The Penal Cluster Part 6

When no answer was forthcoming, the driver turned around and took a good look at his pa.s.senger. "Maybe you're a UN cop yourself, huh?"

Houston shook his head. "Nope. Some kids have been scribbling dirty words on my sidewalk, and I'm going to report it to the authorities."

The driver turned back around and looked ahead again. "Jeez! That's serious. Hadn't you better take it up with the Secretary General? I wouldn't be satisfied with no underlings in a case like that."

"I'm thinking of taking it up with the Atomic Energy Control Board,"

Houston told him. "I think those kids are using radioactive chalk."

"That's one way for 'em to get blue jeans," said the driver cryptically.

There was silence for a moment as the taxi braked smoothly to a halt, guided and controlled by the automatic machinery in the hood.

Then, suddenly, the driver said: "s.h.i.+p up!" He pointed east, along 45th Street, toward Long Island. Far in the distance was a rapidly rising vapor trail, pointing vertically toward the sky, the unmistakable sign of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p takeoff. They didn't leave often, and it was still an unusual sight.

Houston said nothing as he climbed out and paid the driver, tossing in an extra tip.

"Thanks, buddy," said the driver. "Watch out for them kids."

Houston didn't answer. He was still watching the vapor trail as the cab pulled away.

_There goes Harris_, he was thinking. _An innocent man, guilty of nothing more than being born different. And because of that, he's labelled as an inhuman monster, not even worthy of being executed.

Instead, he's taken into s.p.a.ce, filled full of hibernene, and chained to a floating piece of rock for the rest of his life._

Such was humanity's "humane" way of taking care of the bogey of Controllers. Capital punishment had been outlawed all over Earth; it had long since been proved that legalized murder, execution by the State, solved nothing, helped no one, prevented no crimes, and did infinitely more harm than good in the long run.

With the coming of the Controllers, a movement had arisen to bring back the old evil of judicial murder, but it had been quickly put down when the Penal Cl.u.s.ter plan had been put forth as a more "humane" method.

Hibernene was a drug that had been evolved from the study of animals like the bear, which spent its winters in an almost death-like sleep. A human being, given a proper dosage of the drug, lapsed into a deep coma.

The bodily processes were slowed down; the heart throbbed sluggishly, once every few minutes; thought ceased. It was the ideal prison for a mental offender that ordinary prisons could not hold.

But it wasn't quite enough for the bloodthirsty desire for vengeance that the Normals held for the Controllers. There had to be more.

Following Earth in its...o...b..t around the sun, trailing it by some ninety-three million miles, were a group of tiny asteroids, occupying what is known as the Trojan position. They were invisible from Earth, being made of dark rock and none of them being more than fifteen feet in diameter. But they had been a source of trouble in some of the early expeditions to Mars, and had been carefully charted by the s.p.a.ce Commission.

Now a use had been found for them. A man in a s.p.a.cesuit could easily be chained to one of them. With him was a small, sun-powered engine and tanks of liquified food concentrates and oxygen. Kept under the influence of hibernene, and kept cool by the chill of s.p.a.ce, a man could spend the rest of his life there--unmoving, unknowing, uncaring, dead as far as he and the rest of Mankind were concerned--his slight bodily needs tended automatically by machine.

It was a punishment that satisfied both sides of the life-or-death argument.

Houston shook off the bleak, black feeling of terrible chill that had crept over him and pushed his way into the UN Police building.

The thirteenth floor housed the Psychodeviant Division. As he stood in the rising elevator, Houston wondered wryly if the number 13 was good luck or bad in this case.

He stepped out of the elevator and headed for the Division Chief's office.

Division Chief Reinhardt was a heavy-set, balding man, built like a professional wrestler. His cold blue eyes gleamed from beneath s.h.a.ggy, overhanging brows, and his face was almost expressionless except for a faint scowl that crossed it from time to time. In spite of the fact that a Canadian education had wiped out all but the barest trace of German accent, his Prussian training, of the old Junkers school, was still evident. He demanded--and got--precision and obedience from his subordinates, although he had no use for the strictly military viewpoint of obsequiousness towards one's superiors.

He was sitting behind his desk, scowling slightly at some papers on it when Houston stepped in.

"You wanted me to report straight to you, Mr. Reinhardt?"

Reinhardt looked up, his heavy face becoming expressionless. "Ah, Houston. Yes; sit down. You did a fine job on that London affair; that's what I call coming through at the last moment."

"How so?"

"Your orders to return," he said, "were cut before you found your man.

We have a much more important case for you than some petty pilfering Controller. We are after much more dangerous game."

Houston nodded. "I see." Inwardly, he wondered. It was almost as if Reinhardt knew that Houston had found out that the recall had come early. Houston would have given his right arm at that moment to be able to probe Reinhardt's mind. But he held himself back. He had, in the past, sent tentative probes toward the Division Chief and found nothing, but he didn't know whether it would be safe now or not. It would be better to wait.

Reinhardt stood up, walked to the wall, and turned on a display screen.

He twisted a k.n.o.b to a certain setting, and a map of Manhattan Island sprang onto the screen in glowing color.

"As you know," Reinhardt said pedantically, "no Controller can do a perfect job of controlling a normal person. No matter how much he may want to make John Smith act naturally, some of the personality of the Controller will show up in the actions of John Smith. Am I correct?"

Houston nodded without saying anything. The question was purely rhetorical, and the statement was perfectly correct.

"Very well, then," Reinhardt continued, "by means of these peculiarities, our psychologists have found that there is widespread, but very subtle controlling going on right in the UN General a.s.sembly itself! The amazing thing is that they all bear the--shall we say--trademark of the same Controller. Whoever he is, he seems to have a long-range plan in mind; he wants to change, ever so slightly, certain international laws so that he will profit by them. Do you follow?"

"I follow," said Houston.

"Good. It has taken painstaking research and a great deal of psychological statistical a.n.a.lysis, but we have found that one company--and one company only--benefits by these legal changes. Did you ever hear of La.s.ser & Sons?"

"Sure," said Houston. "They're in the import-export business, with a few fingers in s.h.i.+pping and air transport."

"That's them," said Reinhardt. "Someone in that company, presumably someone at the top, is a Controller. And he's a very subtle, very dangerous man. Unlike the others, there is nothing hasty or overt in his plans. But within a few years, if this goes on, he will have more power than the others ever dreamed of."

"And my job is to get him?" Houston asked.

Reinhardt nodded. "That's it. Get him. One way or another. You're in charge; I don't care how you do it, but this one Controller is more dangerous than any other we've come across, so get him."

Houston nodded slowly. "Okay. Can you give me all the data you have so far?"

Reinhardt patted a heavy folder on his desk. "It's all here." Then he tapped the projected map on the screen. "That's the La.s.ser Building--Church Street at Worth. Somewhere in there is the man we're looking for."

David Houston spent the next six weeks gathering facts, trying to determine the ident.i.ty of the mysterious Controller at La.s.ser & Sons.

Slowly, the evidence began to pile up.

At the same time, he worried over his own problem. Who was betraying non-criminal Controllers to the PD Police?

In that six-week period, two more men and a woman were arrested--one in Spain, one in India, and one in Hawaii.