Vigilante 21st Century, page 4
Bitterness now rose in her, anger directed at herself mixing with the fear.
“How’s the arm?” Bright said.
“It’s all right.”
He glanced sharply at her, as if to judge how much she was lying. “Do you know anything about these people who turned red as they died?” he asked suddenly.
“I . . . Why . . .” Fear was in her voice now. She struggled to control it. “What makes you think—?”
“Stop stalling!” Bright interrupted.
“What makes you think . . .?”
“Hold on tight now!” he said, twisting the wheel of the car.
They had been approaching a group of tall buildings, one of the large self-contained communities existing within the enormously vast, sprawling metropolitan area of greater Los Angeles. Containing stores, offices, theaters, and restaurants, as well as hundreds of apartments, such villages almost had an independent life of their own.
Carole gasped as Bright turned the car into the groundlevel plaza of such a group of buildings. She caught a glimpse of tall buildings rising many stories and of shrubbery in an imitation jungle forming a small park in the middle of the plaza. Then the car’s tires were singing as it went down the ramp to an underground garage. She screamed as the car rolled straight toward a segment of corrugated metal marked Private, but as the car slowed, the metal moved hastily upward and backward. As the car moved under the metal and came to a halt, the metal door slid back into place. A tall man with a slight stoop in his back was hurrying toward them.
“Is everything okay, Rebel?” Bright asked.
“As okay as it ever is, boss,” the tall man answered. He glanced through the car at Carole and whistled appreciatively.
“Doc not here yet, I suppose?” Bright said.
“No, sir, that he ain’t,” Rebel answered.
“We’ll be upstairs in my office,” Bright said. “Let me know as soon as Doc gets here.”
Helping Carole from the car, he directed her into an elevator. Forty stories higher, he helped her from the elevator. They passed through the reception room of an office, down an inner corridor, and into a big back room, apparently a private study, one wall of which was covered with shelves of books. A second wall was covered by a large map of Southern California, a map filled with red and blue pins. Another, smaller map showed North America. This one also had clusters of pins.
“How’s the arm?” Bright asked.
“Well . . .”
A frown crossed his face. “Are you in pain?” he asked.
“Nothing I can’t stand. It’s . . . well . . .”
“Nerves,” he said. “Sit down and I’ll make some coffee.”
Sitting down, Carole watched Bright as he prepared the coffee in a small alcove. He was not a really big man, she thought. He stood a bare six feet tall, but to her eyes at this moment, with terror lurking in the back of her mind, he seemed taller.
In fact, it seemed to Carole Zenner that in the presence of this man, the terror seemed to diminish.
Bright was dressed in a suit of good cloth and good cut that had obviously been made by tailors who knew their business. His body was lean and lithe, and there was an aura of hunger about him, but this was not a hunger for food or for things of the senses—money, fame, applause. When he moved, he did not walk as did ordinary men, she thought—he flowed in an easy motion that seemed to take him where he was going without any particular effort. She saw no extra fat on him anywhere nor any suspicious bulges that would indicate either muscles or a hidden weapon. Yet she knew he had a weapon of some kind—her guess was that it was a gas-powered gun that discharged a small needle coated with a fast-acting anesthetic—and that it was held in a harness up his right sleeve.
She was not concerned about the weapon. She was concerned about herself, wondering first of all why she had been such an utter fool as to disobey her orders. Then he was handing her a cup of coffee and smiling down at her, and she was thinking that perhaps she had not been such a fool after all.
“Curious about the maps?” he asked.
“Well, a little,” she answered.
“The blue pins show the location of vigilantes, either groups or single individuals. The red pins show criminals, again either individuals or gangs.”
“So many of them . . . ” she whispered.
“Yes,” he answered. “For every one that is on the map, there are probably ten we haven’t identified. As yet they are smalltime, but they share one idea in common—each of them is certain in his own mind that he deserves to be a bigshot and that he is on his way to becoming what he deserves to be. However, the criminal population fluctuates. If a bitter gang war comes along, then it grows smaller suddenly. And . . .” He shrugged. “Now and then one decides to go straight. This also reduces the number of criminals.”
“But this is a civilized world. . . .” Carole tried to protest. In her heart, she knew her protest was a lie.
“A civilized world?” Bright answered. “Maybe, in another half million years, it may become civilized, if enough men are willing to die to bring civilization into existence. But right now civilization can best be described as a mask over the face of killer, cannibalistic apes!”
“Apes?” she whispered.
“Our ancestors were killer, cannibalistic apes,” he answered. “Half a million years ago, in South Africa, they first learned how to use the foreleg of an antelope to bash in the heads of baboons. In half a million years, they have grown taller and more intelligent. They have improved their weapons enormously, but the only change in their morals is that they no longer use these weapons to protect themselves from baboons but to intimidate and murder their own kind!”
He looked straight at her. “You mentioned a Mrs. Kether,” he said.
“Ye-es.” Her voice faltered into a squeak like that of a frightened mouse.
“And that she had sent you to kill me?”
“Ye-es.” The frightened mouse squeak grew smaller.
“Do you know what Mrs. Kether is?”
“In a kind of way, I know now. I didn’t when I first started working for her.” The squeaking mouse was a little bolder now. “Then I thought she was the . . . the most wonderful woman on earth. She had glamor—”
“Mostly skillful makeup artists,” Bright said.
“I know that now. But I didn’t know it then. She had hordes of suitors—”
“Who were after the money they thought she had!”
“I know that, too, now. But she actually has the money. As one of her so-called secretaries, I often had to handle millions of dollars in cash.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Bright said. “But how did you reach the point where you were willing to kill at her orders?”
“One thing led to another. Numerous young women work for her. We get—got—pretty rivalrous to see who was the most daring, the bravest. I didn’t fully realize how deep I was getting—” She broke off and twisted away from his gaze. The impulse to burst into tears was strong within her.
“Tears are what a woman uses when logic fails,” Bright said. “I’m completely immune to them.”
“But—”
“Your best bet is to be brave enough to confess fully,” Bright said. “Why did you disobey orders? Why did you change your mind about killing me?”
“I . . . I . . .” she felt a blankness in her mind. “I simply don’t know. “Mrs. Kether told me to make an appointment with a fool and to lure him to this saloon and then execute him.”
“Why didn’t you go through with it?”
“I—” The frightened mouse squeak was back in her voice. “I just don’t know. It was as if I changed my mind . . . as if I kind of forgot . . . as if I didn’t want to do it. I don’t know why. . . .” The frightened mouse stared at him.
He nodded. His eyes ceased their close watching of her face and seemed to look inside himself, at worlds that lay there.
“Do you know why I changed my mind?” she asked.
“No, but I can guess. I’ve seen other would-be killers change their minds or miss their aim or slip and fall down just as they were ready to fire.” His voice had a musing quality in it. “Do you remember—I told you I am a sword in the hands of something?”
“Yes.”
“I think this something made you change your mind,” he said quietly.
“What?” The mouse was really frightened now. It had seen the biggest cat in the universe. “What do you mean—something?”
“By something, I mean the forces that plan and shape the future of this planet and of the race now becoming human,” Bright answered. “It was the will of these forces that I should stay alive. So you forgot to kill me. It is all as simple as that—and as complex.”
“As simple? You’re talking about some thing that can’t be seen or heard or felt—”
“There is nothing new about this. Men have been talking about it for thousands of years. It is just that believing in it has sort of gone out of style in the last hundred years or so. I’m no missionary. I’m not trying to make any man or woman believe in this something. I’m not even sure I believe in it myself.”
“But you put your life in its hands! . . .”
“Of course,” he answered, surprised. “How can I be a vigilante of the twenty-first century if I don’t lay my life in its hands and say to it, ‘Use me as you see fit to mold the forces of the future’ ? I think—but can’t prove—that this is what made you change your mind—and saved my life.”
His voice was quiet. There was no hint of boasting in it anywhere. About this something men knew nothing. Hence they could not boast about it.
Longing such as she had never known was suddenly in her mind.
“But why couldn’t it just change Mrs. Kether’s mind?” she protested. “Why couldn’t it just kill off all the crooks?”
“Because it is trying to create free men, not robots,” Bright answered. “No man can become free except by facing problems and solving them with his own free will, his own intelligence. A man—or a woman—must be free to choose evil, free to choose to remain an ape, as long as he or she wishes.”
“Then why does it kill them through you?” Carole persisted.
“It doesn’t kill them, through me,” Bright answered. “I make of myself a sword. I put my life and my sword blade in the hands of the forces trying to hold in check the killer apes, trying to shape the future.”
For a moment, as he mused, his face was bleak and distant. “Perhaps this is only fantasy on my part, a way of trying to evade the consequences of my own actions. There may be no forces trying to shape the future. There may be no forces using me. All this may be only a dream. But I do think that unless these killer gangs of superapes armed with the newest weapons are held in check, there will be no future. The police on local, state, and national levels are powerless against these gangs. The crooks not only have the best weapons, but they can—and do—hire the finest lawyers. Now and then some smalltime gangster is trapped by the police and given a long jail sentence, but the odds are that this is not efficiency in police work but actually a gang using the law to punish one of its own disobedient members.”
“You paint a grim picture,” Carole said.
“This is a grim world,” Bright answered. “How were you going to kill me?”
Lifting her right hand, Carole extended the index finger. Again Bright moved cat-fast, catching the arm and shoving the hand away from him.
“I . . . I wasn’t . . .” Carole whispered.
“Sorry,” Bright said. “What’s in that finger, to make it into a weapon?”
“Wires,” she whispered. “They extend down to the end of the finger. When I point the finger, an invisible radiation is discharged. It won’t work now. The wires extend to a small glass cylinder in the forearm. You broke that, I think.”
“A weapon buried in the flesh!” He whistled. “How was it put there?”
“An operation.”
“And this was the way you were to kill?”
“Yes. But I haven’t killed anybody yet. You . . . you were to be my first victim.”
For an instant she was silent; then words she did not know were in her came pouring surfaceward.
“When I was a little girl, living on the wrong side of the tracks, running from boys and fighting off men, I dreamed . . . well, I dreamed of something better than that. I used to watch and envy the rich people of our little town. They lived in big houses and they drove big cars and their children went away to college. I thought they must be wonderful people—kind, considerate, thoughtful, honest, the type of people you would want to know and to be. When I came here to Los Angeles, this was still my dream. I thought the people at the top were nice.”
Her voice broke into jittery sound. She caught it and brought it back under control. “Only when it was too late did I realize that I dreamed alone and that the people at the top were not nice, not kind, not considerate—except for being polite when politeness pays. They are tougher, rougher, meaner, more clever—and much more deadly—than their fellows. This is why they are at the top!”
“Usually, but not always, this is true,” Bright said. “I’m sorry—about your lost dream, I mean.” His voice was suddenly gentle.
Behind the bookshelves a buzzer sounded softly. Bright was instantly on his feet. As if mounted on ball bearings, a section of the bookcase was pulled away from the wall. Behind it were dozens of miniature TV screens, all dark except one. The lighted screen showed the face of the tall man Carole had seen in the basement.
“Yes, Rebel,” Bright said.
“Doc just came in. He’s on his way up to his hospital right now.”
“Good!” Bright glanced around at Carole. “I’ll take the patient down to him right away.”
“That’s not all,” Rebel said. “Doc brought some guests with him.”
“Guests?” Annoyance sounded in Bright’s voice.
“He didn’t know he was bringing them,” Rebel answered. “Two of them are hiding in the artificial jungle in the middle of the patio.”
“I’ll take the patient down to Doc; then I’ll come on down and join you,” Bright answered.
Carole found she was being hastily helped out of the tight little office and into the elevator. Then she was helped out of the elevator and into a room where a white-haired man with a tired expression about his eyes looked up at her. A young redheaded nurse was with the man with the tired eyes.
“X rays,” Bright said. “She’s got a weapon of some kind buried under the skin in her right arm.”
“A weapon buried under the skin?” A doubting expression appeared in the tired eyes. “How does it kill?”
Bright looked inquiringly at Carole.
“I don’t know how it kills,” she said. “All I know is that the victim turns red.”
“What?” Bright said.
“They turn red,” she repeated.
Bright turned to the man with the tired eyes. “Check her close, Doc. Very close. No, I can’t stick around. We have guests outside that need my attention.”
As Bright went out the door, Carole found that the redheaded nurse was already urging her through a door that opened into what seemed to be a small but very adequately equipped hospital.
chapter
FIVE
IN THE BASEMENT, Rebel waited in the center of an elaborately equipped command post. He was almost surrounded by small TV screens wired to television cameras hidden at various places in the cluster of tall buildings that made up this community. Actually, as Bright’s office was the command post of a much larger area, so Rebel’s basement setup was the watch center and command post for the local area. This was Rebel’s duty area. Unless relieved, he would remain on duty here until the building collapsed.
Rebel was that kind of a man. He had been a rebel against the world, until Bright had converted him, by outdrawing him, outshooting him, then licking him with his bare fists. This had made a believer out of Rebel. His face was scarred with the marks of dozens of fistfights, and there was a straight line across his left cheek where a knife had cut a bloody strip. He looked around from his miniature TV screens when Bright entered. His scarred face broke into a grin at the sight of the only man he had ever known whom he respected.
“Maybe a real fight, huh, boss?” he questioned. At the thought, a grin broke his scarred face into dozens of happy islands.
“Where are they?” Bright asked.
“Two of ’em are hiding in our private jungle out in the plaza,” Rebel answered. He pointed to screen number three.
The camera that was taking this scene was hidden high in a window of a tall building. Using a long lens, the camera had been set to shoot downward at a slight angle, with the result that everything in the clump of imitation jungle was clearly revealed. This jungle was a place of shadows.
“Right there,” Rebel said, pointing. “Two of those shadows are men.”
“I see them,” Bright said. Looking down, he could barely discern two dark shadows in the clumps of shrubbery.
“A car came in right behind Doc and his nurse,” Rebel said. “It went around the plaza. These two birds dropped off and ducked into the jungle there. I can’t tell for sure, but I think they are watching Doc’s little hospital.”
“Could be,” Bright answered. He ran his eye along a row of buttons beside the big panel that held the miniature TV screens, noting which buttons were lighted. He pressed the first lighted one.
“Sixteen here,” a man’s voice said.
“Report,” Bright said.
“On duty at station, sir. Car parked on street outside of village. Three and eight are in the back seat of the car. What—”
“We have visitors,” Bright said. “Keep your eyes open and report here if anything unusual happens.”
“Visitors! Yes, sir!” Eagerness was suddenly in the voice of the man known as sixteen.
Bright pushed another button. A man answered. He identified himself as number nine. Yes, he was awake, alert, and ready. Bright pushed the last lighted button. A woman’s voice answered, saying she was ready. “Good, number five,” Bright said. “Stay alert.”
