New Writings in SF 18 - [Anthology] Read online

  While O’Mara did not openly enjoy his anguish, neither did he display sympathy.

  ‘Stop suffering so loudly in silence, Conway,’ said the Chief Psychologist on his return, ‘and sublimate yourself— preferably in quicklime. But failing that there is always work, and an odd case has just come in which you might like to look at. I’m being polite, of course, it is your case as of now. Observe.’

  The large visiscreen behind O’Mara’s desk came to life and he went on, ‘This beastie was found in one of the hitherto unexplored regions, the victim of an accident which virtually cut its ship and itself in two. Airtight bulkheads sealed off the undamaged section and your patient was able to withdraw itself, or some of itself, before they closed. It was a large ship, filled with some kind of nutrient earth, and the victim is still alive—or should I say half alive. You see, we don’t know which half of it we rescued. Well?’

  Conway stared at the screen, already devising methods of immobilising a section of the patient for examination and treatment, of synthesising supplies of that nutrient soil which now must be virtually sucked dry, and for studying the wreck’s controls to gain data on its sensory equipment. If the accident which had wrecked its ship had been due to an explosion in the power plant, which was likely, then this might well be the front half containing the brain.

  His new patient was not quite the Midgaard Serpent but it did not fall far short of it. Twisting and coiling it practically filled the enormous hangar deck which had been emptied to accommodate it.

  ‘Well?’ said O’Mara again.

  Conway stood up. Before turning to go he grinned and said, ‘Small, isn’t it?’

  <>

  * * * *

  THE CYCLOPS PATROL

  William Spencer

  Industrial espionage is now a highly organised business—in the competitive world of technical development, refined spy devices will soon be the norm rather than the unusual.

  * * * *

  The dull grey fly buzzed irritatingly round Floyd’s head as he bent over the computer display. He drew another line with the light pen on the projected micro-circuit, trying to ignore the fly, a wavering dark blur on the fringes of his vision.

  Then, his patience snapping, he took a side-swipe at the buzzing creature with his free hand—a clumsy swipe that missed as the fly dodged easily upwards. Floyd muttered a few choice expletives half-audibly.

  The fly continued to hover, just out of reach, over his head. It was a big ugly fly, of a breed that Floyd did not recognise. Some mutant form, perhaps, resulting from radiation or the wholesale use of insecticides?

  Floyd passed the back of his hand across his damp brow. He had almost finished the working diagram now. The micro-circuit was a new one, a breakthrough in design. But it was a pity that a firm which was a leader in advanced electronics could not provide better airconditioning. Some fault in the system had caused the temperature in Floyd’s design office to rise a shade too high for comfort.

  Outside it was excessively hot. The floor-to-ceiling sunscreens tempered the glare and the airconditioning should have done the rest. Floyd supposed he should have complained, but instead he had opened a small window behind the sunscreens. There might be a suspicion of a breeze outside. And a lurking sense of claustrophobia made Floyd anxious to feel some communication with the outside air. An open window—hence the fly. There was a price you had to pay for everything.

  The door handle turned and someone came in silently.

  Floyd glanced up quickly and saw it was Clone.

  Floyd was allergic to security men and especially allergic to this one. Heavy-jowled, unsmiling, padding around like a cat, Clone made one feel vaguely guilty. Faint ghosts of half-forgotten misdemeanours rose in the mind when his expressionless eyes studied one’s exposed face.

  Nevertheless, Floyd hated to show that he was disturbed in any way by the security man’s presence. Over-correcting, he had a special brand of false jollity which he reserved for these visits. Swallowing hard, he turned a beaming smile on Clone.

  ‘Hullo there, old man! How goes the industrial espionage?’ Floyd clapped him on the back with excessive bonhomie.

  Clone looked like a man with chronic indigestion.

  ‘It’s not a joke. The people over the way—you-know-who—will stop at nothing to get information. I may say that the Board of Directors takes security very seriously.’

  ‘Good for them. But some of us in the lower-income brackets actually soil our hands with work. We don’t have energy to spare to worry about industrial espionage—we leave that sort of thing to you and the Board.’

  Clone’s face remained impassive. He did not descend to the trivial level of small-talk or jest. But his eyes were restlessly flickering round the room, inquisitive as a snake’s double-tongue. His colourless eyes were so greedily naked that Floyd always felt he was in the presence of something obscene. Also, there was this background of incipient guilt....

  Clone’s sharp glance had penetrated to the open window behind the sunscreens.

  He stiffened. ‘The window?’

  ‘Ye ... es?’ Floyd was colouring somewhat and bending over the computer panel to hide his embarrassment.

  Clone’s face registered deep disapproval as he marched stiffly over, reached through the sunscreen, and closed the window with just the suspicion of a slam.

  The fly, which had been hovering behind Clone’s head, slipped through the window just before it shut.

  ‘You know that’s against regulations,’ said Clone accusingly.

  ‘I know. But it’s always so airless in here. The airconditioning is lousy.’

  ‘It is hot in here. Bound to be, when you have the window open.’

  ‘I tell you the airconditioning is on the blink.’ Floyd, aggressively defensive, allowed his voice to rise slightly.

  ‘In that case you should complain,’ said Clone sternly. ‘Get it fixed.’

  ‘I’m too busy. It’s quicker to set the window ajar. And anyway what does it matter?’

  Clone sat heavily in a chair. ‘I’m sorry you take that view,’ he said.

  Floyd knew he was in for one of Clone’s pep-talks on security.

  ‘This firm has a reputation for original thinking. We spend a fortune on research and development to stay one jump ahead of rival concerns. A careless attitude to security can jeopardise that lead.’

  ‘But how does an open window ...?’

  ‘Somebody might have come in.’

  ‘Hardly—when I’m here.’

  ‘Don’t you ever go out of the room?’

  ‘Yes. But if I do, I close the window.’

  ‘And if you forget?’

  Floyd began to get angry, thought better of it, and turned his open palms upwards.

  ‘Oh, all right, then, I’ll keep the window closed in future.’

  ‘Please try to see that security is vital.’ Clone paced round the room slowly, his face set in a mask of disapproval, then padded silently out of the door.

  Floyd breathed out a long sigh when the security man had left. Putting the finishing touches to the micro-circuit, he smouldered inwardly with words left unsaid.

  * * * *

  Three weeks later, Floyd found himself in the Managing Director’s office.

  It was a vast, low room, the expensive muted furnishings set off with carefully-sited electronic sculptures. Floyd did not relish his rare visits to this sanctum. They tended to coincide with moments Of crisis in his career. And today there seemed to be an oppressive silence in the huge room.

  Despite the soft lighting and the plushy carpet into which you sank toe-deep, it was clear that the ambience was unfriendly.

  Floyd fidgeted while the MD pretended to be reading some papers on his desk. Clone was hovering obsequiously in the background, like a well-trained-butler eager to anticipate his master’s needs.

  ‘Ah, Floyd!’ said the MD at length, as though Floyd had just walked into the room.

  Floyd shifted his w
eight to the other foot.

  ‘Take a close look at that.’ The MD swivelled a heavy-barrelled microscope and pushed it across the plastic desk top.

  Floyd bent forward and pressed his face to the visor, touching the focus controls lightly.

  ‘One of our latest micro-circuits,’ he said after a moment. ‘The one we...’

  ‘Take a closer look, Floyd.’ The Managing Director’s voice was edged like a saw. ‘Read the manufacturer’s name.’

  ‘It says Iota ... but... !’

  ‘But it looks exactly like one of ours. That, Floyd, is a Chinese copy of our most advanced circuit. It could only have been obtained as a result of industrial espionage.’

  The Managing Director paused and looked solemnly at Floyd.

  ‘Naturally we’re checking everyone who had access to the circuit. As you know, this particular job was entrusted to a mere handful of our most senior people.’

  Floyd nodded. So stone-faced Clone had something to worry about after all.

  ‘Now I’m not suggesting that you are unreliable, Floyd. We’ve known each other a long time. But you may have been careless. Clone here tells me that he found a window open in your room on one occasion.’

  He’d expected the accusation to come up. But now, confronted by it, he found nothing to say. Floyd became aware of Clone and the Managing Director looking directly at him, waiting for some kind of explanation or apology.

  ‘I, er ... yes ... that’s true.’

  ‘Really, Floyd, I should have thought a man of your experience, working with a piece of top-secret new circuitry, would have known better.’

  Floyd gulped. ‘But I was there all the time. No one could have got in.’

  The Managing Director glanced round at Clone. ‘Perhaps when the sunscreens were parted momentarily to open or close the window, Iota could have managed a shot with a telephoto lens or laser scanner.’

  ‘No, sir, that’s not possible,’ blurted Floyd. ‘The drawing board is turned so that no part of it is visible from the window. Mr. Clone, here, made a special point of having the drawing board turned that way.’ Give old misery a bit of credit, thought Floyd, though it’s hardly possible to sweeten the old sourpuss.

  ‘Good thinking. Clone,’ said the MD, beaming a warm ray of approval at the security man. ‘Well, Floyd, I accept your statement. There’s nothing we can do about it, now that the circuit has been copied. But I want you to be very much more careful in the future. We cannot afford another security leak like this. Understand?’

  Floyd mumbled something placatory and bowed himself out, trudging soundlessly over the deep carpet.

  * * * *

  The security scare passed off quietly enough. Indeed, only a few senior people were aware of the exact circumstances. Floyd had retained the confidence of the Board of Directors sufficiently to be entrusted with further top-secret work. Next summer found him engaged on another major development in the company’s micro-circuitry. He felt in good spirits that morning as he left his car in the parking lot and walked across the lawns to the block where he worked.

  The lawns were laid out with beds of flowers, formal pools, and a few trees here and there. His way took him under one of the trees, and its shadow covered him for a moment. A blundering dark-grey fly dropped out of the foliage and winged down towards Floyd, unnoticed. It settled on the back of his coat, over the left shoulder blade.

  Floyd crossed another sunlit lawn. Then he entered the electronic doors, showed his pass, and nodded to the uniformed doorman. The doorman pushed a button which swung aside the armoured glass doors leading to the top security wing. The doors closed noiselessly as soon as Floyd was through.

  Thinking of nothing in particular, Floyd paced along the corridor to the door of his own room. He was whistling some kind of tune as he entered, closed the door carefully, and moved over to a block of cupboards.

  Floyd did not see the fly detach itself from the back of his coat just before he took it off.

  The fly slipped across the room out of Floyd’s line of vision and hid under the knee-hole of his desk.

  Floyd put his coat in one of the cupboards. Then he rolled up his sleeves, took out his notes of the day before, and began to switch on the equipment.

  He was working on a modification of the new micro-circuit. Deftly he put the circuit under the microscope, studied it, and sketched with his light pen on the computer panel.

  The fly emerged from its hiding place stealthily, rose upwards, and began to patrol back and forth behind Floyd’s head. Floyd went on with his work, unaware of what was happening.

  Presently he took the micro-circuit from under the lens with fine tweezers and laid it carefully in a plastic dish on the table next to some test equipment.

  Out of the corner of his eye, disbelieving, he saw the fly swoop down like a hawk, gather the micro-circuit up in its grappling legs, and make off with it. Floyd stared, immobile, gulping down his astonishment, as the fly winged its way across the room and disappeared on top of a high cupboard.

  Floyd went after it with a heavy ruler. He had to get a chair to stand on so as to be able to see where the thing had settled. When he clambered up, he could see the fly sitting quietly on top of the cupboard.

  He brought the heavy ruler smashing down, but the fly darted sideways. Before he could strike again, the thing had clung to his forearm and he felt a sharp jab like a needle point being thrust into his flesh.

  With a feeling of sickened revulsion he flung the ugly grey fly off his arm. For a second or two he stood bemused, unable almost to comprehend what had happened. Then his knees crumpled, his vision darkened, and he went crashing unconscious to the floor.

  When he regained consciousness he was lying awkwardly at the foot of the chair. His head swam. For a moment he could not analyse the situation: what had happened ? Then he remembered the fly.

  A fly whose sting caused unconsciousness!

  Warily he looked around him, but there was no sign of the insect. His first impulse was to rush out of the door, in a kind of panic, calling for help.

  But on second thoughts, very possibly that was what the fly wanted him to do. He found himself assuming that the thing possessed a kind of intelligence, for it had acted with considerable cunning so far. As he went out of the door, the fly would go out of the door too and could hide itself anywhere in the building.

  Floyd saw that the only hope of getting the micro-circuit back was to keep the insect trapped in his room. He couldn’t risk having it escape and disappear. He needed it as evidence. Who would believe his story that a big fly had stolen the micro-circuit—unless he was able to produce the insect in question ? He would be written down as suffering from delusions, and his security rating would decline to zero.

  Security. That was the operative word. This was a security problem. A job for Clone. He would ring him up and get him to come and trap the fly. But first Clone would have to install a wire mesh cage outside the door so that the creature could not get out as he got in.

  Floyd edged over to the phone. There was no sign of the fly. But was it watching him from some hiding-place and was it intelligent enough to see the threat to its safety posed by Floyd making a phone call ? And if so, could it sting him again ?

  Floyd remembered reading somewhere of insects that could only sting once and others that needed to recover before they could sting a second time. At any rate he would have to take that chance.

  He was at his desk now.

  He picked up the phone and dialled Clone’s number.

  Clone’s voice crackled over the line, crisp and impersonal as ever.

  ‘Security here.’

  ‘Floyd. I have a security problem in Room 208.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bring a butterfly net.’

  ‘A butterfly net? Did I hear you right?’

  ‘But first you must...Floyd felt the sharp jab in his right forearm again. A dark object was sitting on his flesh. He tried, clumsily, to crush it.

&nb
sp; ‘Fly got me again....’ said Floyd indistinctly, slumping forward on to the desk.

  * * * *

  Floyd came round again to find himself lying on his back on the carpet, his collar undone, and Clone bending over him.

  ‘What happened?’ said Clone.

  Floyd tried to clear his brain of the vaporous confusion that was coiling there. His head felt as if it was splitting. It was difficult to think straight.