hunter left his autojet on the parking flat behind the house. he fed enough coins in the meter to hold the car for twenty-four hours. he didn't know how fast he'd want an autojet after he talked to mrs. ames, but he didn't want a chance passer-by to pick up his car if the charter expired.
it was necessary for him to ring a bell manually, by means of a metal button fixed to the wooden frame of the front door. no scanner announced his arrival, nor did any soundless auto-door respond to a beam transmitted from within the house. after a time hunter heard footsteps. a strange woman—probably a new resident who had taken ann's place—opened the door.
"i'm captain hunter," he said. "i came to see mrs. ames."
"won't you come in, captain?" the woman replied.
she led him into a front room which, ann had once told him, had been called a living room. a peculiar name, surely, for the room appeared to have been designed solely as a place to sit while watching tri-d—or flat-screen television, as it had been called in its early developmental stage when the house was new—or to hear someone play the bulky instrument known as a piano.
the room was an example of the appalling waste of space so common to the twentieth century. it was extremely spacious, but neither food tubes nor bed drawers were concealed in the walls.
hunter had always been curious about the piano. it amazed him that it had been operated entirely by hand. there was no electric scanner to read the mood of the player and interpret it in melody. driven to contrive his own harmonics, how could the twentieth century man have derived any satisfaction at all from music? his sensibilities had been immature, of course. but even so, an instrument which demanded so much individual creativeness must have been an enormous frustration.
since so many surviving twentieth century machines made the same demand on the individual—their automobiles, for example, had been individually directed, without any sort of electronic safety control—it had puzzled both hunter and ann that the incidence of maladjustment in the past had been so low.
the captain dropped into a comfortable, chintz-covered rocking chair—one relic in this island of time that he really enjoyed. "will you tell mrs. ames i'm here?" he asked the stranger.
"i'm mrs. ames."
"i mean mrs. janice ames—the owner of the house."
the woman smiled woodenly. "you're speaking to her, captain, though i must say i don't remember ever having met you before."
"you don't remember—"
fear clutched at his heart. he sprang up, moving toward her with clenched fists. "an hour ago i called mrs. ames from the spaceport. i saw her. here—in this room."
"i've owned this house all my life, captain." her expression was more than good acting. she spoke with utter conviction, and seemed completely sure of herself. "you must be—" she hesitated and looked at him sharply. "have you checked your adjustment index recently?"
"i haven't lost my mind, if that's what you're getting at," he said. "where's ann saymer?"
"believe me, please. the name is totally unfamiliar to me." the woman was painfully sympathetic—and frankly scared. she backed away from him. "you need help from the clinic, captain. will you let me call them for you?"
suddenly the light fell full on her face, and hunter saw the tiny, still-unhealed scalpel wounds on both sides of her skull. the light glowed on the microscopic filament of platinum wire clumsily left projecting through the incision.
he understood, then. this woman was wearing one of ann's patented grids, sealed into her cerebral cortex. it made her into a robot, responding with unquestioning obedience to the direction of ann's transmitter. and hunter had no doubt that united manipulated the transmission.
simultaneously he realized something else. if the cartel went to this extreme to forestall his search for ann, she must still be alive. for some reason they still needed her. possibly her patent drawings had been submitted for government registry in such a way that only ann understood them.
ann had been through the general school, and knew what the score was. she would have protected her invention—and incidentally insured her own survival—if she could have possibly done so, even at a fearful risk to herself.
hunter swung toward the door. it did not occur to him to call the police, since they were all cartel mercenaries. whatever he did to help ann, he would have to do on his own. until he found her, he could count on help from consolidated. after that—nothing.
he jerked open the front door—and froze. three men were waiting on the porch with drawn blasters. hunter had no time to recognize facial features which it might have been to his advantage to remember later, no time to find any identifying insignia on their tunics. with a barely visible flickering fire arced from one of the weapons, and pain exploded in his body, unconsciousness washed into his brain.
his first sensation when the paralysis began to wear off was the dull ache of visceral nausea. he opened his eyes, and saw, bleakly shadowed, the living room of the ames house. it was after dark, which could only mean that he had lain there nearly four hours. to knock him out for that period of time, they must have given him a nearly lethal charge from the blaster calculated just under the limit of physical endurance.
his motor control and his sense of touch returned more slowly. for a quarter of an hour he lay helpless in the chintz-covered rocker, feeling nothing but a tingling, like pin-pricks of fire, in his arms and legs.
he looked down and saw that he held a blaster in his hand—his own blaster, which he had left in his room in the roost. he did not yet have the neural control to release his fingers from the firing dial.
as his sense of hearing was restored, he became aware that the tri d had been left on. the screen pictured the swirling confusion of a mob. an announcer was describing the sudden outburst of labor violence which had occurred in the industrial district that afternoon. eric young's u.f.w. had gone on strike against a dozen separate plants.
essential plants, naturally. everything was always essential, and government spokesmen always made pretty speeches deploring the situation. it was a pattern familiar to hunter for years. one of the cartels would pay young to strike factories belonging to the other. then a second bribe, paid by the struck cartel, bought off the strike. occasionally a sop of bonus credits had to be dished out to the faithful.
it was not a maneuver either consolidated or united used frequently, because the advantage was transitory, and the only long-term winner was eric young.
this time there was a slight variation in the formula. young had struck plants of both cartels. that puzzled hunter, but any curiosity he felt was subordinate to his disgust. how much longer would this farce go on before it dawned on the rank and file of the u.f.w. that eric young was playing them all for suckers? hunter tried to get up to snap off the telecast. he managed only to throw himself awkwardly over the arm of the chair.
and then he saw the body on the floor—the body of the genuine mrs. ames, charred by a ragged blaster wound seared through her breast. they had murdered her—naturally with his blaster—and left him at the scene, neatly framed for the crime.
hunter heard—right on cue—the whine of a police siren outside. everything timed to trap him just as the motor paralysis wore off! with an effort that brought beads of sweat to his forehead, he dropped his blaster and pushed himself out of the chair. his feet were numb. he moved a few steps and banged into the piano. clawing for support, his hands crashed in jangling discord on the keys.
the siren swelled loud in front of the house. hunter heard the drum-beat of boots on the porch. he stumbled toward the kitchen—and fell into the arms of two police officers who had entered from the rear of the house.
he swung his fist; the fingers felt like clods of wet clay. one of the mercenaries caught his wrist and held it easily. in the gloom hunter saw the consolidated insignia on the man's jacket, and the guard whispered quickly, "this deal was a set-up, hunter—packaged evidence, dropped at headquarters ten minutes ago."
hunter stared. "accusing me by name? get this straight! four hours ago they put me under with a blaster and—"
"it's a united frame," the guard said. "they want you out for good. the top brass of consolidated is giving you the green right down the line. the fastest out jake and i could figure—" he jerked his head toward his companion. "—was to give the united boys on our team the front of the house, and let you make a break for it from the back. we'll fake enough here to protect ourselves."
they pushed a blaster into hunter's hands. he stumbled through the kitchen as the front door gave and two united mercenaries burst into the house. hunter ran awkwardly, without full control of his legs.
he saw, looming black against the night shadows, the oval silhouette of the autojet on the ames flat, still held under his twenty-four hour charter. it offered a tempting means of escape, but a public car was too easily traced and brought down by police tracers. however, it could perform a miracle as a diversion.
