CHAPTER XV
As Doug marched, he thought.
There was less than an hour yet of marching to complete the great circle, to devise a plan.
Two boys in five hundred thousand. An impersonation now demanding so complex a knowledge of the situation of which it was the center that to carry it to successful conclusion would be impossible. Even a moment's belief otherwise was rank stupidity. Escape? Yes, by himself somehow, perhaps he could escape in one of the two sleek ships even now being serviced on the plaza; that had been the basis for his original plan. But the plan was junk now. Junk, unless he could find Terry and Mike first. Two boys, in a half-million!
Aircraft were being rolled out on the plaza. The immense aircraft in which he and Tayne would fly as they directed the maneuvers of their quadrants, and the aircraft of the tabulation and evacuation specialists. They were huge, and there were fully a hundred of them. But for all their size and number, they offered no hope. It was like being in a nightmare wherein one had to run for life, but the ground beneath was a sucking, miring bog.
His reason hinted temptingly that the voice he had heard might well not have been that of his son. How many voices were there in all creation that were precise echoes of each other? Thousands? Millions, even. But among them, there was of course the one. And he must know. He had to know.
The Contraption. Again, what had it done? It had transmitted himself and Dot into their physical counterparts on a parallel time-track. If the blue glow of the contraption had touched Terry and Mike, then they too would have been transmitted. But because they had not appeared in the cellar when the transmission was complete, he and Dot had assumed that they had been just outside the Contraption's limited range.
That was it, of course—the cellar. That was what had thrown them off, confused their logic. Through some quirk of coincidence, the other Blair, Senior Quadrate Blair and his wife had been in their cellar at the time of the switch. Had they been anywhere else—anywhere else at all, even just upstairs, the mistake in logic would not have been made. And if Madame Blair had no sons, Terry and Mike would not have been transmitted at all. But Quadrate and Madame Blair had had sons. Two, ten years old. He remembered when Tayne had told him of their transfer from his quadrant to Tayne's own.... Ordered by Gundar Tayne, Director. He remembered. He remembered how thankful he had been that they had not been his. But now—now, fantastically, they were. Because when the switch happened, Ronal and Kurt Blair had not been in the cellar. They had been on Venus.
But it was too much, the coincidences—the marriage of two counterparts; their children, same sex, same age.
And then he remembered what he had told Grayson so terribly long ago. There's a million possible results when you go fooling around with the structure of the universe, Carl ...
Thousands of voices in the universe that were exact echoes of each other. But Terry and Mike were here, and there was no doubting that. And in Tayne's quadrate, the one beside which he was even now marching. Oh, he was doing well with his thinking! He had narrowed the field down to a trifling two hundred fifty thousand!
And he knew that by any direct means that would not arouse Tayne's too-willing suspicion, it was as far down as he would narrow it.
Indirect, then.... Somehow, through Tayne himself, perhaps. Tayne had his boys. Tayne's brother had seen to that, with of course no reason given. Pressure—simple pressure. Doug wondered if the pressure was supposed to break him. He wondered what Tayne's reaction would be—and his brother's—if it did not. Easy enough to guess. If his sons' deaths at Tayne's careful arrangement were not enough to break him, shatter him, make him throw down his office, then the corpses of Kurt and Ronal—Terry and Mike—would somehow end up on the battle area occupied by his quadrant, far enough behind the front lines of fighting to convince any martial court that he had violated the Director's order, had obviously at the last moment brought his sons back within his own quadrant, where they might be in some measure protected.
That was how it would be. If the pressure was not enough, then a simple frame. A simple matter of good timing. Yet if the timing should, by some miracle, go wrong....
If the timing went wrong! God there it was!
Suddenly, the blood was pounding through his body, throbbing in the large veins at his throat. Five minutes more and this thing would end. Three hundred seconds, four hundred strides. Then the final salute as the Prelate General left as he had come. And then thirty minutes for deployment, and the games on the northern mass would begin.
But before those thirty minutes started.... It must be done just as the Prelate General's ship disappeared into the white syrup of the sky. It must be done just before the order to break ranks to prepare for combat deployment.
And then of course it would be a gamble at best. But it was a chance, where before there had been no chance at all.
Five hundred thousand swords flashed in final salute as the Prelate General's glittering ship leapt skyward, trailing a satisfactorily impressive wake of flame and thunder as it ascended into invisibility. And the sprawling headquarters building was at once denuded of its steeple. The Director had taken his place in the balcony. Divinity had withdrawn, entrusting its mission at length to the obedient officer of its lay hosts.
The swords were sheathed. And in a moment, the Director of the games would signal dismissal.
Now!
Suddenly, Doug was striding from his post at the point of the flying wedge, the thin flanks of which still joined the two quadrants, heading unerringly for a point directly before the balcony itself. And as suddenly he stopped, stiffly raised his open palm in salute. His cloak fluttered in the warm breeze.
"Your Very Grand Excellence! Senior Quadrate Blair wishes to report a suspected breach of command!" And he held his breath, but not intentionally, for suddenly breath would not come.
His salute was returned. And the field behind him was again still as though carven from stone.
"Report, Quadrate!"
He mustered all the wavering strength in his body, for each word must be crisp, clear, strong and flowing with confidence.
"Your Very Grand Excellence, it has come to this officer's attention that there exists the possibility of failure to execute a quadrant reassignment as prescribed in your command of June 3, in which Ronal Blair and Kurt Blair, identification numbers 28532 and 28533, were ordered transferred from the quadrant which I command to that of Quadrate Tayne. In order that such a failure be rectified at once if, in actuality, it has transpired, I request permission to order an immediate inspection of the units concerned!"
His muscles were rigid and his throat felt like so much wadded sandpaper. Everything hinged on what happened now. Everything.
"In the interests of military efficiency and discipline, your unprecedented request must be granted, Quadrate Blair. I will expect, however, a full report in writing concerning the basis of your suspicion of such failure at your earliest convenience. Order the inspection; you may have ten minutes!"
"At once, sir!"
He saluted, about-faced, and strode, the single animate figure in a great open amphitheater of statues, toward the Post Tayne held behind his own. And as he walked the foreboding silence was suddenly shattered by the roar of starting aircraft engines. The tabulation and evacuation planes, readying for warm-up flights, last-minute terrain checks. There was so little time. And the Director's flat, superbly confident tone had been enough to tell him that only a naive fool could hope to win. In it there had been no trace of surprise, no trace of suspicion, no trace of hesitation. It could mean that he was already beaten. Or, there was the thread-slim chance that it meant the Director had seen no threat in the request to the subtle plan against him. For, regardless of the inspection's outcome, the sons of Quadrate Blair would end up where they belonged, under Quadrate Tayne. And so the plan would thence go forward.
But for the record, the Director had demanded a report!
A report, Doug knew, which one way or the other, he would never write.
Somewhere behind him a flight of tab planes thundered into the air.
And then suddenly, he was facing Tayne, and it was time to play out the gamble to the end.
"Quadrate Tayne, in order to satisfy the Director and myself that the transfer of my sons to your quadrant has been effected as ordered by the Director's command dated June 3, you will order forward for inspection the unit within your quadrant to which they were assigned."
"Yes, sir."
Tayne pivoted.
"Divisions Six and Eighteen, forward—march!" Again, the familiar relay of command. Then the two great masses surged forward, one behind the other, leaving the two behind them still in formation. "Six by the left flank, march!" Six had cleared the quadrant formation, moved off as commanded to the left. "Eighteen by the right flank, march!" And Eighteen did the same. "Divisions, halt! Six, right, face! Eighteen, left, face!" And as quickly as Tayne's commands were relayed, the way was methodically cleared for the rear rank division he called next. There were perhaps seven minutes left.... "Division Thirty forward, march!"
And it came forward, and Doug realized at once that in this formation, this Division Thirty, were his sons, if they were anywhere among the five hundred thousand at all.
"Division, halt!" A second flight of evac ships roared over them, and Tayne waited. Six minutes.... "'A' Company, First Battalion, Second Regiment, forward—" This time, the unit Tayne wanted was in the very front, and at once, two hundred boys were separated from a division of over five thousand, as the division itself had been picked from among forty-eight others in a quadrant of a quarter-million.
And then—
"Squad leaders Kurt and Ronal Blair, front center!" And from the squads of a rear platoon, two bare-torsoed, helmeted youngsters rushed forward on the double!
They halted three paces from Tayne, saluted. And to Doug, their young faces were completely unrecognizable.
Curiously pinched, worried young faces, drawn taut with the tension of bewilderment and sudden fear.
Tayne pivoted, faced Doug.
"Sir, Kurt and Ronal Blair, as assigned by command! At your orders, sir!"
Doug returned the salute, said nothing. He walked with a careful nonchalance to where the two boys, swords and maces still swinging at their sides, stood at attention. Their arms rose in salute. There was no sign of recognition in their eyes.
He dared linger near them but a moment, the fleeting moment it would take for him to identify his own sons beyond doubt. And again, it would be a matter of timing. For until the right moment, Tayne could hear every word.
"How long have you boys been in your present unit?"
"Since—since June the third I think, sir." Terry's voice. And it was Terry's way of saying words. It was Terry, and it was Mike beside him.
But he remained silent. He waited, and he prayed.
The silence drew into seconds, and it was deadly.
And then suddenly a third flight of evac ships thundered their paen of power as they fought for altitude above him!
And with the prayer still at his lips lest his words be either too loud or drowned altogether, Doug shouted almost in their faces: "Terry, Mike! It's Dad! The Contraption's done all of this! Watch for me—I'll pick you up off the field!"
Their eyes were suddenly wide but the roar was already subsiding. He had managed about twenty quick words. He turned to Tayne. And Tayne's sword was not drawn. On his face was the masked look of hatred, but not the unveiled one of sudden comprehension. He had not heard....
"My sons, without doubt, Quadrate. You may order them to fall in, and reform your ranks. You shall receive my apology of record as soon as practicable."
He saluted stiffly and took his post at the apex of the wedge.
Tayne bellowed his commands for the reformation of his quadrant between the fourth and fifth ascending flights of tab and evac planes. And then, once again, there was the fantastic tableau of helmeted statues.
And through the speakers came the Director's command to deploy for combat.
As their quadrants were marched off to take the field under the ground command of the Junior Quadrates of the headquarters cadre, Doug and Tayne were escorted by an honor guard of cadets to the hangar-sections of the headquarters building where their command planes waited in the dank heat, engines idling. Huge aircraft, powerful, but not built for speed. Propeller-driven instead of jet, and the reason was obvious enough—the great, broad-winged craft had been designed for observation, not pursuit. Although there was no sign of a rotor assembly on either ship, Doug knew that for all their size, they were capable, in the thick atmosphere of Venus, of hovering at very little more than the speed of a slow human run. Everything, planned to the last detail. Everything, irrevocably woven into the unchangeable fabric of destiny itself.
The last half of what little plan he had remained only partially within the pattern, and after that, it would simply be a race between fugitive and pursuer—a fully-committed race between hunter and hunted. Nothing more, he knew, than a desperate attempt at escape where there could be no escape. But at least there would be the brief, red-hot satisfaction of trying—there was always that, when there was nothing else....
It would be simple. As Senior Quadrate, his was the duty of over-seeing the campaign not only of his own quadrant, but that of Tayne, Vladkow, Klauss. His was the prerogative of flying his ship over or landing it among any of the troops, wherever they fought. He could land in any quadrant—in Tayne's quadrant. The detailed campaign maps, kept in constant conformation with each phase of the battle as it progressed by picked tabulation personnel, would show him where to land. Wherever he found A Company, First Battalion, Second Regiment, Division Thirty.... And if the boys had understood, they would be watching, waiting. And after that, back to the plaza, the ship, with the prayer that its return trajectory was already plotted, its autorobot already reset for the return journey to Earth.
That was where he must break the pattern. That was when the hopeless, foolish race would begin.
And inwardly, Doug smiled an ironic, tight little smile. So funny, so tragically funny. A down-to-Earth, practical man like Congressman Douglas Blair, running for his life from a fantasy that could not possibly exist! As the people of Hiroshima had run on the day of the atomic bomb....
Their cloaks started to whip in the slipstreams of the waiting aircraft. Another ten strides and he would have been aboard the plane.
But before he had taken five of them, the speeding surface-vehicle had drawn up beside them and stopped scant feet short of the plane's opening port. Cadremen leapt from it, swords drawn. And behind them came the Director himself.
The formation halted as though it had suddenly struck an invisible wall.
As he walked between his flanks of guards, the hulking Gundar Tayne drew his own sword. And Doug knew what the gesture meant.
"Senior Quadrate Blair, as lawful husband of Madame Lisa Blair, who was taken into custody by the S-Council of Earth at 1300 hours Earth Standard Time today, I hereby place you under official arrest. Guards! Disarm this man."