The Cartels Jungle Part 5

Max Hunter felt a chill of terror. He was walking in a human graveyard of living automatons, responding to the transmission from Ann's machine. United had lost no time in putting the thing to work. This was no ordinary strike, but the opening skirmish in the conflict that would wreck both Consolidated and the Union of Free Workers.

Hunter entered the monorail terminal. It was deserted except for a woman who stood by the window looking out at the crowd. She was wearing a demure, pink dress. Her face was plain, and she had used no cosmetic plasti-skin to make it more striking. Her brown hair, streaked with a gray which she took no trouble to hide, was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck.

Surprisingly, Hunter thought she was pretty, perhaps because she was so different from the eternal, baby-faced adolescent who thronged the city in a million identical duplications.

Hunter knew he had seen her before. He couldn't remember where. She shifted her position slightly and the light cast a sharp, angular shadow on her face. Then he knew.

"Dawn!" he cried.

Startled, she turned to face him with a strange look in her eyes.

"I was hoping you wouldn't recognize me, Captain Hunter," she said.

"What are you doing here--dressed like some dowdy just in from a farm sector?" he asked, his gaze incredulous.

"We're all of us a mixture of different personalities," she replied.

"I work for an entertainment house, yes. But I also have some of the qualities of your Ann Saymer. Don't take offense, please. Ann and I are both interested in the maladjusted. She wants a quick cure. I'm looking for the cause."

"Here?"

"Wherever there are people who face an emotional crisis--the men who come to Number thirty-four, or a mob of strikers. I want to know why we react in the way we do, and what makes up the frustration pattern that crowds us across the borderline into insanity."

"You sound like a psychiatrist," he said.

"I hold a First, Captain Hunter."

"And you work in an entertainment house?"

"Tell me about yourself, Captain. Have you found Ann yet?"

He looked away quickly.

"No," he said, his face hardening.

"And you still haven't had a chance to use your blaster?"

He directed an appraising glance at her. The question might imply a great deal. Did she somehow know what had happened at Mrs. Ames'? Did she know he was a fugitive?

A dozen police mercenaries appeared abruptly at the end of the street.

Since the police had never been used to break a strike, Hunter guessed that this was Consolidated's answer to Werner von Rausch's new weapon.

The mercenaries drew their blasters and ordered the mob to disperse.

The automatons turned to face them. And as they turned they fell silent--the cloying, choking silence of the tomb. Like marching puppets, the mob moved toward the police. Clearly Hunter could hear a shrill voice ordering them to halt.

Hunter felt a sickening inner horror. How could the mob obey when they heard nothing but the enslaving grid, and responded to neither fear nor reason? Still they moved forward, in a robot death march. Whatever happened, it was a situation Young could turn to his advantage. If the mercenaries killed unarmed workers, it could be turned into superb propaganda. And ultimately, by sheer weight of numbers, the defenseless mob could overwhelm the mercenaries.

White fire leaped from the blasters. The first rank fell, but the mob marched blindly across the smoking corpses. The mercenaries fired again. It was slaughter--brutal and pointless--of slaves unaware of their danger, unable to save themselves.

Without understanding his own motivation--and without caring--Max Hunter leaped into the sill of the terminal window. There he was in a position to fire over the heads of the mob. The blast from his weapon arrowed into the line of police mercenaries.

Three fell in the agony of the flames. The rest, glad for an excuse to stop the slaughter, turned and fled. Like clockwork things, the mob turned back and resumed its precision demonstration in front of the factory.

Hunter slipped white-faced into a terminal bench. His hand trembled as he jammed the blaster back beneath his belt.

"Why did you do it, Captain?" Dawn asked.

How could he answer her, without saying he had seen the grids in their skulls? And he wasn't ready to trust Dawn to that extent.

"The people couldn't help themselves," he said ambiguously.

"Because they're in the U.F.W. and Eric Young cracks the whip. Is that what you mean?"

"They weren't aware of their own danger."

"Miscalculating the risks then? But that's part of the system, Captain. If you can't fight your way up to the top--"

"Then the system is utterly vicious."

"You don't mean that," she said.

"Why not? We're living in a jungle society. It's nothing but conflict--conflict on the frontier and conflict here from the time they put you in the general school."

"Only the children who have the intelligence--"

"But why?" he interrupted fiercely. "Where does it get us?"

"We have a stable society," she told him. "Peace of a sort. Law enforcement, too, and a chance to build something better when we learn how."

"Something better?" He laughed as he stood up. "We'll get that when we pull this h.e.l.l apart, and not before."

She put her hand on his arm. "No, Captain. It's not realistic to say that. Over and over again in the past we wrecked civilization because good-hearted and conscientious people thought there was no other way to create a finer world. It didn't work, because violence is madness.

This time we have to begin where we are and build rationally. We can, you know, when we understand what we have to build with."

"What else do we need to know, Dawn? You're falling back on the typical double-talk of the psychiatrists. With all the application of physical science that we have--"

"I wasn't thinking of technology, Captain. Civilization isn't machines. It's people. Our acc.u.mulation of knowledge is tremendous, but essentially it means nothing because we know so little about ourselves. It's absurd to talk of making something better until we really know the individual we're making it for."

"Go ahead," he countered angrily. "p.u.s.s.y-foot around with your cautious experiments, make sure n.o.body gets hurt--and you'll all end up slaves. As for me, I'm going to find Ann and get out while there's still time."

"Always the same two alternatives," Dawn said wearily. "Pull down the world, or run away from it. We need the courage to try something different. We need men who will act like men. I thought, Captain, by this time--" She looked up into his eyes. "Where are you going?"

"To the top--the casinos." Her abrupt question took him off balance and almost surprised him into telling the whole truth.

"Top level." She paused, studying his face. "That's logical, of course. You'll rescue your woman and run away--perhaps to the frontier, or to a forgotten world too insignificant to be claimed by either cartel. It all sounds so easy, doesn't it? You have friends in the service. They'll smuggle you away from Sector West." She hesitated again. "Running away is insanity, too, Captain. But that is one thing you still have to learn."

VII