World Without Children

III

THEY left the ’copter on the roof of a theater building and stopped at the nearest public phone booth to try to reach Luther and Morey. Both were still out of range. Then they went looking for a suitable hiding place for Art.

In Venice—in any modern city—there were a million places to get very thoroughly lost. There were discreet apartment houses, residence hotels, ’copter courts— and there were the vice houses. George, knowing Art’s staid habits, chose one of the latter. The police would also know Art and might not look there.

For the benefit of those with scruples or reputations, entrance to the house was by way of a series of little cubicles lining one side of an arcade. The other side was rented to a group of second-rate but bona fide shops. Having inspected the merchandise displayed there and assured himself that no acquaintances were lurking in the corridor, a prospective client could simply step across into the nearest vacant cubicle and shut the door. Inside, a polite voice from a wall speaker asked to be allowed to learn your wishes, registered you under any name you chose to give, and allotted you a room, a suite, a wing or a floor according to your wishes and your pocketbook.

George, speaking German with a thick and slightly drunken Munschener accent, affected hesitation and asked for a resume of the house’s attractions. The invisible clerk immediately switched to impeccable Low German and suggested, “The Herren would possibly like to inspect-the ladies in one of the private salons before making a choice? Or perhaps one of the theaters first? Or if the Herren require any stimulation—?” He proceeded to describe some of the entertainments now being offered in the theaters, and to name the various species of stimulants that were available to clients.

“No,” said George fuzzily. “Later, later. We are already too drunk. Give us just a room—no, a suite. The best.”

“Certainly. Sixty lira, please.” George put the notes into the slot in the counter. A receipt and two door keys popped out, and the right wall of the cubicle rolled back to reveal a tiny self-service elevator. “Suite C 35,” said the clerk. “Turn right when you leave the elevator.”

The suite was eminently comfortable: three bedrooms, two baths, living room, game room, and even a tiny gymnasium; but Art grumbled. “Dammit, George, I suppose I shouldn’t complain when you’ve just saved my neck, but I can’t see your sense of humor. Anyway, what are these people going to think when I keep staying here but don’t have any women up?”

“Probably think we’re queer,” George suggested. Then, as Art seemed about to explode, he added hastily. “It’ll be good for you, Art — teach you humility and not condemning your fellow man and so forth. Anyhow, you’ve got to admit it’s safe.”

“All right,” said Art, brushing the subject aside. “Listen, do you have any idea where Luther and Morey might be, or when they’re due back?”

“Not the faintest,” George admitted. “Luther has his cat farm up near Turino—he might have gone there—but he might just as easily have run over to Praha or even Wembley for a couple of days. Morey might have gone back to North America—I hope so—but in any case I don’t see how we can risk a ’gram without giving the whole show away.”

“No,” agreed Art. He scowled and bit his lip. “Just the same, we’ve got to locate them. I have a hunch the S. P. is just as anxious to find them as we are.”

George lifted one eyebrow. “You think they’re clairvoyant?”

“No. I think that up till an hour ago, Golightly’s crowd took me just seriously enough to want me out of the way. But since you’ve pulled that television-serial act with the ’copter, I’m willing to bet that they’re seriously alarmed. I told you they must have our meeting on tape, so they’ll know Luther and Morey are involved. You, too, of course.”

George sat down on the edge of a large, circular divan, upholstered in aphrodisia red. He said thoughtfully, “Well, what do we do? If we all run, then we’ll just be advertising our whereabouts, won’t we?”

Art nodded grimly But if the S. P. gets hold of any of the four of us, I wouldn’t give much for our chances of seeing daylight again.” .

George stared at him. “I suppose I’m naive, but it seems to me that you’re implying they’ll use illegal methods—truth serum and so on.”

“I think they will,” Art said positively. “George, you were born into this society, so I wouldn’t expect you to realize, emotionally, just how unstable it really is. You’ve read about the series of religious wars that followed the big blowup, and the Asian massacres, but I suppose it’s never occurred to you that that kind of thing could happen again. It could, and nobody knows it better than Golightly. By education and technology and, let’s face it, by the execution of everybody who really objected, this planet has been forced to keep its birth-rate at zero. But the1 urge to reproduce,’ next to the survival instinct, is one of the strongest forces in nature. Tilt the balance of control just enough, and Golightly’s government would go over like a house of cards. And just incidentally, Golightly is about as paranoid as you can get without being locked up. I know the man. He’ll do anything to keep himself in the driver’s seat.”

George felt himself going a trifle pale. He said, “In that case, I suppose I’d better get busy. I’ll call every place they could possibly be. You stay here, Art. I’ll come back and report as soon as I can”

He found a public booth in the concourse nearby, and spent an expensive twenty minutes trying to locate Morey at his headquarters in Des Moines, and Luther at Turino, Praha, Wembley and points in between.

Gloomily, he called Art at the vice house, using the name he had given in registering. “No luck so far,” he said in German. “See here, have you looked at the fax or the video newscasts?”

“Yes. Nothing of interest there.”

“Do you think they may have been found already?”

“It’s possible,” said Art’s earnest voice, “but I think it’s unlikely. Anyone like those two is terribly hard to track down at a moment’s notice, as you are finding out. If we can get them within the next few hours, I think We’ll be in time. Keep trying.”

George rang off and sat thinking for a moment. Actually, the possible number of places where either Luther or Morey might be at this moment included everything within a day’s flight from Venice, meaning the major part of Earth’s surface. If he kept on calling relay stations at random, it might easily take him days to hit the right one. There had to be a quicker way.

How about the agony columns in the Telefax papers? George considered the probable cost briefly, and whistled softly to himself. Another difficulty was that it would mean showing his hand; the S. P. would almost certainly see the messages, whether Luther and Morey did or not. But he could think of no other answer.

He plucked a doodle-sheet from the pad fixed to the wall of the booth, and set down a rough draft of the message. Dissatisfied, he scratched it out and tried again. After six attempts, he had:

WORLD FATHERS OF VERMONT AND LOUISIANA: Serious charges have been leveled against revered Father Owl of California. Abandon your worldly identities immediately and fly to consult with your brethren. The meeting will assemble in the place of the Drowned Insect.

It sounded silly enough, he hoped, to pass as an ordinary notice intended for one of the innumerable crackpot sects which had sprung up after the power of the organized churches had been crushed. He couldn’t make it more specific, but he hoped “Vermont and Louisiana” would serve to attract Luther’s and Morey’s attention—the name of a man’s home state will usually stand out from a page of type almost as well as his own name — and “World Fathers” and “Father Owl of California” would make the identification certain.

The last line was a long shot. He had to indicate a meeting place without naming it; “the place of the Drowned Insect” was a restaurant in (Venice where the three of them, a few years before, had been served a tureen of soup with a dead cockroach floating in the center of it. Also, he had to tell them to assume false names, and if possible get across the idea that they were to disguise themselves. Here again, he couldn’t be too explicit; “abandon your worldly identities” was the best he could think of.

When he read it over, it seemed like a forlorn hope either that the two men would see the notice or that they would read it correctly. But he took the slidewalk down to the nearest fax agency and fed the message into a machine, adding the code numbers for all the local papers served by the Mediterranean Agency, which covered southern and eastern Europe, part of what had once been the Soviet Union and most of North Africa.

The cost was approximately two hundred times the amount of cash he was carrying, and this worried him until he reflected that he was undoubtedly on the S. P. list, if Art was right; there was no point in trying to conceal his tracks. He wrote a check and fed it into the machine.

While he waited for its acknowledgment, he set up the same message on another machine and coded it for the PanAmerican Syndicate. He went through the same procedure twice more, once for the North Atlantic Agency and once for the All-Asia Syndicate.

When he was finished, his Venetian bank account was in a state of near collapse.

The bank itself was only a few blocks away, near the Rialto bridge. As an afterthought, he went there and closed out his account, pocketing the cash. It had occurred to him that, again supposing that Art was right, the government would very likely impound their property. He wished he had included a suggestion of this kind in the message to Luther and Morey, but it was too late to worry about it.

He went back to the vice hoгse, conferred with Art, and then took himself to “the Place of the Drowned Insect.”

The restaurant was an old-fashioned one, catering to those who liked human service well enough to pay the almost astronomical prices imposed by the waiters’ salaries. At that, George noticed, the place was understaffed. In another century or so, he supposed, nobody would be able to hire any kind of servant for less than a division chief’s pay.

He found an inconspicuous table at the rear, ordered minestrone and spaghetti marinara, and waited. When the spaghetti gave out, he ordered a half bottle of claret. He made the wine last as long as he could, then bought a newspaper at the fax machine across the room and ordered another half-bottle.

He checked to make sure his ad had been entered properly, read the paper through, and then, through sheer boredom, read it completely through again. He was beginning to feel awash with wine, and the waiter was glancing at him with obvious irritation each time he passed. George caught his eye and ordered a pastry and coffee. When that was gone, he ordered more coffee. Then he went back to wine.

Eventually it became impossible to think of taking another sip of the stuff. George sat and stared glassily at the half-empty bottle, wondering why he had not had the God-given sense to make the meeting place a library, or an opium den, or anything at all except a restaurant.

“Came as soon as I could,” said Luther’s voice. “What’s up?”

George looked around with enormous relief to see the little man easing into the chair opposite.

“Luther!” he said. “I couldn’t be gladder to see you!” He smothered a belch. “You haven’t gone back to your apartment, have you?”

“No, of course not. Why?”

“Don’t. According to Art, we’re all about two jumps away from Jail. Where were you, and how did you come back?”

“In Milano. I wanted to see a man there who claimed he had a new strain of Abyssinians. Came back by plane, the same way I Went up. Why?”

“Good Lord,” said George. “You were lucky they didn’t nab you at the airport. All right, the next thing is, give me checks for any funds you’ve got in Venetian banks. Wait a minute. First, do you have any idea where Morey might be?”

“Marseilles, I think. Now why—”

George stood up somewhat unsteadily. “I’ll try to call him there while you’re writing the checks. Don’t order anything till I get back.”

He returned in a moment. “No luck. Either he’s on the way back, or you were mistaken. Got the checks?”

“Yes. Here. But listen, George, take pity on my ignorance, will you? What’s happened to Art? Why do you want all my money? I feel as if I’d come in at the second act.”

“I’ll explain it all to you later or Art will. Oh, damn!” He looked at his watch. “The banks are closed, aren’t they?” He tore up the three slips of paper Luther had handed him and stuffed the fragments in his pocket. “Well, look. Art is in the Hotel Scato on the Ruza Vecchia, Suite C 35. Speak German and ask for Herr Bauernfeind—that’s the name I gave when I registered. You go on up there as fast as you can, but use the slidewalks; don’t take a ‘copter. I’ll stay here—” George looked unhappily at the wine bottle— “and wait till Morey shows up, or the place closes.”

Luther stood up. “All right. Look, though, if Morey is on the way here, and if he started about when I did, he might be within phone range by now. Why don’t you try calling him again?”

George clutched at the idea. “I will. Walt for me.” He Went to the booth again and dialed Morey’s number.

A voice said, “This is Stiles.”

George sighed happily. He said, “George, Morey. How long will it take you to get here? … You saw the ad?… Good. I’ll meet you outside.”

An hour later they were all together in Art’s suite, listening to a video newscaster announce, “The following persons are wanted by the Security Police for questioning in connection with a conspiracy against the peace. Please memorize these names and pictures. If you see one of these persons, communicate immediately with your local S. P. office. Arthur Benjamin Levinson, age 341; residence, Pasadena, California; profession, geneticist. Luther Wallace Wheatley, age 357; residences in Venice, Mexico City and Caulfield, Vermont; independently wealthy.” Three more pictures and descriptions of Luther’s friends appeared, then George’s. Morey was far down the list, which was a long one.

“They’ll narrow it down,” said Art Levinson. “In a couple of days, at the most, they’ll have located all but the four of us. Then you’ll really see a fox hunt.”

Morey’s long face was gloomy. “It don’t look good, Art. If you want my opinion, we’re licked.”

“I didn’t say the fox hunt would succeed,” Levinson said. “We can slip the hounds and, as long as we’re free, we have a chance to get our program across.”

Morey shook his head. “Maybe you got some reason to be optimistic, but I don’t see it. We’ve got to throw out all the plans we’ve made so far, ain’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, will you tell me what in blazes we can do? How much money have we got between us?”

They counted up. George had a little over two thousand international credits, Art four hundred, Luther not quite a thousand, and Morey, surprisingly, five thousand.

“It’s union money,” he said glumly. “If we spend it, that’s one more crime chalked up against us. Not that it’ll matter. Anyhow, we got just short of eighty-three hundred credits. How far can we get with that?”

“Not very far—if we run,” said Art. “If we run, they’ll catch us. I think we can take that as a mathematical certainty. That disposes of one of the three alternatives we have, as I see it.”

“The other two being?” asked Luther.

“We can give ourselves up,” said Art. “Or we can fight. It may seem funny, but I honestly think the safest thing we can do—supposing for a minute that we’re just interested in saving our necks —is to fight. Or let’s say to resist. The other two ways are the next thing to suicide.”

Art’s round face was flushed with enthusiasm. Luther was smiling quietly, and there was a faint gleam even in Morey’s pale eye. George felt a trifle left out. He had an absurd picture of the four of them behind a barricade, doing battle with an endless swarm of policemen.

“Somebody explain this to me, will you?” he asked plaintively.

“He’s too young to remember,” said Luther kindly. “Tell the boy, Art.”

Art leaned forward earnestly, and unconsciously the three hitched themselves forward a little in their chairs.

“George, you probably haven’t read much about the two so-called World Wars’ that preceded the Last War, because in historical perspective they were only a sort of preliminary. But during the second one, when Germany had overrun most of Europe, there was a thing called the Resistance. An underground movement. Their situation was very much like ours—they didn’t have enough of an organization to attack openly, or even defend themselves openly. But they did what they could—sabotage, espionage, propaganda, and some guerrilla warfare. In effect, they made themselves one hell of a nuisance to the Germans. We can do the same thing.”

“There were more than four of them, though, weren’t there?” George asked.

Art said, “An analogy is just an analogy, George, not an identity. As it happens, Golightly’s government has one serious disadvantage that the Germans didn’t have. The Germans were a frankly oppressive group to begin with, operating to the full extent of their power. Golightly’s crowd can’t fight even a small resistance group—and we’ll grow, don’t worry — without assuming the characteristics of a tyranny. And, George, this planet simply isn’t weak enough or sick enough, economically and politically, to hold still for a tyrant.

“This present group has been continuously in power for more than two centuries, and there isn’t one of the inner circle that wouldn’t like to extend their power. But we’ve still got a democracy. Why? Because they haven’t got a power concept behind them. They’ve kept office all this time because they’re the best administrators and practical politicians on the planet, and that’s all. If they stop acting in the people’s interest – which they’ve already done — and if enough of the people find out about it—which they will—their goose is cooked.”

“This is revolution you’re talkin’ about,” said Morey gently. “A lot of people’re going to get hurt.”

“I know it,” replied Art, looking grimly unhappy. “Show me another way, Morey, and I’ll grab it.”

“This is just for the record, so to speak,” Morey said. “There’s an election coming up in eighteen months. We might be able to hook up with Golightly’s opposition and get them in.”

Luther snorted. “Di Falco? That man is the eternal disappointed candidate.”

“And,” said Art, “we can’t wait eighteen months. All right?”

“Grant the point,” agreed Morey reluctantly.

“Okay. Here’s a tentative list of tactics I’ve made up. You’ll notice that I’ve tried to put the emphasis on things that will provoke the government into illegal and, if possible, violent acts. It’s like ju-jitsu—we’ve got to make them use their own strength against themselves.”

“Let’s see that,” said Morey, with such enthusiasm that the other three stared at him. “It’s been a long time since a union man had to hit below the belt, but I remember a few tricks, can dig up more from the old books, and maybe invent some of my own.”