Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

Leota shook her head. “Men! That’s male ego for you. You’d rather believe you were a skunk of your own free will than a helpless dupe. But the fact is, that’s a strong sign of the trance state. It’s called a tolerance of incongruities. It means you act as though mutually conflicting things are both right, or both true.”

He protested, “It’s all impossible! They couldn’t hypnotize me without my remembering it!”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t, but—”

She said, “It could have been a post-hypnotic suggestion to forget. Or you might not have been aware of it in the first place. They could have slipped you a drug. Planted a tape under your pillow. I don’t know. All I’m sure of—”

She was interrupted by the sound of the door being unlocked. The Reddi with the scar over his brow looked in on them, his right hand resting on the holster of a pistol. He smiled.

“Ah, I see you are making good progress, sweetie,” he observed as Leota grabbed for her beach dress and held it before her.

She said coldly: “We’ve made the deal, Rama. Now it’s up to you to work out an arrangement for a trade.”

“I see,” he said, studying them in amusement. “Yes, perhaps something can be done. When my brother returns we will speak further. But how can we know that Reverend Hake will keep his word to us?”

Neither Hake nor Leota answered; there was no obvious answer to give. The Indian nodded. “Yes, that is a difficulty. Well, I had thought that you might wish to come on deck, my dear, but perhaps you prefer to remain here?”

He smiled—it was almost a friendly smile, at least a tolerant one, Hake was astonished to discover—and closed the door behind him.

Hake and Leota looked at each other. Hake said, “Ah, about what he was saying. How do you suppose they’re going to make sure I keep my bargain?”

“I don’t have a clue, Horny, except that it probably will be in a way you don’t like. The easiest thing would be to kill you if you don’t. If the Team can plant somebody who can get at you when they want to, and I can, then it’s a real good bet that the Reddis can, too. Or it might be something a lot worse.”

“Such as?”

She said angrily, “The worst thing you can think of. Or worse than that, the worst thing either of them can think of. Addict you to a drug? Give you a fatal disease that they keep providing you the medicine for? I don’t know. They’ll think of something.”

The future began to look rather dubious to Hake. “But maybe it won’t be that bad,” she added, trying to reassure him. “There’s nothing you can do about it anyway, right? Whatever it is, it’s better than floating up on the docks of the Bay of Naples.”

“Why Naples? I thought we were around Capri?”

“You’d have to ask them why. Last I saw, we were tied up to some industrial dock. If you listen, you can hear trains in the freight yards.”

He listened, putting his arm around her again, but heard nothing he could identify. “Well,” he said, “as it looks like we still have some time—”

“Wait a minute, Horny.” She was still listening, with an expression of puzzlement. There was a faint, rapid patter of feet on the deck outside, and then something that was almost a splash.

She stood up, pulling the dress over her head. “Something’s going on,” she announced, and opened the door a crack. There was no one outside. “I’m going to take a look. You’d better stay here.”

“No. I’m coming too.”

“Then stay back.” She crossed to the deck door, which was slid fully open, and looked around. Hake came up behind her and peered over her shoulder. They were moored to ancient wood pilings, alongside a bulkhead. Greasy water lapped against the wood, and beyond the bulkhead were bulbous, immense tanks of some sort. It was night time, but the tanks were brightly lit, and around and among them Hake saw figures moving cautiously closer. There was no sign of either of the Reddis.

“Oh, Christ!” she whispered. “It looks like your boys are coming after you. Or, more likely, after the Reddis and me. Rama must’ve seen them and taken off!”

“What will happen to you?” Hake demanded.

“Nothing real good,” she said worriedly. “Hake, Fm going to get out of here. You stay. You’ll be okay. If you can, stall them.” She ran into the cabin and came out again, strapping the scuba tanks on hurriedly.

“Wait!” he protested. “I want to see you again!”

She paused for a second, regarding him. “Oh, Horny,” she said, “you are so bloody naive.” She kissed him hard and fast, and lowered herself over the far gunwale. Minutes later, when the first of the approaching men had reached the short gangplank, Hake came out of the cabin With his hands up.

“It’s me!” he cried. “Thank God you got here! They’ve all taken off that way, not more than five minutes ago—if you hurry you can catch them!” And he pointed down the waterfront toward the likeliest, darkest spot.

Yosper was having a high old good time. He took command of the little ship like a corsair, dispatched his pirate crew in all directions, himself straddled the quarterdeck and strutted back and forth. He did not neglect the perquisites of conquest. He found three bottles of Piper-Heidsieck nicely chilled in the cabin aft and shared them with Hake while they supervised the search.

The pursuit on land came up empty. Dietrich, fresh out of a Neapolitan jail, reported that there was no one in sight; he had paid off the hired hoods and sent them away, and the quarry had escaped. I’m glad, Hake thought; one out of three glad, anyway. But Yosper’s bright old eyes were on him. “Don’t look so happy,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. D’you know what we had to do to get you out of this? First we had to find you. Tracked down the boatman, located a witness in the tour boat outside the Grotto. Then we had to message back to Washington for spy-satellite photos to track this ship. Then we had to hire half a dozen muscle to come in after you.”

“I’m sorry to have put you to the trouble.”

“Sure you are. Dietz! Go on below and give Mario a hand checking this ship out, then we’ll all celebrate.”

Hake wasn’t listening. He was calculating. The worst thing about owing somebody your life was that it became difficult to be rude to him. But for how long? A week?

Well, two or three days, anyway. At a minimum, for longer than would help him now, when he urgently wished for license to tell Yosper to piss off, and didn’t have it. The man was an arrogant ass, and was repetitively proving it.

“—give it back now.”

Hake woke up. “What?”

“I said, you might as well give us back the bracelet now,” Yosper repeated, pointing to the silver bangle on Hake’s arm. “We won’t need it any more on you. Served its purpose. We knew you’d go off to see her, long’s we didn’t catch her at the Pescatore. So we kept you tagged. You didn’t move ten feet without registering. But the boat was a surprise, and by the time we could follow you were out of range.”

Silently Hake unstrapped the band and passed it over, as Mario and Dieter came up from the hold. The Italian was carrying a flat metal box, and they were both looking worried. Yosper scrambled to his feet.

“It’s defused,” said Mario, breathing hard. He handed it to Yosper, who accepted it with care.

“Yeah,” he said. “It would have blown this ship up easy enough. And then—” He gazed out at the spherical tanks, only yards away, and Hake was astonished to see that the old man was grinning. “Fifty thousand metric tons of liquid hydrogen!” he breathed. “Man! What a blowup that would’ve been! You see what kind of people your girl friend’s mixed up with, Hake?”