Day After Tomorrow

XX

From the dash compartment he brought a heavy automatic and checked the clip. He jacked a cartridge into the barrel and put the gun in his hip pocket, then left the car and walked toward the garages. Time was running out now.

He strode into the only open door, without shifting pace. Two men were posted nearby, neither of them truckmen by appearance. They looked at him in surprise.

Larry clipped out, “The password is Judgement. I’ve got to see Professor Voss immediately.”

One of them frowned questioningly, but the other was taken up with the urgency in Woolford’s voice. He nodded a direction. “He’s over there in the office.”

Now ignoring them completely, Larry strode past the low rows of sealed delivery vans toward the office.

He pushed the door open, entered and closed it behind him.

Professor Peter Voss was seated at a paper-littered desk. There was a cot with a rumpled army blanket in a corner of the room, some soiled clothing and two or three dirty dishes on a tray. The room was being lived in, obviously.

At the agent’s entry, the little man looked up and blinked in distress through his heavy lenses.

Larry snapped, “You’re under arrest, Voss.”

The Professor was, on the face of it, dismayed, but he said in as vigorous a voice as he could muster, “Nonsense! On what charge?”

“Counterfeiting, among many. Your whole scheme has fallen apart, Voss. You and your Movement, so-called, are finished.”

The Professor’s eyes darted. To Larry Woolford’s surprise, the Movement’s leader was alone in here. Undoubtedly, he was awaiting others, drivers of the trucks, technicians involved in the rockets, other subordinates. But right now he was alone.

If Larry correctly diagnosed the situation, Voss was playing for time, waiting for the others. Good enough, so was Larry Woolford. Had the Professor only known it, a shout would have brought at least two of his followers on the run and the government agent would have had his troubles.

Woolford played along. “Just what is this fantastic scheme of yours for raining down money over half the country, Voss? The very insanity of it proves your whole outfit is composed of a bunch of nonconformist weirds.”

The Professor was indignant—and stalling for time. He said, “Nonconformists is correct! He who conforms in an incompetent society is an incompetent himself.”

Larry stood, his legs apart and hands on hips. He shook his head in simulated pity at the angry little man. “What’s all this about raining money down over the country?”

“Don’t you see?” the other said. “The perfect method for disrupting our present system of social-labels. With billions of dollars, perfect counterfeit, strewing the streets, the fields, the trees, the housetops, available for anyone to pick up, all social currency becomes worthless. Utterly unuseable. And it’s no use to attempt to print more with another design, because we can duplicate it as well. Our experts are the world’s best, we’re not a bunch of sulking criminals, but capable, trained, dedicated men.

“Very well! We will have made it absolutely impossible to have any form of mass-produced social currency.”

Larry stared at him. “It would completely foul the whole business system. You’d have chaos!”

“At first. Private individuals, once the value of money was seen to be zero, would have lost the amount of cash they had on hand. But banks and such institutions would lose little. They have accurate records that show the actual values they held at the time our money rains down.”

Larry was bewildered. “But what are you getting at? What do you expect to accomplish?”

The Professor, on his favorite subject, said triumphantly, “The only form of currency that can be used under these conditions is the personal check. It’s not mass-produced, and mass-production can’t duplicate it. It’s immune to the attack. Business has to go on or people will starve, so personal checks will have to replace paper money. Credit cards and traveler’s checks won’t do. We can counterfeit them too, and will, if necessary. Realize of course that hard money will still be valid, but it can’t be utilized for any but small transactions. Try taking enough silver dollars to the store with you to buy a refrigerator.”

“But what’s the purpose?” Larry demanded, flabbergasted.

“Isn’t it obvious? Our whole Movement is devoted to the destruction of social-label judgements. It’s all very well to say: You should not judge your fellow man but when it comes to accepting another man’s personal check, friend, you damn well have to! The bum check artist might have a field day to begin with—but only to begin with.”

Larry shook his head in exasperation. “You people are a bunch of anarchists,” he said.

“No,” the Professor denied. “Absolutely not. We are the antithesis of the anarchist. The anarchist says, ‘No man is capable of judging another.’ We say, ‘Each man must judge his fellow, must demand proper evaluation of him.’ To judge a man by his clothes, the amount of money he owns, the car he drives, the neighborhood in which he lives, or the society he keeps, is out of the question in a vital culture.”

Larry said sourly, “Well, whether or not you are right, Voss, you’ve lost. This place is surrounded. My men will be breaking in shortly.”

Voss laughed at him. “Nonsense. All you’ve done is to prevent us from accomplishing this portion of our program. What will you do after my arrest? You’ll bring me to trial. Do you remember the Scopes Monkey Trial back in the 1920s which became a world-appreciated farce and made Tennessee a laughingstock? Well, just wait until you get me into court backed with my organization’s resources. We’ll bring home to every thinking person, not only in this country but in the world, the fantastic qualities of our existing culture. Why, Mr-Secret-Agent-of-Anti-Subversive-Activity, you aren’t doing me any injury by giving me the opportunity to have my day in court. You’re doing me a favor. Newspapers, radios, Tri-Di will give me the chance to expound my program in the home of every thinking person in the world.”

There was a fiery dedication in the little man’s eyes. “This will be my victory, not my defeat!”

There were sounds now, coming from the other rooms—the garages. There were shouts and scuffling. Faintly, Larry could hear Steve Hackett’s voice.

He was ogling the Professor, his eyes narrower.

The Professor was on his feet. He said in defiant triumph, “You think that you, personally, will win prestige and honor as a result of tracking the Movement down, don’t you, Mr. Woolford? You probably figure on promotion. Well, let me tell you, you won’t! In six months from now, Mr. Woolford, you’ll be a laughingstock.”

That did it.

Larry said, “You’re under arrest. Turn around with your back to me.”

The Professor snorted his contempt, turned his back and held up his hands, obviously expecting to be searched.

In a fluid motion, Larry Woolford drew his gun and fired twice. The other, with no more than a grunt of surprise and pain, stumbled forward to his knees and then to the floor, his arms and legs akimbo.

The door broke open and Steve Hackett, gun in hand, burst in.

“Woolford!” he barked. “What’s up?

Larry indicated the body on the floor. “There you are, Steve,” he said. “The head of the counterfeit ring. He was trying to escape so I had to shoot him.”

Behind Steve Hackett crowded Ben Ruthenberg of the F.B.I. and behind him half a dozen others of various departments.

The Boss came pushing his way through. He glared down at the Professor’s body, then up at Larry Woolford.

“Good work, Lawrence,” he said. “How did you bring it off?”

Larry replaced the gun in his hip pocket and shrugged modestly. “I got a bit of information on a leak in our office from Ilya Simonov, over the Soviet Complex Embassy. How he got it, I haven’t the vaguest idea. At any rate, it was the Polk girl. I gave her some Scop-Serum in a drink and she talked. Evidently, she was a prominent member of the Movement.”

The Boss was nodding wisely. “I’ve had an eye on her, Lawrence. An obvious weird. But we’ll have to suppress that Scop-Serum angle. Knowing you, I can imagine you were discrete.” He slapped his favorite field man on the arm jovially. “Well, boy, this means promotion, of course. I can use a right hand man.”

Larry grinned. “Thanks, sir. All in a day’s work. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble with the remnants of this Movement thing. The pitch is to treat them as counterfeiters, not subversives. Try them for that. Their silly explanations of what they were going to do with it, the money, will never be taken seriously.”

He looked down at the small corpse. “Particularly now that their kingpin is gone.”

A new wave of agents, F.B.I. men and prisoners washed into the room and Steve Hackett and Larry were for a moment pushed back into a corner by themselves.

Steve looked at him strangely and said, “Did you really have to shoot him, Woolford?”

Larry brushed it off. “What’s the difference? He was as weird as they come, wasn’t he?”