. He got off blindly. She took his wrist. “Come on.” People yelled at them. No one pursued. They would quiet down when they saw the fat man was all right.

Karen hurried down the block with him and around a corner. She stopped and leaned against the side of a scabrous building, dipped again into her blouse pocket to bring out a cigarette and hang it on her lower lip. Lorin lit the cigarette for her with a hand that trembled. She could sense his emotions. Distaste for her, annoyance with the situation, a vague shame that he had run. She knew that he was a troubled man, as who wouldn’t be with the illusions Shard’s agent had provided for him to block the newspaper article. Yet she was slightly uneasy. She had studied Branson and Lorin. She knew them well And now Lorin seemed a bit too upset. She wished she dared take him under full control. He might be hard to handle.

“I cert’ny want to thank you, mister.”

“That’s all right. I hope I didn’t get us in trouble, miss.”

“Karen. Karen Voss. I bet I know you. I bet you’re Dake Lorin. I used to see your picture next to your column all the time.”

He looked mildly pleased. “Don’t tell me you used to read it.”

“Sure. Maybe you wouldn’t think so. I go for that stuff. Politics, economics, international relations. I got a friend. He’s got money. Lots of money. He was saying just the other day he’d like to see you back in business. He says you used to make a lot of sense. Maybe he’d back you — buy space in a paper or something.”

“The Public Disservice Act keeps anyone from saying anything very critical, Miss Voss. I don’t think your friend would want to join me on a shale pile.”

She snorted. “Nobody touches him. Not twice anyway. I guess you heard of him. Miguel Larner.”

“The racketeer? Certainly I’ve heard of him. He’s got his hands in every filthy...”

“Don’t go Christer, Mr. Lorin. Mig has got... well, two sides to his nature. He might be a lot of help to you.” She was secretly amused at her words. “He’s a good friend of mine. Want to see him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe you’re in some kind of trouble. He likes helping people. You wouldn’t think so, would you? But he does.”

“I don’t think there’s anything he can do for me.”

“You in a rush? You got an appointment or something? It isn’t far.”

She could sense his indecision. She urged him gently. At last he agreed reluctantly. She broke the connection by sliding the stud on the catch of her bag. Miguel would have heard Lorin agree. He’d be ready. She walked beside the tall man, alert for any form of interception. She hailed a cab, settled back in the seat beside Lorin, giving him a mechanical sultry smile, crossing her round brown legs.

By the time they reached 215th Street he said, accusingly, “Not far?”

“Just a couple more blocks, honey.”

The cab let them out. Lorin paid the fare. She saw his quick curious glance at the sleek above-ground lobby. As they passed through the doorway Karen felt the barrier break, fold shut again behind them. She gave the traditional sigh of relief that came up from the stubbed toes of her shabby pumps. Nothing could touch her in here. Nothing could reach into the warm security of the egg-shaped barrier. The pointed end of the egg was above-ground, making a small dome over the entrance. The rest of the egg encircled all of the levels below-ground. Here Miguel Larner, Stage Three, presided over the agent teams, routed the field operations, maintained the communications network. Usually, the moment she was inside, she could erase the Karen Voss hypno-fix temporarily and revert to her own identity. But with Lorin in tow she had to keep her makeup on.

The Stage One at the desk had been alerted.

“We want to go down and see Mr. Larner, Johnny.” How did I do?

“I guess you can go right on down, Miss Voss.” Nice going, lady.

“Thanks, Johnny.” And scratch one Stage Two.

“You’re welcome, Miss Voss.” Don’t get too many credits. We’ll miss having you around.

She led the way back to the elevator. As it slid silently down the shaft she gratefully let the rest of the screens slip. She had released the first one to permit communication with the Stage One at the desk. She felt warmly proud of herself, knowing that she had come out of this with a credit. One step closer to the heart worlds, my girl. One step closer to Training T to become a Stage Three, and then one more tour and you’re out of it, and you can go to work. Next time, by God, they’ll have to do better than this chippy cover. The fix went a little too deep. You had to watch your reflexes.

“Have you known Larner long?”

“A pretty long time. Here we are.” The door slid back and they walked directly from the elevator into the main room of Lanier’s suite. It was a garish room, furnished with the best that Bombay supply houses could offer. One whole wall was a vast and intricate diorama, portraying a walled garden with a pool. Miguel spent a lot of his time by the pool, and the perspective was so cleverly done that it gave the impression of being a vast open space, rather than a twenty by twenty cube cut into bedrock. Miguel kept the controls set in such a way that the diorama changed through each hour of the twenty-four, from cloudless days to full-moon nights.

Miguel was sitting out by the pool in the four o’clock sunlight, a chunky sun-browned man with very little forehead and eyes like oiled anthracite. He wore lemon-yellow bathing trunks, and had a glass in his hand.

He waved casually. “How’s it going, Karen? Come on out. Who’s your friend?”

They went out by the pool. “Don’t you recognize him, Mig? It’s Dake Lorin.” Is this going to be one or two credits? I broke down a Stage Two.

Miguel reached up with a languid hand. “Nice to know you, Mr. Lorin.” I suppose you were too busy congratulating yourself to scan properly. Take another look and see why it’s only one credit for not seeing the obvious.

“I was telling Dake how you always liked his stuff, Mig.” All right, so I missed it. But when you assign two and they assign five, it keeps you busy. I see what you mean. Carelessness. Something about a fingernail.

“I’ve missed your column, Mr. Lorin. Used to get a charge out of it, the way you hacked at everybody.” Yes, they should have had somebody there ready with an illusion, checking to see if Lorin accepted the doll. “Have a drink, folks? Sit down.”

They took poolside chairs. “Gee, I’d go for a collins. How about you, Dake?” Are you getting what I’m getting, Miguel? He’s balanced on the edge. It’s a little beyond his credibility, and he is wondering about his own sanity.

Miguel pushed a button. The servant appeared almost at once. He gave the orders. So we must be very careful, girl. A little push might send him over the edge. Once we use him, maybe we can run a check and see. But I don’t think he’d make it. Rigidity there. Father image. Streak of the Puritan. Somber messiah. They seldom check through. Too dependent on the nature of reality.

“Hasn’t Mig got a nice place here, Dake?” Don’t forget the quota. He might do very nicely.

“I guess I could be classified as unemployed right now, Mr. Larner,” Dake said. “I’ve been working for the government for a year. And today my... superior died. A bit suddenly. It was sort of unofficial employment, so I guess that ends it.”

“Weren’t you working for Branson?” Miguel asked.

“Why, yes! How did you know that?”

“I got sources. I have to keep in touch. Anything Branson did might effect imports and exports. And anything that effects those, changes my income. You got any plans, Mr. Lorin?”

“I’m writing a newspaper article for Thursday publication.”

“Hot?”

“It would have been hotter if Mr. Branson hadn’t died. It will probably be classified as a Disservice to the State.”

“Putting your head in the noose, eh?”

“I suppose you could call it that. It just seems... more important than what can happen to me. Trouble, though, is that it’s critical of Darwin Branson. He’s the man who died today.”

“You need a place to work?”

“Thanks, no. A man is letting me use an office.”

“If it doesn’t work out, I got a place here you can use. A nice setup.” Do you want to fix Kelly, girl? Now that we have him here I want him to stay.

“This would be a nice quiet place to work, Dake,” Karen said. Let Dale do it. I’ve been outside too long. It made hash of my nerves, Miguel. See how restless he is getting? He wants to leave.

“I changed my mind, Karen,” Miguel said. “This is easier. I just put him under full control.”

She looked quickly at Lorin, saw the automaton rigidity of his posture, the eyes in trance. But how can you...

“Aloud, please. Para-voice is an insidious habit on tour. The easiest way to keep him here is to take full control. Let him believe he went back to Kelly and Kelly changed his mind and gave him a refund of his money, and backed out. Then we’ll release him up above in the lobby with the idea he has come here to take up my offer. It just seems simpler. Ready now, and I’ll turn him over to you. Take him to one of the rooms upstairs and give him the complete memory pattern of seeing Kelly and coming back here at, say, nine this evening. Leave him in stasis up there and then you can rest and take him up to the lobby at nine.”

Karen waited. When Miguel released Lorin she caught him deftly. There was a split second of release in which Lorin stirred and made a faint sigh, almost a moan. Then she had him. As she went through the wide doors into the main room and toward the elevator, she looked back and saw him following her with that odd walking-on-eggs stride of the controlled. There was always a pathetic vulnerability about the controlled which touched her. It seemed particularly poignant in this case, all the tall hard strength of the man following as docile as a lamb.

She took the elevator up two levels and walked him down a corridor to an empty room. Lorin sat on the edge of the bed, turned stiffly, lifted his feet up, and lay back, eyes open and staring, arms rigid at his side.

Karen sat on the edge of the bed and quickly took him through all the mechanical actions of returning to New Jersey, talking to Kelly, listening to the man’s protestations, accepting the refund, returning to the city. She took him on an aimless walk, had him eat a solitary meal, decide to take Miguel’s offer, and return to the apartment. She stopped the visualization the moment he stepped through the door, through the barrier. It was the work of but five minutes to give him the entire visualization, and it took another few seconds to push consciousness even further back so that he would remain in stasis until she called to get him.

With an impulse that surprised her a bit, she bent over and kissed his unconscious lips lightly. Poor big oaf. Poor bewildered earthling, torn this way and that. Pawn in a game he’d never know. She kissed her fingertip, touched the middle of his forehead, smiled down at him, and left the room, shutting the door quietly, even though it would have made no difference at all if she had slammed it.