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Cartels Jungle

<h2>IV</h2> Captain Hunter left the lift at Level Nineteen. An automatic entry probe accepted his blue-tinted executive card, and he walked the short distance to the hotel which specialized in catering to spacemen. It was traditionally neutral ground, where the mercenaries of Consolidated or United Research met as friends, although a week before they might have been firing radiation fire at each other in the outer reaches of space. The frontier conflict was a business to the spaceman. Hunter was too well-adjusted to become emotionally involved in it himself. The spacemen called their hotel the Roost, a contraction lifted from the public micropic code. The full name was the Roosevelt, lettered on the entry. The hotel was popularly supposed to have been built close to the site of a twentieth century Los Angeles hotel of the same name, destroyed in the last convulsive war that had shattered the earth. By micropic Hunter had made his customary reservation. His room was high in an upper floor overlooking Level Twenty-three. Through the visipanel he could see the walk-ways thronged by the various classifications of executives who worked in the central offices of the cartels—lawyers, engineers, administrators, directors, astrogeographers, designers, statisticians, researchers. Somewhere in the crowd, perhaps, were the two men who ruled the cartels and directed the struggle for the Galactic empire. Glenn Farren of Consolidated Solar and Werner von Rausch of United Researchers. Max Hunter had never seen either of the men or any of their dynastic families. He knew little about them. Their pictures were never published. Yet Farren and Von Rausch held in their hands more despotic power, more real wealth and military might, than any ancient Khan or Caesar had ever dreamed of. Did they now want Ann Saymer's patent? The answer, Hunter realized, was obvious. With Ann's Exorciser, they could enslave the centers of civilization as they had enslaved the frontier. In itself that was a minor factor, already accomplished by man's acceptance of the jungle ethics of the cartels. Far more important, if one of the cartels controlled the patent, it had a weapon that would ultimately destroy the other. With trembling fingers, Hunter took Ann's last micropic from his bag and rolled the tiny film into a wall-scanner. He could have recited it by heart; yet, by reading it again, he somehow expected to extract a new meaning. The code he and Ann used, contrived for economy rather than secrecy, was merely a telescoping of common phrases into single word symbols. IHTKN, at the beginning, was easily interpreted as "I have taken," and COMJB became "commission-job." The micropic transmission monopoly arbitrarily limited all code words to five letters or less, counting additional letters as whole words. But because of the simplicity of the technique, some of Ann's symbols were open to a number of interpretations. Hunter was sure of one thing. Ann had not specifically named the clinic where she was working. She said she had gone to work for the biggest—or possibly the symbol meant best—of the private clinics. Either term could apply to the clinics run by the two cartels; or, for that matter, to the largest of them all, operated by Eric Young's union. But Ann, having invented the Exorciser, would know all its possible misuses—a factor which had not occurred to Hunter until Dawn spelled it out for him. Would Ann, then, have been fool enough to let herself fall into the hands of the cartels? That line of reasoning gave Hunter new hope. If one of the cartels tried to trap her, Ann would simply go into hiding. It would complicate the problem of finding her, but at least he could assure himself she was safe. Ann had brains to match her ambition. She couldn't otherwise have earned a First in Psychiatry. No, Hunter was certain the cartels didn't have her. The telescreen buzzer gave a plaintive bleep. Hunter jerked down the response toggle. Surprisingly, the screen remained dark, but Hunter heard a man's voice say clearly, "You are anxious to find Ann Saymer, Captain Hunter?" Apparently the transmission from Hunter's screen was unimpaired, for the speaker seemed to recognize him. "Who is this?" Hunter asked, his mouth suddenly dry. "A friend. We have your interest at heart, Captain. We suggest that you investigate United Researchers' clinic when you start looking for Miss Saymer." The contact snapped off. Hunter sat down slowly, his mind reeling. Since only his screen had been neutralized, the machine was not at fault. Only a top-ranking cartel executive could arrange for a deliberate interruption of service. The rest followed logically. No one in United would have given him the information. So Ann had fallen into their hands after all! Someone in Consolidated—perhaps Glenn Farren himself—was setting him on Ann's trail, on the chance that Hunter could find her when Consolidated's operatives had failed. Hunter was used to the risk of long odds. He had a ten-year apprenticeship in the treachery and in-fighting of the frontier. There was a good chance that he could play one cartel against the other, and in the process get Ann away from both of them. One more thing he wanted before he planned his opening attack against United Researchers—the note Ann had sent to Mrs. Ames. It might give him a clue as to where United had taken her. Hunter wasn't naive enough to suppose they had kept her in center-city. But perhaps she was not even in Sector West. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> Each of the eleven sectors into which the Earth was divided was controlled by one of the two cartels, as an agricultural or industrial appendage of the western metropolis. It was a paternal relationship, although no comparable city had been permitted to develop and company mercenaries policed the sectors. Children who exhibited any spark of initiative or ability were skimmed off from the hinterland to Sector West and thrown into the competitive struggle of the general school. If they fought to the top there, they were integrated as adults into the hierarchy of the cartels. The rest became the labor force of Sector West, enrolled in Eric Young's union and crowded into the minimum housing. The teeming millions left in the hinterland were a plodding, uninspired mass content with trivialities. They felt neither ambition nor frustration. While the number of the mentally ill continued to multiply in Sector West, only a fraction of the hinterland population suffered the mental decay. Hunter fervently hoped United had taken Ann to one of the other sectors. Rescue would be easy. An experienced spaceman could out-talk, out-maneuver, and out-fight an entire hinterland battalion. Max Hunter took an autojet from the Roost to Mrs. Ames' residential apartment. Conservation of his capital no longer counted, but time did. If United had Ann's patent, Ann herself was expendable. Hunter had to make his move to save her before they knew what he was up to. It would be a difficult deal to pull off in the capital city, where operatives of both cartels swarmed everywhere. He left his blaster in his hotel room, to avoid an interrogation at any other metro-entry. Mrs. Ames' apartment residence was one place in the city where he had no need to go armed. Just outside center-city a single street of twentieth century houses, sheltered by the Palos Verdes Hills, had survived the devastation of the last war. In the beginning the street had been preserved as a museum piece while the cartel city had grown up around it. But with each passing generation, popular interest had waned. Eventually the houses had been sold. One was now operated by a religious cult. Two were enormously profitable party houses, where clients masqueraded in the amusing twentieth century costumes and passed a few short hours living with the quaint inconveniences of the past. The game had become so attractive that reservations were booked months in advance. The fourth relic remained unsold, slowly falling into ruin. The fifth belonged to Mrs. Ames. To satisfy a whim—originally it was no more than that, Mrs. Ames had assured Hunter many times—she had asked her husband to buy it for her some fifty years ago. After a space-liner accident left her a widow at thirty-five, she had moved into the house as a means of psychologically withdrawing from her grief. She never left it again. She found the old house an island in time, a magic escape from the chaos of her world. She took in four residents because she needed their credits to augment the income from her husband's estate, and the house was then officially listed as an apartment. Chance worked her a miracle—or perhaps the house did possess a magic of its own—for the residents were as charmed by its inconveniences as Mrs. Ames had been. Ann wouldn't consider living anywhere else, although the house was more than a mile from her university. Even Hunter felt the indefinable spell, when he was in from a flight and went to see Ann. It was a house that invited relaxation. It was a house where time seemed to be stated in a value that could not be measured with credits. It was a house that whispered, "I saw one world fall into dust; yours is no more eternal"—and, for a moment, that whisper made the cartel-jungle meaningless. <h2>V</h2> 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. His first sensation when the paralysis began to wear off was the dull ache of visceral nausea. He opened his eyes, and saw, bleakly shadowed, the living room of the Ames house. It was after dark, which could only mean that he had lain there nearly four hours. To knock him out for that period of time, they must have given him a nearly lethal charge from the blaster calculated just under the limit of physical endurance. His motor control and his sense of touch returned more slowly. For a quarter of an hour he lay helpless in the chintz-covered rocker, feeling nothing but a tingling, like pin-pricks of fire, in his arms and legs. He looked down and saw that he held a blaster in his hand—his own blaster, which he had left in his room in the Roost. He did not yet have the neural control to release his fingers from the firing dial. As his sense of hearing was restored, he became aware that the Tri D had been left on. The screen pictured the swirling confusion of a mob. An announcer was describing the sudden outburst of labor violence which had occurred in the industrial district that afternoon. Eric Young's U.F.W. had gone on strike against a dozen separate plants. Essential plants, naturally. Everything was always essential, and government spokesmen always made pretty speeches deploring the situation. It was a pattern familiar to Hunter for years. One of the cartels would pay Young to strike factories belonging to the other. Then a second bribe, paid by the struck cartel, bought off the strike. Occasionally a sop of bonus credits had to be dished out to the faithful. It was not a maneuver either Consolidated or United used frequently, because the advantage was transitory, and the only long-term winner was Eric Young. This time there was a slight variation in the formula. Young had struck plants of both cartels. That puzzled Hunter, but any curiosity he felt was subordinate to his disgust. How much longer would this farce go on before it dawned on the rank and file of the U.F.W. that Eric Young was playing them all for suckers? Hunter tried to get up to snap off the telecast. He managed only to throw himself awkwardly over the arm of the chair. And then he saw the body on the floor—the body of the genuine Mrs. Ames, charred by a ragged blaster wound seared through her breast. They had murdered her—naturally with his blaster—and left him at the scene, neatly framed for the crime. Hunter heard—right on cue—the whine of a police siren outside. Everything timed to trap him just as the motor paralysis wore off! With an effort that brought beads of sweat to his forehead, he dropped his blaster and pushed himself out of the chair. His feet were numb. He moved a few steps and banged into the piano. Clawing for support, his hands crashed in jangling discord on the keys. The siren swelled loud in front of the house. Hunter heard the drum-beat of boots on the porch. He stumbled toward the kitchen—and fell into the arms of two police officers who had entered from the rear of the house. He swung his fist; the fingers felt like clods of wet clay. One of the mercenaries caught his wrist and held it easily. In the gloom Hunter saw the Consolidated insignia on the man's jacket, and the guard whispered quickly, "This deal was a set-up, Hunter—packaged evidence, dropped at headquarters ten minutes ago." Hunter stared. "Accusing me by name? Get this straight! Four hours ago they put me under with a blaster and—" "It's a United frame," the guard said. "They want you out for good. The top brass of Consolidated is giving you the green right down the line. The fastest out Jake and I could figure—" He jerked his head toward his companion. "—was to give the United boys on our team the front of the house, and let you make a break for it from the back. We'll fake enough here to protect ourselves." They pushed a blaster into Hunter's hands. He stumbled through the kitchen as the front door gave and two United mercenaries burst into the house. Hunter ran awkwardly, without full control of his legs. He saw, looming black against the night shadows, the oval silhouette of the autojet on the Ames flat, still held under his twenty-four hour charter. It offered a tempting means of escape, but a public car was too easily traced and brought down by police tracers. However, it could perform a miracle as a diversion. <h2>VI</h2> Hunter slid into the car, punched out a destination blindly, and engaged the flight gear. With the customary roar of power, the car shot up from the flat. Hunter leaped free. His feet struck the cement. The lingering trace of paralysis, destroying his normal co-ordination, made the fall very painful. Hunter flung himself flat in the shadow of the ornamental shrubs along the edge of the parking flat. The four police mercenaries sprinted out of the house and leaped into the police jet. With sirens screaming, it soared up in pursuit of the empty autojet. Hunter estimated that he had perhaps thirty minutes before they sent out a general alarm. A painfully small margin of safety. Where could he hide that the machines of detection—the skilled, emotionless, one-track, electronic brains—would not eventually find him? And what of Ann Saymer? What could he do as a fugitive to save her? United had planned it all down to the smallest detail. But that was the way the cartels operated. It was the system Hunter was accustomed to. He felt neither anger not resentment, simply a determination to out-plan and out-play the enemy. If he accepted defeat he would admit frustration, and for Captain Max Hunter that was impossible. Hadn't he survived a decade of frontier conflict with an adjustment index of zero-zero? Instead of hopelessly weighing the odds stacked against him, he counted the advantage which a single man held in maneuverability and rapid change of pace. He walked along the museum street, the blaster in his hand. A block away rose the bulk of a factory building and behind it towered the monster of center-city, transformed into a fairyland by the glow of lights on the many levels. Hunter's eye followed the pattern up toward the top, hidden above the blanket of haze. The top! Luxury casinos and the castles of the cartels. Werner von Rausch and his empire of United Researchers. Werner von Rausch, who gave orders and Ann Saymer disappeared. Werner von Rausch, who gave new orders and Mrs. Ames lay murdered in her living room. But behind the façade of his spacefleet and his private army, behind his police mercenaries, Werner von Rausch was one man—an old man, Hunter had been told—and a vulnerable target. Hunter weighed his changes, and the margin of success seemed to be balanced in his favor. It was not what they would expect him to do. They had framed him for murder and he should now be running for his life. The hunted turned hunter. Hunter grinned savagely, enjoying his pun. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> He slipped the blaster under his belt, leaving the scarlet jacket open to his navel so that the loose folds would conceal the outline of the weapon. He would have no trouble reaching the top level. The resort casinos, like the mid-city amusement area, were open to any citizen. Special autojets, with destinations pre-set for the casino flat, were available in every monorail terminal. Hunter could by-pass a probe inspection at a regular metro-entry. The nearest terminal, from the north-coast line, was less than a quarter of a mile away. As Hunter entered the industrial district he heard the turmoil of an angry crowd. He came upon them suddenly, swarming at the gates of a factory close to the terminal. Eric Young's trouble-makers, he thought with a worried frown, jumping obediently when the big boss spoke the word. In less than five years Eric Young had turned the union into a third cartel, more powerful than Consolidated or United because the commodity Young controlled—human labor—was essential to the other two. A third cartel! Suddenly Max Hunter understood why the cartels had to have Ann's patent at any cost. The absolute control of the human mind! It was the only weapon which Consolidated or United could use to break Young's power. Hunter shouldered his way through the strikers toward the terminal. Though he wore no U.F.W. disc, he felt no alarm. Eric Young's strike riots were always well-managed. None of the violence was real and no one was ever seriously hurt. But these trouble-makers seemed absurdly well-disciplined. They stood in drill-team ranks, moving and shouting abuse in perfect unison. Then Hunter saw their faces, as blank as death masks—and in all their skulls the still unhealed scalpel wound, as well as an occasional projecting platinum strand which sometimes caught the reflected light. 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 hell 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 accumulation 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. "Pussy-foot around with your cautious experiments, make sure nobody 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." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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