Chapter V

Hunter left his autojet on the parking flat behind the house. He fed enough coins in the meter to hold the car for twenty-four hours. He didn’t know how fast he’d want an autojet after he talked to Mrs. Ames, but he didn’t want a chance passer-by to pick up his car if the charter expired.

It was necessary for him to ring a bell manually, by means of a metal button fixed to the wooden frame of the front door. No scanner announced his arrival, nor did any soundless auto-door respond to a beam transmitted from within the house. After a time Hunter heard footsteps. A strange woman--probably a new resident who had taken Ann’s place--opened the door.

“I’m Captain Hunter,” he said. “I came to see Mrs. Ames.”

“Won’t you come in, Captain?” the woman replied.

She led him into a front room which, Ann had once told him, had been called a living room. A peculiar name, surely, for the room appeared to have been designed solely as a place to sit while watching Tri-D--or flat-screen television, as it had been called in its early developmental stage when the house was new--or to hear someone play the bulky instrument known as a piano.

The room was an example of the appalling waste of space so common to the twentieth century. It was extremely spacious, but neither food tubes nor bed drawers were concealed in the walls.

Hunter had always been curious about the piano. It amazed him that it had been operated entirely by hand. There was no electric scanner to read the mood of the player and interpret it in melody. Driven to contrive his own harmonics, how could the twentieth century man have derived any satisfaction at all from music? His sensibilities had been immature, of course. But even so, an instrument which demanded so much individual creativeness must have been an enormous frustration.

Since so many surviving twentieth century machines made the same demand on the individual--their automobiles, for example, had been individually directed, without any sort of electronic safety control--it had puzzled both Hunter and Ann that the incidence of maladjustment in the past had been so low.

The captain dropped into a comfortable, chintz-covered rocking chair--one relic in this island of time that he really enjoyed. “Will you tell Mrs. Ames I’m here?” he asked the stranger.

“I’m Mrs. Ames.”

“I mean Mrs. Janice Ames--the owner of the house.”

The woman smiled woodenly. “You’re speaking to her, Captain, though I must say I don’t remember ever having met you before.”

“You don’t remember--”

Fear clutched at his heart. He sprang up, moving toward her with clenched fists. “An hour ago I called Mrs. Ames from the spaceport. I saw her. Here--in this room.”

“I’ve owned this house all my life, Captain.” Her expression was more than good acting. She spoke with utter conviction, and seemed completely sure of herself. “You must be--” She hesitated and looked at him sharply. “Have you checked your adjustment index recently?”

“I haven’t lost my mind, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said. “Where’s Ann Saymer?”

“Believe me, please. The name is totally unfamiliar to me.” The woman was painfully sympathetic--and frankly scared. She backed away from him. “You need help from the clinic, Captain. Will you let me call them for you?”

Suddenly the light fell full on her face, and Hunter saw the tiny, still-unhealed scalpel wounds on both sides of her skull. The light glowed on the microscopic filament of platinum wire clumsily left projecting through the incision.

He understood, then. This woman was wearing one of Ann’s patented grids, sealed into her cerebral cortex. It made her into a robot, responding with unquestioning obedience to the direction of Ann’s transmitter. And Hunter had no doubt that United manipulated the transmission.

Simultaneously he realized something else. If the cartel went to this extreme to forestall his search for Ann, she must still be alive. For some reason they still needed her. Possibly her patent drawings had been submitted for government registry in such a way that only Ann understood them.

Ann had been through the general school, and knew what the score was. She would have protected her invention--and incidentally insured her own survival--if she could have possibly done so, even at a fearful risk to herself.

Hunter swung toward the door. It did not occur to him to call the police, since they were all cartel mercenaries. Whatever he did to help Ann, he would have to do on his own. Until he found her, he could count on help from Consolidated. After that--nothing.

He jerked open the front door--and froze. Three men were waiting on the porch with drawn blasters. Hunter had no time to recognize facial features which it might have been to his advantage to remember later, no time to find any identifying insignia on their tunics. With a barely visible flickering fire arced from one of the weapons, and pain exploded in his body, unconsciousness washed into his brain.