Chapter 14

THE GENERAL STRIKE

In their suite, Percival Train put his arm around his wife's supple waist, swung her

around, and kissed her lingeringly. "Let's sit down and talk this thing out. We both

scanned both kids. We agree that they're both normal-apparently so, anyway-now. So

what? Shoot me the load of what's bothering you."

"So a hell of a lot." A cigarette appeared between Cecily's lips, lit itself, and she burned

a quarter of it in one long inhalation. "I'll give you both barrels. They had mind blocks.

Both of them did. Now they either haven't any or are able to hide the fact that they have

and I know damn well which one it is. Now. How could a baby who can scarcely walk

yet-to say nothing of two of them-have anything to hide or want to? Or be able to if they

did? Here's how. They were both conceived in subspace. . . ."

"So what? Don't you think that ever happened before?" "Not in any ship that ever picked

up a zeta charge, it didn't. No woman ever lived through that before to become a mother.

And both periods of gestation were impossibly long. And all four parents were powerful

psiontists; just how powerful you and I don't know and can't guess. And they both, at an

age when normal babies are completely dependent, have super-normal intelligence and

super-normal powers. . . ."

"Hold it, presh, you're just guessing at that."

"Guessing your left eyeball! Look at what happened! Could any normal man alive, of his

own ability, do what we know Upton Maynard did? Or Eldon Smith? Or Guerdon Dann?

And look at Steve Spehn. You know as well as I do, Perce, that it's starkly impossible to

hide an operation as big as that from a spy system as good as EastHem's. And look at

me. I never had even a trace of psionic ability before-how did I get it? And so all of a

sudden? And those are only a few of the stickers, big boy; if you aren't convinced yet I

can go on for half an hour."

Train, his face set hard in concentration, thought for minutes; then said, "I'm convinced

that. . ."

"Good! I didn't expect you to admit it."

"Hold on, Sess! I'm convinced that there's an operator. I never thought about those things

before in that way, hut the way you pile them up leaves no room for doubt. But you got

off on the wrong foot and never corrected yourself-so you went clear out to the Pleiades,

by way of Canopus, Rigel, and S-Doradus, to hit Venus next door. Didn't you ever hear

of Occam's Razor?"

"Why, of course, but..."

"Use it, then, and that functional as well as beautiful red-thatched head of yours."

It took her only a couple of seconds. "Why, it's Barbara!" she shrieked then. "It's been

Barbara all the time!" "Right. So let's examine Barbara. She's been an honest to-God

witch all her life. The greatest and probably the only one-hundred-percenter ever. She's

known it and worked at it. That much we know for sure. What else she is we'll never

know, but we can do some freehand guessing. She's had her own way all her life. How?

Yet it never spoiled her. Why not? Even as a teenager, nobody's line ever fooled her.

Why not? Above all, why wasn't she ever shot or strangled or blown up with dynamite?"

Cecily nodded her spectacular head. "Competition must have tried. That has always

been the cut-throatingest of all cut-throat games. And, underneath, she really is hard."

"Hard! She's harder than the superneotride hubs of hell itself. Whenever she has wanted

anything she has taken it. Including Carlyle Deston. And speaking of Deston, look at what

happened to him-and me. He didn't used to have any more psionic ability than I did-not

as much. Then, all of a sudden-both of us-bam-whingo! And you can't say the kids did

that-not to him, anyway. Not only they weren't born yet-you might claim they could work

pre-natally-they weren't conceived yet . . . probably, that is . . ."

She laughed. "You can delete the `probably', Perce. They got married right after their

first meetings, you know. Anyway, virgin brides or not, they certainly were not pregnant

ones. They both knew the facts of life."

"Okay. She made full-scale, high-powered psionic operators out of Herc and Bun, too;

long before the kids were born and probably before they were conceived. So, for my

money, it was Bobby who worked all of us over and pulled the strings on the Adamses

and on Maynard And Company and did everything else that was done."

"But those babies are not normal babies, Perce . . ." She paused, then went on, "But of

course . . ." She paused again.

"Of course," he agreed "With cat-tractor-psiontist parents on both sides, how could they

be? Especially with said parents working on them-just like we'll be working on ours-from

the day they were born? Or maybe even before? I'll buy it that they have a lot more stuff

than any normal kids could possibly have; up to and including mind-blocks and even the

ability to hide them. When they grow up they'll probably have a lot more stuff than any of

us. But now? And that kind of stuff? Uh-uh. No sale, presh; wrap it back up and put it

back up on the shelf."

"I'll do just that." She drew a deep breath of relief and wriggled herself into closer and

fuller contact. "Just the thought of such little monsters as that simply petrified me."

"I know what you mean. You almost gave me gooseflesh there for a minute myself."

"But we can understand Bobby's doing it and play along."

"You're so right. Actually, we owe her a vote of thanks for what she's done for us."

"We certainly do. I'd tell her so myself, too, if it wouldn't . . . but say . . . s'pose she's

reading us right now?"

The man stiffened momentarily, then said, "We haven't said a word I wouldn't want her to

hear. If you are on us, Bobby, I say this-thanks; and you can put it down in your book

that we're both with you until the last clang of the gong. Check, Cecily?"

"How I check!" She kissed him fervently. "You were right; I should have talked to you

before. I didn't have a leg to stand on."

"That allegation I deny." He laughed, put his right hand on her well-exposed left leg, and

squeezed. "This, in case nobody ever told you before-I thought I had-is one of the only

perfect pair of such ever produced."

She put her hand over his, pressed it even tighter against her leg, and grinned up at him;

and for a time action took place of words. Then she pulled her mouth away from his and

leaned back far enough to ask, "You don't suppose she's watching us now, do you?"

"No. Definitely not. She's no Peeping Thomasina. But even if she were-now that you're

you again, my redheaded bundle of joy, we have unfinished business on the agenda. And

anyway, you're not exactly a shrinking violet."

"Why, I am too!" She widened her eyes at him in outraged innocence. "That's a vile and

base canard, sir. I'm just as much of a Timid Soul as you are, you Fraidy Freddie,

you-why, I'm absodamlutely the shrinkingest little violet you ever laid your cotton-pickin'

eyes on!"

"Okay, Little Vi, let's jet." He got up and helped her to her feet; then, arms tightly around

each other and savoring each moment, they moved slowly toward a closed door.

The cold-war stalemate that had begun sometime early in the twentieth century had

become a way of life. Contrary to the belief of each side over the years, the other had

not collapsed. Dictatorship and so-called democracy still coexisted; both were vastly

stronger than they had ever been before. Each had enough superpowerful weapons to

destroy all life on Earth, but neither wanted a lifeless and barren world; each wanted to

rule the Earth as it was. Therefore the Big Bangs had not been launched; each side was

doing its subtle best to outwit, to undermine, and/or to overthrow the other.

WestHem was expanding into space; EastHem, as far as WestHem's Intelligence could

find out, was waiting, with characteristic Oriental patience, for the capitalistic and

imperialistic government of the West to fall apart because of its own innate weaknesses.

This situation existed when the Galactic Federation was formed; specifically to give all

the peoples of all the planets a unified, honest, and just government;, when Secretary of

Labor Deissner, acting through Antonio Grimes, called all the milk-truck drivers of

Metropolitan New York out on strike.

At three forty five of the designated morning all the milk-delivery trucks of Depot

Eight-taking one station for example; the same thing was happening at all were in the

garage and the heavy steel doors were closed and locked. The gates of the yard were

locked and barricaded. The eight-man-deep picket line was composed one-tenth of

drivers, nine-tenths of heavily-armed, heavy-muscled hoodlums and plug-uglies. They

were ready, they thought, for anything.

At three fifty a fleet of armored half-tracks lumbered up and began to disgorge armored

men. Their armor, while somewhat reminiscent of that worn by the chivalry of old, was

not at all like it in detail. Built of leybyrdite, it was somewhat lighter, immensely stronger,

and very much more efficient. Its wide-angle visors, for instance, were made of

bullet-proof, crack-proof, scratch-proof neo-glass. Formation was made and from one of

the trucks an eighty-decibel voice roared out:

"Strikers, attention! We are coming through; the regular deliveries are going to be made.

We don't want to kill any more of you than we have to, so those of you with only clubs,

brass knucks, knives, lead pipes, and such stuff, we'll try to only knock out as cold as

frozen beef. You guys with the guns, every one of you who lets go one burst will get

shot. Non-fatally, we hope, but we can't guarantee it. Now, you damn fool bystanders" -it

is remarkable how quickly a New York crowd can gather, even at four o'clock in the

morning= keep right on crowding up, as close as you can get. Anybody God damned fool

enough to stand gawking in the line of fire of fifty machine guns ought to get killed-so just

keep on standing there and save some other fool-killer the trouble of sending you to the

morgue in baskets. Okay, men, give 'em hell!"

To give credit to the crowd's intelligence, most of it did depart-and at speed-before the

shooting began. New Yorkers were used to being chivvied away from scenes of interest;

they were not used to being invited, in such a loud tone of such savage contempt, to stay

and be slaughtered. Of the few who stayed, the still fewer survivors wished fervently,

later, that they had taken off as fast as they could run.

Armored men strode forward, swinging alloy-sheathed fists, and men by the dozens went

down flat. Then guns went into action and the armored warriors fell down and rolled

hap-hazardly on the pavement; for no man, however strong, can stand up against the

kinetic energy of a stream of heavy bullets. Except for a few bruises, however, they

were not injured. They were not even deafened by the boiler-shop clangor within their

horribly resounding shells of metal-highly efficient earplugs had seen to that.

Those steel-jacketed bullets, instead of penetrating that armor, ricocheted off in all

directions-and it was only then that the obdurately persistent bystanders-those of them

that could, that is-ran away.

The machine-gun phase of the battle didn't last very long, either. In the assault-proof

half-tracks expert riflemen peered through telescopic sights and .30-caliber rifles barked

viciously. The strikers' guns went silent.

Leybyrdite-shielded mobile torchers clanked forward and the massed pickets fled: no

man in his right mind is ever going to face willingly the sixty-three-hundred degree heat of

the oxy-acetylene flame. The gates vanished. The barriers disappeared. The locked

doors opened. Then, with an armored driver aboard, each delivery truck was loaded as

usual and went calmly away along its usual route; while ambulances and meat-wagons

brought stretchers and baskets and carried away the wounded and the dead.

Nor were those trucks attacked, or even interfered with. It had been made abundantly

clear that it would be the attackers who would suffer.

But what of the source of New York's milk? The spaceport and Way Nineteen? Pickets

went there, too, of course; but what they saw there stopped them in their tracks. Just

inside the entrance, one on each side of the Way, sat those two tremendous,

invulnerable, enigmatic super-tanks. They did not do anything. Nothing at all. They merely

sat there; but that was enough. No one there knew what those things could or would do;

and no one there wanted to find out. Not, that is, the hard way.

Nor did the Metropolitan Police do anything. There was nothing they could do. This was,

most definitely, not their dish. This was war. War between the Galaxians on one side and

Labor, backed by WestHem's servile government, on the other. The government's armed

forces, however, did not take part in the action. At the first move of the day, Maynard

had taken care of that.

"Get the army in on this if you like," he had told Deissner, flatly. "Anything and everything

you care to, up to and including the heaviest nuclear devices you have.

We are three long subspace jumps ahead of anything you can do, and the rougher you

want to play it the more of a shambles New York will be when it's over."

Therefore, after that one brief but vicious battle, everything remained-on the

surface-peaceful and serene. Milk-deliveries were regular and punctual, undisturbed by

any overt incident. The only difference-on the surface-was that the milk-truck drivers

wore leybyrdite instead of white duck.

Beneath that untroubled surface, however, everything seethed and boiled. Grimes and

his lieutenants raved and swore. Deissner gritted his teeth in quiet, futile desperation.

The Nameless One of EastHem, completely unaccustomed to frustration and highly

allergic to it, went almost mad. He now knew that the Galaxians had the most powerful

planet in the galaxy and he could not find it.

This situation was, of course, much too unstable to endure, and Nameless was the first

to crack. He probably went completely mad. At any rate, his first move was to liquidate

both Secretary of Labor Deissner and Chief Mediator Wilson. Nor was there anything of

finesse about these assassinations. Two multi-ton blockbusters were detonated, one in

each of two apartment hotels, and the fact that over three thousand persons died meant

nothing to EastHem's tyrant. His second move was to make Antonio Grimes the boss of

all WestHem. Whereupon Grimes called a general strike; every union man of the

Western Hemisphere walked out; and all hell was out for noon.

The union people, however, were not the only ones who walked out. Executives,

supervisors, engineers, and top bracket technicians did too, in droves, and disappeared

from Earth; and they did not go empty-handed. For instance, the top technical experts of

Communications Incorporated (a wholly-owned subsidiary of InStell) worked for an hour

or so apiece in the recesses of their switch-banks and packed big carrying-cases before

they left.

Grimes knew and counted upon the fact that WestHem's economy, half automated

though it was, could not function without his union men and women at work. He must also

have known the obverse; that it could not function, either, without the brains that had

brought automation into being in the first place and that kept it running-the only brains

that understood what those piled-up masses of electronic gear were doing. He must also

have known that in any fight to the finish Labor would suffer with the rest; hence he did

not expect a finish fight. He was superbly confident that Capital, this time as always

before, would surrender. He was wrong.

When Grimes found every one of his own communications channels dead, he tried

frantically to restore enough service to handle Labor's campaign, but there was nothing

he or his union operators could do. (They were still called "operators", although there

were no longer any routine manual operations to be performed).

These operators, although highly skilled in the techniques of keeping the millions of calls

flowing smoothly through the fantastically complex mazes of their central exchanges,

were limited by their own unions' rules to their own extremely narrow field of work. An

operator reported trouble, but she must not, under any conditions, try to fix it. Nor could if

she tried. No operator knew even the instrumentation necessary to locate any particular

failure, to say nothing of being able to interpret the esoteric signals of that

instrumentation.

There were independent experts, of course, and Grimes found them and put them to

work. These experts, however, could find nothing with which to work. The key codes, the

master diagrams, and the all-important frequency manuals had vanished. They could not

even find out what, or how much, of sabotage had been done. It would be quicker, they

reported, to jury-rig a few channels for Labor's own use. They could do that in a day or

so; in just a little longer than it would take to fly technicians to the various cities he

wanted in his network. . Grimes told them to go ahead; but before the Labor leaders

could accomplish much of anything, EastHem launched every intercontinental ballistic

missile it had.

WestHem's warning systems and defenses were very good indeed. The Department of

Defense had its own communications system, which of course was not affected by the

strike. In seconds, then, after the first Eastern missile left the ground, the retaliatory

monsters of the West began to climb their ladders.

And in minutes the Nameless One and hundreds of the hard core of the Party died; and

thousands of his lesser minions were in vehicles hurtling toward subspacers which had

for many months been ready to go and fully programmed for flight.