The Zap Gun

"Has she got to Lilo yet?"

"No. We intercepted her in the outer public lobby."

"Who's holding onto her?"

"Bill and Ed McEntyre, from the drafting department. But she's really sore. You wouldn't believe it was the same girl, Lars. Honest. She's unrecognizable."

Lars opened his office door. At the far end, by the window, alone in the room, stood Lilo, gazing out at New York.

"You ready to go?" Lars said.

Lilo, without turning, said, "I heard; I have terribly good hearing. Your mistress is here, isn't she? I knew this would happen. That is what I foresaw."

The intercom on Lars' desk buzzed and his secretary Miss Grabhorn, this time with panic, not with disdain, said, "Mr. Lars, Ed McEntyre says that Miss Faine got away from him and Bill Manfretti and she's out of the pub-lob and she's heading for your office."

"Okay," Lars said; he grabbed Lilo by the arm, propelled her out of the office and along the corridor to the nearest up-ramp. She came ragdoll-like, passively; he felt as if he were lugging a light-weight simulacrum devoid of life or motivation, a weirdly unpleasant feeling. Did Lilo not care any longer, or was this just too much for her? No time to explore the psychological ramifications of her inertness; he got her to the ramp and onto it and the two of them ascended, back up toward the roof with its field and waiting government hopper.

As he and Lilo emerged onto the roof, stepped from the up-ramp, a figure manifested itself at the up-terminus of the building's one alternate up-ramp, and it was Maren Faine.

As Henry Morris had said, she was difficult to recognize. She wore her high-fashion Venusian wubfur ankle-length cloak, high heels, a small hat with lace, large, hand-wrought earrings and, oddly, no make-up, not even lipstick. Her face had a lusterless, straw-like quality. A hint almost of the sepulcher, as if death had ridden with her across the Atlantic from Paris and then up here now to the roof; death perched in her eyes, gazing out fat-birdlike and impassive but with guileful determination.

"Hi," Lars said.

"Hello, Lars," Maren said, measuredly. "Hello, Miss Topchev."

No one spoke for a moment. He could not recall ever having felt so uncomfortable in his entire life.

"What say, Maren?" he said.

Maren said, "They called me direct from Bulganingrad. Someone at SeRKeb or acting for it. I didn't believe it until I checked with KACH."

She smiled, and then she reached into her mail-pouch-style purse which hung from her shoulder by its black leather strap.

The gun that Maren brought forth was positively the smallest that he had ever seen.

The first thought that entered his mind was that the damn thing was a toy, a gag; she had won it in a nickel gum machine. He stared at it, trying to make it out more exactly and remembering that he was after all a weapons expert, and then it came to him that it was genuine. Italian-made to fit into women's purses.

Beside him Lilo said, "What is your name?" Her tone, addressed to Maren, was polite, rational, even kindly; it astonished him and he turned to gape at her.

There was always something new to be learned about people. Lilo completely floored him; at this critical moment, as she and he faced Maren's tiny dangerous weapon, Lilo Topchev had become lady-like and mature, as socially graceful as if she had entered a party in which the most fashionable cogs abounded. She had risen to the occasion and it was, it seemed to him, a vindication of the quality, the essence, of the stuff of humanity itself. No one could ever again convince him that a human being was simply an animal that walked upright and carried a pocket handkerchief and could distinguish Thursday from Friday or whatever the criterion was... even Ol' Orville's definition, cribbed from Shakespeare, was revealed for what it was, an insulting and cynical vacuity. What a feeling, Lars thought, not only to love this girl but also to admire her.

"I'm Maren Faine," Maren said, matter-of-factly. She was not impressed.

Lilo hopefully extended her hand, evidently as a sign of friendship. "I am very glad," she began, "and I think we can—"

Raising the tiny gun, Maren fired.

The filth-encrusted and yet clean-shiny little gadget expelled what once would have been certified as a dum-dum cartridge, in its primordial state of technological development.

But the cartridge had evolved over the years. It still possessed the essential ingredient—that of exploding when it contacted its target—but in addition it did more. Its fragments continued to detonate, reaping an endless harvest that spread out over the body of the victim and everything near him.

Lars dropped, fell away instinctually, turned his face and cringed; the animal in him huddled in a fetal posture, knees drawn up, head tucked down, arms wrapped about himself, knowing there was nothing he could do for Lilo. That was over, over forever. Centuries could pass like drops of water, unceasing, and Lilo Topchev would never reappear in the cycles and fortunes of man.

Lars was thinking to himself like some logical machine built to compute and analyze coolly, despite the outside environment: I did not design this, not this weapon. This predates me. This is old, an ancient monster. This is all the inherited evil, carried here out from the past, carted to the doorstep of my life and deposited, flung to demolish everything I hold dear, need, desire to protect. All wiped out, just by the pressure of the first finger against a metal switch which is part of a mechanism so small that you could actually swallow it, devour it in an attempt to cancel out its existence in an act of oral greed—the greed by life for life.

But nothing would cancel it now.

He shut his eyes and remained where he was, not caring if Maren chose to fire again, this time at him. If he felt anything at all it was a desire, a yearning that Maren would shoot him.

He opened his eyes.

No longer the up-ramp. The roof field. No Maren Faine, no tiny Italian weapon. Nothing in its ravaged state lay nearby him; he did not see the remnants, sticky organic, lashing and decomposed and newly-made, the bestial malignancy of the weapon's action. He saw, but did not understand, a city street, and not even that of New York. He sensed a change in temperature, in the composition of the atmosphere. Mountains ice-topped, remote, were involved; he felt cold and he shivered, looked around, heard the honking racket of surface traffic.

His legs, his feet ached. And he was thirsty. Ahead, by an autonomic drugstore, he saw a public vidphone booth. Entering it, his body stiff, creaking with fatigue and soreness, he picked up the directory, read its cover.

Seattle, Washington.

And time, he thought. How long ago was that? An hour? Months? Years; he hoped it was as long as possible, a fugue that had gone on interminably and he was now old, old and rotted away, wind-blown, discarded. This escape should not have ever ended, not even now. And in his mind the voice of Dr. Todt came incredibly, by way of the parapsychological power given him, that voice as it had on the flight back from Iceland hummed and murmured to itself: words not understandable to him, and yet their terrible tone, their world, as Dr. Todt had hummed to himself an old ballad of defeat. Und die Hunde schnurren an den alten Ma

Dropping a coin into the phone-slot he dialed Lanferman Associates in San Francisco. "Let me talk to Pete Freid."

"Mr. Freid," the switchboard chick at Lanferman said brightly, "is away on business. He ca

"Can I talk to Jack Lanferman, then?"

"Mr. Lanferman is also—I guess I can tell you, Mr. Lars. Both of them are at Festung Washington, D.G. They left yesterday. Possibly you could contact them there."