John Brunner - The Squares of the City

“I’ve sold your government nothing except my services,” I said harshly. “Whatever you may be able to do with your own puppet-citizens, you can’t do it to me.”

He ignored me. “As for you, Dalban!” His gaze shifted, and I suddenly felt that I was looking at a man who wielded conscious and astonishing power. “You have been a damnable nuisance for too long. The patience of the government is great, but not inexhaustible, and this time you have overreached yourself. You are finished.”

He just sat there when he was done. I felt a hand on my shoulder; the tough male receptionist had come up to me and jerked a thumb to indicate the door. Dalban, with dignity, was rising to his feet.

“On the contrary, Dr. Mayor,” he said quietly, “I am just about to begin.”

And he strode from the room.

I followed, wishing I had not drunk quite so much. A million things I wanted to say to Mayor boiled in my skull, but none of them would come to my tongue. What was left of my ability to think logically directed that I should obey the command to leave; if I stayed, it was inevitable that my frustration would drive me to attack Mayor physically—I should have liked to strangle him with the cord of his telephones. But that wouldn’t have solved anything. And I’d have been thrown out bodily.

Outside, in the cool night air, with the illuminated fagade of the building looming above us, Dalban stopped and turned back to me.

“Again I will apologize, Senor Hakluyt,” he said, curiously humble.

“I’ll accept that,” I said. “But I don’t undertake to forget that you threatened me. I thought that honor was at a premium here. And yet—”

He gave a somehow ghastly chuckle. “And yet your encounter with Mayor has perhaps disillusioned you, no?”

“I’d like to—oh, hell, I don’t know what I’d like to do to him. I thought he was a sound man; maybe he was when he was just a political theorist. But—corrupted by power, maybe. I don’t know.”

“This country may owe its twenty years of peace to his methods,” said Dalban, and glanced up toward the lighted windows. “But Mother of God, it has cost us dearly!”

“What will you do now?” I said.

“Who knows? We will find a way, senor. The worst things in the world cannot endure.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say after that, so I went back to my car and drove, very slowly, with cool air on my face, back down the mountainside into the city.

Something howled, screamed, and rattled past the hotel. I blinked wildly at the pattern of lights drifting across my ceiling—I always prefer to sleep with the curtains open— interpreting them into nonsense.

I got out of bed and stared down toward the street.

A fire engine, its siren crying like a soul in torment (I thought of Brown’s wife at her husband’s death), swung around a corner and tore off into darkness. A helicopter buzzed past, seeming so close that I could have jumped up beside the pilot. Two police patrol cars took the same route as the fire engine.

By this time I was beginning to understand what was going on, and I lifted my eyes toward the hills. There was a glare up there—a red, shifting glare that was patently no sort of street lighting. A plane crashed into the mountainside was my first guess; then I realized that it wasn’t necessary to implicate a plane. The broadcasting center was on fire.

I glanced at my watch as I went to fetch my binoculars. Three-ten a.m. A dead time of night. From the way it showed up, the blaze had had plenty of time to take hold before it was discovered. Perhaps there was no one in the entire building.

But surely there would be sprinkler systems in a place like that, and probably also an alarm system connected directly with fire headquarters—

I stopped myself making empty guesses, because whether or not there were sprinklers and alarms, they hadn’t saved the place. Through the glasses it was an impressive sight. The antennae, stilted and stiff atop the hard square outline of the building, seemed to be walking with vast deliberation into the mouth of hell. A section of wall and roof would slip; accordingly, one leg of one of the masts would dip, like a man taking a short step forward. After that, the mast would wait, as children do when playing Red Light, for an opportunity to move again.

I couldn’t see the fire engines—they were hidden from view by intervening buildings and the slope of the ground—but their presence could be detected wherever the red glow dulled with the impact of their thousand-gallons-a-minute pumps. I considered going out to see the fire from close at hand; then I decided that anybody who did would certainly interfere with the serious job of fighting the flames. Though Vados’s traffic flow was excellent, even a single extra vehicle on the road up to the broadcasting center might delay an essential ambulance or another fire engine.

So after ten minutes or so I went back to bed.

My mind was slightly muzzy. It wasn’t until I’d lain down again that the full impact of what I’d just seen came home to me. Vados’s Minister of Information and Communications wouldn’t be broadcasting any retractions, or anything else, today, tomorrow, or for months to come.

And if Vados’s government was really dependent on the operations of Mayor’s public misinformation service to mold the pliable opinion of Vadeanos, then for that period el Presidente was going to be like a man with one hand tied behind his back.

I thought of what Dalban had said, standing outside that imposing building which the age-old force of fire was now reducing to a shell. And I wondered…

Wondering, I dozed off. But I wasn’t allowed to get much rest. It was still before daylight, only a little after five o’clock, when I heard voices at my door.

“Este cuarto es el No. 1317,” said a hard, low voice. “Abria la puerta.”

It was uttered in too quiet a tone to be addressed to me, but the number of the room was certainly mine. I sat up in bed.

I hadn’t given back the police automatic that had been forced on me for the visit to Sigueiras’s slum. I eased it from its holster and sat waiting with one hand on the light cord.

When the door swung open and a man stepped through, I tugged the cord and jerked the muzzle of the gun through an attention-drawing arc. “Quien esta?” I said loudly, “Y que hace Vd.?”

The man swore loudly and came forward. I saw a scared-looking member of the hotel staff behind him. “Policia, Senor Hakluyt,” he said.

I lowered the gun. It was Guzman, the sergeant of detectives I had encountered previously—the one who had offered me a twenty-four-hour bodyguard after Dalban first threatened me.

“All right, Guzman,” I said aggressively. “What do you want?”

“The senor will please come with me.”

“The senor will do nothing of the kind. The senor will see you and the entire police department in hell first. Go away and come back at a reasonable hour.”

His saturnine face did not react. With an air of extreme patience, he answered, “There has been sabotage at the television station, Senor Hakluyt. Last night, we learn, you visited it for some purpose or other. You will certainly be able to help with our investigation.”

“How? I went to tell your precious Dr. Mayor what I thought of him. Rioco saw me arrive, and Jose Dalban saw me leave. So, if he had any eyes, did this man who’s supposed to be following me when I leave the hotel. Why don’t you ask Mayor?”

“Because Dr. Mayor is nowhere to be found.” Guzman spoke unblinkingly. “It is known that he remained late last night to prepare directives about today’s news on the radio. They have not yet been able to reach his office because the fire is too hot.”