Mind, Machines and Evolution Part 13

"Cancel my call for seven hundred hours. Also, I'd like a room breakfast at seven-thirty-two eggs, bacon, tomatoes, toast, coffee. Okay?"

"Okay."

Pause.

"That's all."

"Thank you." Click.

Kra.s.sen flipped off the switch and interlaced his fingers behind his head as he settled back to reflect on the events of the past ten days. Experience had taught him that this was the time to catch any danger signals that might have been thrown up by his subconscious data processing during the night. Once whatever the new day had in store had begun to unfold, they would be lost forever.

His voyage from Mars-as a regular fare-paying pa.s.senger aboard the Sirius-cla.s.s photon-drive s.h.i.+p Percival Lowell-had pa.s.sed without incident. Upon his arrival at the Earth-orbiting transfer satellite, the pa.s.sport and papers identifying him as Paul Langley, structural design engineer, citizen of the Federation of Martian City-States, visiting Earth for two weeks' vacation, had pa.s.sed the scrutiny of the immigration officials. Nothing to worry about there-everything had gone smoothly.

The shuttle from the transfer satellite had brought him down thirty miles north of Oklahoma City limits at Roosevelt s.p.a.ceport, where, as prearranged, he had collected a package from the information desk at the east end of the arrivals terminal. The package had contained the key to a baggage locker, and inside the locker he had found a black briefcase. The briefcase had provided the items that he would need for the a.s.signment, including a complete set of personal doc.u.ments relating to one Dr. Hadley B. Kra.s.sen, in whose affairs he had already been thoroughly schooled. Also, there were the keys to Kra.s.sen's personal airmobile, located three hundred miles away in the public parking area at Kansas City International Airport.

Who the "real" Hadley Kra.s.sen was the a.s.sa.s.sin didn't know and probably never would. Hadley Kra.s.sen was a sleeper-an agent quietly injected into an ordinary, everyday position in American society, possibly years previously, since which time he had maintained banking and credit accounts, acquired ground driver's and airmobile pilot's licenses, and generally performed all the functions expected of a statistical unit in the federal data banks. Whoever had been Hadley Kra.s.sen would already have been spirited away to some low-profile existence elsewhere. If, by some inspired piece of detective work, the authorities managed to trace anything that happened subsequently back to Hadley Kra.s.sen, it wouldn't matter very much; by that time, "Hadley Kra.s.sen" would have ceased to exist.

After arriving at Roosevelt and collecting the briefcase, the a.s.sa.s.sin had rented an airmobile, still as Paul Langley, and flown it to Kansas City Airport. On arrival there he had confirmed his reservation on a suborbital flight to London in fourteen days' time. Then he had switched ident.i.ties.

He had locked all of Langley's papers, including the ticket to London, inside the rented airmobile and secured the keys out of sight up inside the undercarriage recess. Then, carrying only Kra.s.sen's papers and with nothing on him to link him with Paul Langley in any way, he had walked down two levels of the airmobile park, located Kra.s.sen's vehicle, and departed on a ten-day hotel-hopping tour of the North American continent. Thereafter he had faithfully acted out the part of a holidaymaker with a surplus of money and time and a shortage of ideas as to how to spend both of them. So far as "his" employers-the Fellerman Chemical Company of Long Island-were concerned, Dr. Kra.s.sen had left on two weeks'

vacation and was strictly incommunicado. Anybody calling his apartment would have discovered that before leaving he had not programmed his infonet terminal to forward incoming calls.

During those ten days he had detected nothing suspicious. His tortuous meanderings about nearly a dozen cities, back and forth among the ramps, terraces, and walkways of the pedestrian precincts, on and off the autocabs, had failed to reveal any sign of a tail. There had been no unlikely coincidences, such as the same face appearing in two different restaurants a mile apart, or a fellow hotel guest "happening"

to choose the same bar as he for an evening drink of the far side of town. His comings and goings had not been watched by curious eyes s.h.i.+elded by newspapers in hotel lobbies; no room that he stayed in had been searched; his vehicle had not been opened during his absence. He allowed himself to arrive at the conclusion therefore that he was, with a high degree of certainty, "clean."

He rose, took a shower, and shaved, moving with the unhurried ease of one conditioned to the notion that haste and disaster go hand in hand. That done, he selected his clothing from piles arranged the night before on top of the room's second, unused bed. The lightweight undervest, made from a foam-filled honeycomb of toughened nylon mesh, would stop a .38 bullet fired from anywhere beyond twenty feet.

The trousers were of a strong but flexible material, loose-fitting around the hips and narrowing at the ankles to afford maximum freedom of movement; to go with them he chose a short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt, plain necktie, and conventional jacket. His shoes were soft, light, and nonslip, and would enable a suitably skilled wearer to move noiselessly over almost any surface.

With his single suitcase open on the bed, he sat down at the writing desk alongside and emptied his pockets and his wallet. First he checked Kra.s.sen's personal doc.u.ments, transferring them into the wallet as he did so. The last item among them was a high-security pa.s.s folder, about half the size of a postcard, which contained his own photograph and thumbprint, and which, according to the wording carried on its face, had been issued by the Defense Department (NORAM) of the United Western Democracies and signed by James S. Vorner, Secretary to the Director of Military Intelligence. Then he put the wallet in one of his inside jacket pockets and his airmobile keys and a handkerchief in the side pockets, leaving his trousers empty for better mobility. Everything else went into the suitcase along with his spare clothing.

Next he checked the technical papers and research journals that provided legitimate contents for the briefcase, arranged them inside, and finally closed the case and positioned it on the desk in front of him, together with two other items-an ordinary-looking gray ballpoint pen, and a small transparent plastic box containing what appeared to be a common brand of tranquilizer capsules.

The pen came apart rapidly under his practiced fingers, the writing head, ink tube, and tapering portion coming away at one end and the rounded cap at the other, to leave just a plain cylinder of toughened, high-density plastic.

Turning his attention to the briefcase, he located the concealed catch beneath the lock and pressed it, allowing the handle to come away in his hand. The grip was bound with decorative hoops of leather thong. When he took the handle between both hands and flexed it, the grip broke like a shotgun, parting between two of the leather hoops and pivoting about a hinge on the inner edge of the grip; at the same time, a trigger clicked out from a point near the hinge. The handle had hinged into two parts of unequal length: The larger section formed the b.u.t.t and body of the pistol, while the smaller section, hinged back to curve below his index finger, provided the trigger guard. The gray plastic tube screwed quickly into place to become the barrel.

The weapon fitted snugly in his hand. It was small, lightweight, and smoothly angled, easily concealed in an inside jacket pocket. Formed from plastic components that resembled everyday objects, it could be carried with impunity through the most stringent X-ray and visual security checks.

He squeezed the trigger a few times and felt the mechanism trip smoothly. Then he opened the pillbox and took out one of the yellow-and-blue capsules. What made these capsules different from those that looked the same and could be obtained in any drugstore was that the yellow end was soft and concealed a needle-sharp projectile formed from a fast-acting neurotoxin designed to fragment almost immediately after impact and cause death in under five seconds. The propellant was a charge of highly compressed gas contained in the blue end.

The a.s.sa.s.sin drew the magazine slide out from the b.u.t.t, carefully pressed the capsule into one of the five positions provided, and pushed the slide back in until he felt its restraining spring click into place. Pistol in hand, he rose from the chair, selected a large Florida orange from the bowl of fruit provided by the management, and lodged it firmly in the ashtray standing on the desk. He backed off ten paces, raised his arm, aimed, and fired.

A dull phutt from the pistol, a sharper splatt from the orange, and the briefest suggestion of a hiss from nowhere in particular sounded all at the same time. He walked back to the waiting desk to inspect his handiwork.

About an inch off center, the skin of the orange was punctured by a quarter-inch diameter hole surrounded by a thin halo of pulped peel and flesh. The juice oozing out was discolored a greenish yellow. He peeled the skin back and inspected the damage, checking the depth of penetration and looking especially for signs of incomplete fragmentation. If the bullet were from a bad batch, with the center of ma.s.s not lying precisely on the spin axis, the ensuing in-flight wobble would cause too much energy to be dissipated in tearing through layers of clothing, preventing effective penetration of the target.

Satisfied, he removed the spent propellant cartridge from the magazine and tossed it down the disposal unit, to be incinerated, along with the orange.

He dismantled the pistol, refitted the briefcase handle, and put the rea.s.sembled pen and pillbox away in zip-protected pockets in his jacket. The chime of the console panel sounded just as he was finis.h.i.+ng.

"Kra.s.sen," he said, touching a b.u.t.ton to accept the call.

"Seven-thirty breakfast, sir. Would it be convenient now?"

"Okay."

"Thank you."

Half a minute later the light above the room's dispensing unit indicated that the tray had arrived.

As he ate his breakfast he made his final mental run-through of the day's planned operation. Normally he preferred to work alone; on this occasion, however, too many specialized skills had been called for, so that had not been possible. But he had satisfied himself that those chosen to make up the rest of the team were all first cla.s.s in their jobs.

His meal over, he swiveled the console around to face the desk and activated the keyboard. A swift sequence of commands connected him to the continental infonet service and activated an inquiry program already residing in a file established in the system. The program accessed a virtual address in the net and relayed its contents back to the screen on his console. The process was the electronic equivalent of the traditional dead-letter box: messages could be deposited in and retrieved from the virtual address with neither sender nor recipient being known to, or traceable by, the other.

The message read:

JOHN.

VISIT PROFESSOR AS ARRANGED.

MARY (7:00)

So-everything was go up until seven that morning; no last-minute hitches. He finished his coffee, then operated the console once more to access the hotel computer and call up the checkout routine. A record of the transaction appeared from the console's hard-copy unit, accompanied by a message thanking him for his business, expressing the hope that he would choose Holiday Inn again next time, and inviting him to call for manual a.s.sistance from the duty clerk if everything had not been to his complete satisfaction.

He loaded his suitcase into the receptacle of the baggage-handling system and left instructions to deliver it to the hotel airmobile park, Level 2, Bay 26. After a final check of the room, he put on his jacket and hat and walked down the hallway to the elevator.

Five minutes later, he settled himself into the pilot's seat of the airmobile, switched on the control console, and flipped the Manual/Auto flight mode setting to Auto. The display screen came to life:

ALL SYSTEMS CHECKED AND FUNCTIONING NORMALLY.

FLIGHT MODE AUTO SELECTED.

KEY FOR DESTINATION:.

N NEW.

P PREPROGRAMMED.

X AUXILIARY SERVICES.

He pressed the N key.

AUTO FLIGHT LOG-IN.

SPECIFY DESTINATION REQUIRED.

He bit his lower lip as the first trace of tension began building up inside him. If disaster was going to strike, it would surely be within the next sixty seconds. He keyed:

JOINT SERVICES ARMAMENTS RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT.

ANDERSCLIFF.

LINCOLN.

NEBRASKA.

Almost certainly, the destination that he had specified would trigger a response from a surveillance program somewhere in the system. Sure enough:

QUERY.

DESTINATION REQUESTED IS TOP-SECURITY LOCATION.

ACCESS PERMITTED TO AUTHORIZED Pa.s.s-HOLDERS ONLY.

STATE.

NAME, POSITION HELD, Pa.s.s CODE/VISITOR CLEARANCE REFERENCE.

He responded:

DR. HADLEY B. KRa.s.sEN.

SECTION A.8, DEPARTMENT 39, PLASMA PHYSICS.

7x8H/927380.BB

An eternity pa.s.sed while the characters remained frozen on the screen. This was the moment of truth.

No Kra.s.sen had ever been employed at Anderscliff.

Eighty-seven miles away, a computer deep below the administration building of the Joint Services Armaments Research Establishment scanned the information that he had entered and compared it against the stored records. It located a record pertaining to a Kra.s.sen, Hadley B., as described, and verified the pa.s.s code. Its verdict was composed into a message and flashed back through the infonet system. In the airmobile, the display changed at last:

AUTHORIZATION POSITIVE.

DESIRED TAKEOFF TIME:.

The a.s.sa.s.sin felt a surge of jubilation as he replied: