Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“I like this,” he decided.

“We should take notes.” Pierce was smiling as he stuffed the empty vial back in his pocket.

The next day Bryce looked back on that evening with pleasure. Everyone had been remarkably pleasant, friendly and considerate, and Pierce had always had the right friendly word and gesture to reward them, speaking for Bryce, knowing his way around the cities of the Moon to the right places for the information they sought, always speaking for Bryce Carter, his employer, getting him the things he wanted, giving the orders he wanted to give before Bryce had even fully realized that he wanted them. Bryce had needed to say nothing the whole time except “Right. That’s it,” and everything went as he wanted it.

“A perfect left hand man,” he smiled, stretching, and turned the polarization dial to let in the sunlight.

The telephone rang. He picked it up and the desk clerk said in a deferentially hushed voice, “Eight o’clock, Mister Carter.”

For some reason the hushed voice struck him as funny. “Thanks, I’m up.” He hung up and stretched again. It was soothing to have someone solicitous that he arose on time, if only a hotel. The hotel had given him a lot of good service. He felt suddenly grateful for all the pleasures and luxuries and small services they surrounded him with. It was a good place. He was feeling good that morning. Maybe because the sun was so bright….

He liked the look of the people passing in the lobby as Pierce joined him, and he liked the look of the passengers in the tube trains on the way to the office. They all looked more friendly. And as he pushed through the second glass door into his offices he liked the clean shine of the glass and the rich blended colors and soft rugs and gray textured desks and the soft efficient hum of work in progress.

Bryce usually passed Kesby’s office with a businesslike nod, but Pierce smiled in, stopping for an instant with Bryce. “Good morning, Kesby. We’re glad to see you.” It was true enough and expressed what he felt.

Bryce exchanged a grin with Kesby at the boy’s insolence and then went on into his office.

It was a good day.

It was a good day for what he had to do.

In the luxury of his inner office he sank into the deepest, softest chair, letting his cousin-from-Montehedo sort the mail, agreeing with the boy’s suggestions for action or sometimes issuing his own instructions, keeping only half his mind on the routine day’s business, relying on Pierce, and concentrating the other half on the deed to be done. The plan was set in his mind but he had changes to make.

He was barely conscious of the time slipping by as he lay, rarely moving, in his chair, while Pierce worked at top speed.

By one o’clock the deck was cleared for action.

Bryce stood up, stretched, and checked his watch again. It was 1304 hours. A telephone call was scheduled in about another hour, and five more successively about a half hour apart.

“Order us some lunch, Pierce, before I lift the drawbridge.”

The food came in as he was instructing his staff to leave them undisturbed for the rest of the afternoon.

By the time they had finished eating, their isolation was complete. The office was a command post now, with only the slender, unattended telephone wires connecting them with the outside worlds.

Bryce moved over behind his desk. He drew the telephone toward him and dialed a number. Somewhere, in the locked safe, the phone rang.

From the case he took a toy dial phone. Pierce’s eyes were on it, his eyebrows lifted quizzically, but Bryce offered no explanation. The boy was due for a series of surprises. And when it was over, he would know everything without any explanations, and too late to interfere.

“Hi Al,” Bryce said to the recorded “Yeah?” at the other end. He dialed a number on the toy dial, the one receiver against the other’s back. After the usual ritual, Bryce said, “Hello George, how’s everything going?”

This is it, Bryce thought. This was the first part of the final blow to UT. And the only instrument he needed in his delightfully simple method was a telephone. Originally he had planned six brief warning calls to the six key numbers of the ground organization. He would tell them to refuse to take anything from the hands of the UT branch, and break contact with them immediately after accepting cash for miscellaneous items. That would set the stage.

The police trap would close on all members of the UT branch of the organization while they were encumbered with a maximum of incriminating objects to dispose of in too little time. Then would come his anonymous tip to the police. He’d inform them that certain employees of UT in a few listed cities would be found to be smuggling in large quantities of drugs. The thing would be so simple. And the whole works would blow up with the efficiency of the calculated explosion of nuclear reaction.

That had been his original plan.

But things would be different now. The morning in the easy chair had changed his approach. The newer, more elaborate program, still remarkably simple, would bring down the whole structure within UT without the help of the police, but by himself alone, planning it, initiating it, executing it with no one’s help. Not even Pierce’s.

He heard himself saying:

“This is ‘Hello George.’ Listen to me and don’t interrupt.

“Somebody has talked. I’ve been betrayed myself. Get that? Hello George is washed up. Right now the cops are tapping this line. It doesn’t make any difference to me, now. But it does to you. This is an open warning from Hello George to you. Spread the word. I’ll keep making calls until they break in on me and cut this line.

“Meanwhile, spread the word. Break connections with me and the whole organization. Get out of range before the trap closes. But pass on this warning first.

“I’ll hold out against questioning a short time. The police will get me eventually, of course. And when they do they’ll pump me dry. They’ll get names and addresses. The whole works will get grabbed, unless you move fast. Spread the word.”

Bryce paused and winked at Pierce who was standing at his elbow, “Any questions? Yes, I’m sure. Of course I’m sure. Any other questions? Good luck, Okay.”

He hung up.

As Caesar once said, the dice were rolling.

Pierce, beside him through it all, simply stood there, his eyes wide and his face sharp with curiosity and incredulity, his body twitching now and then from the infection of the excitement which rippled over the room. That excitement had been there, though Bryce had not permitted himself to indulge in it in any visible way. He had showed Pierce a new facet to his operations, one which Pierce could not anticipate immediately, one in which only he, Bryce, could make the snap decisions and evaluate the immediate responses demanded of him.

That was with the first call.

With the second one Pierce began to contribute, rising to the occasion as he had so often and quickly done in the past. He began pacing up and down between calls, smoking furiously and laughing under his breath.

“Tell ’em the police are breaking down the door,” he suggested during the third call. “Say you’re hypnoed to hold out against questioning five days at the most, two hours more likely.”

His suggestions were a howl. Bryce repeated them into the phone with counterfeit desperation and was rewarded by the sounds of panic at the other end. He and Pierce chortled over the frantic queries and exclamations from the victim. The whole thing, succinct and pointed and with the dramatic power of simplicity, was one super practical joke which would set the entire solar system scurrying around for the next few weeks.