The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Page 44

  Theoretically, Harry wasn’t supposed to sell the things. They were still difficult to make, and they were supposed to be used only by persons who were authorized to build robot brains, since that’s what the stack was—a part of a robot brain. Mike could have put his hands on one legally, provided he’d wanted to wait for six or eight months to clear up the red tape. Actually, the big robotics companies didn’t want amateurs fooling around with robots; they’d much rather build the robots themselves and rent them out. They couldn’t make do-it-yourself projects impossible, but they could make them difficult.

  In a way, there was some good done. So far, the JD’s hadn’t gone into big-scale robotics. Self-controlled bombs could be rather nasty.

  Adult criminals, of course, already had them. But an adult criminal who had the money to invest in robotic components, or went to the trouble to steal them, had something more lucrative in mind than street fights or robbing barrooms. To crack a bank, for instance, took a cleverly constructed, well-designed robot and plenty of ingenuity on the part of the operator.

  Mike the Angel didn’t want to make bombs or automatic bankrobbers; he just wanted to fiddle with the stack, see what it would do. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, then shrugged, got up, went over to his closet, and put the thing away. There wasn’t anything he could do with it until he’d bought a cryostat—a liquid helium refrigerator. A cryotron functions only at temperatures near absolute zero.

  The phone chimed.

  Mike went over to it, punched the switch, and said: “Gabriel speaking.”

  No image formed on the screen. A voice said: “Sorry, wrong number.” There was a slight click, and the phone went dead. Mike shrugged and punched the cutoff. Sounded like a woman. He vaguely wished he could have seen her face.

  Mike got up and walked back to his easy chair. He had no sooner sat down than the phone chimed again. Damn!

  Up again. Back to the phone.

  “Gabriel speaking.”

  Again, no image formed.

  “Look, lady,” Mike said, “why don’t you look up the number you want instead of bothering me?”

  Suddenly there was an image. It was the face of an elderly man with a mild, reddish face, white hair, and a cold look in his pale blue eyes. It was Basil Wallingford, the Minister for Spatial Affairs.

  He said: “Mike, I wasn’t aware that your position was such that you could afford to be rude to a Portfolio of the Earth Government.” His voice was flat, without either anger or humor.

  “I’m not sure it is, myself,” admitted Mike the Angel, “but I do the best I can with the tools I have to work with. I didn’t know it was you, Wally. I just had some wrong-number trouble. Sorry.”

  “Mf.… Well.… I called to tell you that the Branchell is ready for your final inspection. Or will be, that is, in a week.”

  “My final inspection?” Mike the Angel arched his heavy golden-blond eyebrows. “Hell, Wally, Serge Paulvitch is on the job down there, isn’t he? You don’t need my okay. If Serge says it’s ready to go, it’s ready to go. Or is there some kind of trouble you haven’t mentioned yet?”

  “No; no trouble,” said Wallingford. “But the power plant on that ship was built according to your designs—not Mr. Paulvitch’s. The Bureau of Space feels that you should give them the final check.”

  Mike knew when to argue and when not to, and he knew that this was one time when it wouldn’t do him the slightest good. “All right,” he said resignedly. “I don’t like Antarctica and never will, but I guess I can stand it for a few days.”

  “Fine. One more thing. Do you have a copy of the thrust specifications for Cargo Hold One? Our copy got garbled in transmission, and there seems to be a discrepancy in the figures.”

  Mike nodded. “Sure. They’re in my office. Want me to get them now?”

  “Please. I’ll hold on.”

  Mike the Angel barely made it in time. He went to the door that led to his office, opened it, stepped through, and closed it behind him just as the blast went off.

  The door shuddered behind Mike, but it didn’t give. Mike’s apartment was reasonably soundproof, but it wasn’t built to take the kind of explosion that would shake the door that Mike the Angel had just closed. It was a two-inch-thick slab of armor steel on heavy, precision-bearing hinges. So was every other door in the suite. It wasn’t quite a bank-vault door, but it would do. Any explosion that could shake it was a real doozy.

  Mike the Angel spun around and looked at the door. It was just a trifle warped, and faint tendrils of vapor were curling around the edge where the seal had been broken. Mike sniffed, then turned and ran. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a big roll of electrostatic tape. Then he took a deep breath, went back to the door, and slapped on a strip of the one-inch tape, running it all around the edge of the door. Then he went into the outer office while the air conditioners cleaned out his private office.

  He went over to one of the phones near the autofile and punched for the operator. “I had a long-distance call coming in here from the Right Excellent Basil Wallingford, Minister for Spatial Affairs, Capitol City. We were cut off.”

  “One moment please.” A slight pause. “His Excellency is here, Mr. Gabriel.”

  Wallingford’s face came back on the screen. It had lost some of its ruddiness. “What happened?” he asked.

  “You tell me, Wally,” Mike snapped. “Did you see anything at all?”

  “All I saw was that big pane of glass break. It fell into a thousand pieces, and then something exploded and the phone went dead.”

  “The glass broke first?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mike sighed. “Good. I was afraid that maybe someone had planted that bomb, rather than fired it in. I’d hate to think anyone could get into my place without my knowing it.”

  “Who’s gunning for you?”

  “I wish I knew. Look, Wally, can you wait until tomorrow for those specs? I want to get hold of the police.”

  “Certainly. Nothing urgent. It can wait. I’ll call you again tomorrow evening.” The screen blanked.

  Mike glanced at the wall clock and then punched a number on the phone. A pretty girl in a blue uniform came on the screen.

  “Police Central,” she said. “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to Detective Sergeant William Cowder, please,” Mike said. “Just tell him that Mr. Gabriel has more problems.”

  She looked puzzled, but she nodded, and pretty soon her image blanked out. The screen stayed blank, but Sergeant Cowder’s voice came over the speaker. “What is it, Mr. Gabriel?”

  He was evidently speaking from a pocket phone.

  “Attempted murder,” said Mike the Angel. “A few minutes ago a bomb was set off in my apartment. I think it was a rocket, and I know it was heavily laced with hydrogen cyanide. That’s Suite 5000, Timmins Building, up on 112th Street. I called you because I have a hunch it’s connected with the incident at Harry’s earlier this evening.”

  “Timmins Building, eh? I’ll be right up.”

  Cowder cut off with a sharp click, and Mike the Angel looked quizzically at the dead screen. Was he imagining things, or was there a peculiar note in Cowder’s voice?

  Two minutes later he got his answer.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mike the Angel was sitting behind his desk in his private office when the announcer chimed. Mike narrowed his eyes and turned on his door screen, which connected with an eye in the outer door of the suite. Who could it be this time?

  It was Sergeant Cowder.

  “You got here fast,” said Mike, thumbing the unlocker. “Come on back to my office.”

  The sergeant came through the outer office while Mike watched him on the screen. Not until the officer finally pushed open the door to Mike’s own office did Mike the Angel look up from the screen.

  “I repeat,” said Mike, “you got here fast.”

  “I wasn’t far away,” said Cowder. “Where’s the damage?”
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  Mike jerked a thumb toward the door to his apartment, still sealed with tape. “In there.”

  “Have you been back in there yet?”

  “Nope,” said Mike. “I didn’t want to disturb anything. I figured maybe your lab boys could tell where the rocket came from.”

  “What happened?” the cop asked.

  Mike told him, omitting nothing except the details of his conversation with Wallingford.

  “The way I see it,” he finished, “whoever it was phoned me to make sure I was in the room and then went out and fired a rocket at my window.”

  “What makes you think it was a JD?” Cowder asked.

  “Well, Sergeant, if I were going to do the job, I’d put my launcher in some place where I could see that my victim was inside, without having to call him. But if I couldn’t do that, I’d aim the launcher and set it to fire by remote control. Then I’d go to the phone, call him, and fire the rocket while he was on the phone. I’d be sure of getting him that way. The way it was done smacks of a kid’s trick.”

  Cowder looked at the door. “Think we can go in there now? The HCN ought to have cleared out by now.”

  Mike stood up from behind his desk. “I imagine it’s pretty clear. I checked the air conditioners; they’re still working, and the filters are efficient enough to take care of an awful lot of hydrogen cyanide. Besides, the window is open. But—shouldn’t we wait for the lab men?”

  Cowder shook his head. “Not necessary. They’ll be up in a few minutes, but they’ll probably just confirm what we already know. Peel that tape off, will you?”

  Mike took his ionizer from the top of the desk, walked over to the door, and began running it over the tape. It fell off and slithered to the floor. As he worked, he said:

  “You think you know where the rocket was fired from?”

  “Almost positive,” said Cowder. “We got a call a few minutes back from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.”

  The last of the tape fell off, and Mike opened the door. It didn’t work easily, but it did open. The odor of bitter almonds was so faint that it might actually have been imagination.

  Cowder pointed out the shattered window at the gray spire of the cathedral. “There’s your launching site. We don’t know how they got up there, but they managed.”

  “They?”

  “Two of them. When they tried to leave, a couple of priests and two officers of the Cathedral Police spotted them. The kids dropped their launcher and two unfired rockets, and then tried to run for it. Result: one dead kid, one getaway. One of the cops got a bad gash on his arm from a vibroblade, and one of the priests got it in the abdomen. He’ll live, but he’s in bad shape.”

  Mike said something under his breath that might have been an oath, except that it avoided all mention of the Deity. Then he added that Name, in a different tone of voice.

  “I agree,” said Cowder. “You think you know why they did it?”

  Mike looked around at his apartment. At first glance it appeared to be a total loss, but closer inspection showed that most of the damage had been restricted to glass and ceramics. The furniture had been tumbled around but not badly damaged. The war head of the rocket had evidently been of the concussion-and-gas type, without much fragmentation.

  “I think I know why, yes,” Mike said, turning back to the sergeant. “I had a funny feeling all the way home from Harry’s. Nothing I could lay my finger on, really. I tried to see if I was being followed, but I didn’t spot anyone. There were plenty of kids on the subway.

  “It’s my guess that the kids knew who I was. If they cased Harry’s as thoroughly as it seems they did, they must have seen me go in and out several times. They knew that it was my fault that two of their members got picked up, so they decided to teach me a lesson. One of them must have come up here, even before I left Harry’s. The other followed me, just to make sure I was really coming home. Since he knew where I was going, he didn’t have to stick too close, so I didn’t spot him in the crowd. He might even have gone on up to 116th Street so that I wouldn’t see him get off at 110th.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Cowder agreed. “We know who the kids are. The uniformed squads are rounding up the whole bunch for questioning. They call themselves—you’ll get a laugh out of this!—they call themselves the Rocketeers.”

  “I’m fracturing my funny bone,” said Mike the Angel. “The thing that gets me is this revenge business, though. Kids don’t usually go that far out for fellow gang members.”

  “Not usually,” the sergeant said, “but this is a little different. The girl you caught and the boy who got killed over at the cathedral are brother and sister.”

  “That explains it,” Mike said. “Rough family, eh?”

  Sergeant Cowder shook his head. “Not really. The parents are respectable and fairly well off. Larchmont’s the name. The kids are Susan and Herbert—Sue and Bert to you. Bert’s sixteen, Sue’s seventeen. They were pretty thick, I gather: real brother and sister team.”

  “Good family, bad kids,” Mike muttered. He had wandered over to the wall to look at his Dali. It had fallen to the floor, but it wasn’t hurt. The Valois was bent, but it could be fixed up easily enough.

  “I wonder,” Mike said, picking up the head of a smashed figurine and looking at it. “I wonder if the so-called sociologists have any explanation for it?”

  “Sure,” Cowder said. “Same one they’ve been giving for more decades than I’d care to think of. The mother was married before. Divorced her husband, married Larchmont. But she had a boy by her first husband.”

  “Broken home and sibling rivalry? Pfui! And if it wasn’t that, the sociologists would find another excuse,” Mike said angrily.

  “Funny thing is that the older half brother was a perfectly respectable kid. Made good grades in school, joined the Space Service, has a perfectly clean record. And yet he was the product of the broken home, not the two younger kids.”

  Mike laughed dryly. “That ought to be food for high sociological thought.”

  The door announcer chimed again, and Cowder said: “That’s probably the lab boys. I told them to come over here as soon as they could finish up at the cathedral.”

  Mike checked his screen and when Cowder identified the men at the door, Mike let them in.

  The short, chubby man in the lead, who was introduced as Perkins, spoke to Sergeant Cowder first. “We checked one of those rockets. Almost a professional job. TNT war head, surrounded by a jacket filled with liquid HCN and a phosphate inhibitor to prevent polymerization. Nasty things.” He swung round to Mike. “You’re lucky you weren’t in the room, or you’d just be part of the wreckage, Mr. Gabriel.”

  “I know,” said Mike the Angel. “Well, the room’s all yours. It probably won’t tell you much.”

  “Probably not,” said Perkins, “but we’ll see. Come on, boys.”

  Mike the Angel tapped Cowder on the shoulder. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  Cowder nodded, and Mike led the way back into his private office. He opened his desk drawer and took out the little pack that housed the workings of the vibroblade shield.

  “That accident you were talking about, Sergeant—the one that made those vibroblades blow, remember? I got to thinking that maybe this could have caused it. I think that with a little more power, it might even vaporize a high-speed bullet. But I’d advise you to wear asbestos clothing.”

  Cowder took the thing and looked at it. “Thanks, Mr. Gabriel,” he said honestly. “Maybe the kids will go on to using something else if vibroblades don’t work, but I think I’d prefer a rocket in the head to being carved by a vibro.”

  “To be honest,” Mike said, “I think the vibro is just a fad among the JD’s now, anyway. You know—if you’re one of the real biggies, you carry a vibro. A year from now, it might be shock guns, but right now you’re chicken if you carry anything but a vibroblade.”

  Cowder dropped the shield generator into his coat pocket. “Thanks again, Mr. Gabrie
l. We’ll do you a favor sometime.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The firm of M. R. GABRIEL, POWER DESIGN was not a giant corporation, but it did pretty well for a one-man show. The outer office was a gantlet that Mike the Angel had to run when he came in the next morning after having spent the night at a hotel. There was a mixed and ragged chorus of “Good morning, Mr. Gabriel” as he passed through. Mike gave the nod to each of them and was stopped four times for small details before he finally made his way to his own office.

  His secretary was waiting for him. She was short, bony, and plain of face. She had a figure like an ironing board and the soul of a Ramsden calculator. Mike the Angel liked her that way; it avoided complications.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gabriel,” she said. “What the hell happened here?” She waved at the warped door and the ribbons of electrostatic tape that still lay in curls on the floor.

  Mike told her, and she listened to his recitation without any change of expression. “I’m very glad you weren’t hurt,” she said when he had finished. “What are you going to do about the apartment?”

  Mike opened the heavy door and looked at the wreckage inside. Through the gaping hole of the shattered window, he could see the towering spires of the two-hundred-year-old Cathedral of St. John the Divine. “Get Larry Beasley on the phone, Helen. I’ve forgotten his number, but you’ll find him listed under ‘Interior Decorators.’ He has the original plans and designs on file. Tell him to get them out; I want this place fixed up just like it was.”

  “But what if someone else.…” She gestured toward the broken window and the cathedral spires beyond.

  “When you’re through talking to Beasley,” Mike went on, “see if you can get Bishop Brennan on the phone and switch him to my desk.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Within two hours workmen were busily cleaning up the wreckage in Mike the Angel’s apartment, and the round, plump figure of Larry Beasley was walking around pompously while his artistic but businesslike brain made estimates. Mike had also reached an agreement with the bishop whereby special vaultlike doors would be fitted into the stairwells leading up to the towers at Mike’s expense. They were to have facings of bronze so that they could be decorated to blend with the Gothic decor of the church, but the bronze would be backed by heavy steel. Nobody would blow those down in a hurry.