Chapter Seven

"You can't question these poor devils now," Dr. Petri said. "They're exhausted. They're just recovering from shock. The only reason they're not under heavy sedation right now is because your men told me . . ."

"I know, I know," Bahr said impatiently. "It's too bad, but they've got to be questioned."

"You'll get much farther with them if you'll let them sleep for eight hours." The doctor flicked a 3-V switch. "Look at them."

Bahr glanced at the 3-V image of the Critical Ward. The men were there, not two, but seven—including the eminent James Cullen of the University of Michigan, one of the leading socio-economists in the country, and, it was said, one of the ten men in the world who fully understood the social, economic, and psychological implications of the Vanner-Elling equations. They were sprawled in R-chairs, glassy-eyed and haggard, trying to relax and sleep in the face of the sustaining drugs they had been given. They did not look like the leading scientists of a nation. They looked like living dead men.

"We can't wait," Bahr said. "If we let them sleep, they won't come out of it for days, and we've got to know what happened to them."

"Mr. Bahr, you don't understand the strain . . ."

Bahr pulled himself to his feet. "You take care of the bodies, Doctor. I'll make the decisions about what we do with them. I'll want each of them in a separate room, and I'll want somebody with me who can keep them awake. Is that clear? I mean wide awake."

The doctor took a breath and left the office, leaving Bahr glaring at the wall clock. Fleetingly, he thought of the return trip from Canada. A DIA car had met him at the landing field, whisked him through the downtown Chicago streets with siren at full blast, but even that brief ride had brought him back shockingly to the change that had been taking place since the Wildwood raid.

He had not seen the normal early-morning bustle of people on the streets. Instead, people were gathered on street corners, moving listlessly into the buildings. A huge crowd had gathered to watch the morning newscast, projected on the eight-story screen on the Tribune building, with John John relaying the latest news from BURINF, but it had been an uneasy crowd. A dozen times on the way to the hospital he had heard police sirens wailing.

And at the hospital, the sudden appearance of TV cameras, and a dozen newsmen, all of diem talking at once about the European newsbreaks and about an alien landing, asking for confirmation or denial, complaining bitterly about the anemic information BURINF had made available.

He had shouldered his way through them, repeating his "Sorry, boys, nothing now," until a woman's voice, quite loud, cut through the babble of voices.

"Isn't it true, Mr. Bahr, that your appointment as Director of DIA has not been approved, pending a DEPCO check?"

Bahr stopped, found the woman's face. "Who gave you that information?"

"Just rumors, Mr. Bahr."

"Well, you can publish that I have assumed John McEwen's post in DIA, pending appointment of a new director, for reasons of National Security, and you can serve the interests of National Security a great deal by refusing to spread any more nasty rumors than you can help." He started on, and added, "I don't know who the new director will be, and right now I don't care. I'm simply doing a job that has to be done."

It had sounded all right, he thought now, but it had come too close to the mark. He looked up as Dr. Petri came to the door, nodded to him.

"All right, Mr. Bahr. But I warn you—"

One of Bahr's aides stopped them in the corridor. "There's a Mr. Whiting from DEPCO here to see you, Chief."

Bahr scowled. "Too busy," he said.

"He has an AA priority. And he says it's about this alien business."

"What office of DEPCO?" Bahr said, stopping suddenly.

"Foreign affairs. It's about those broadcasts."

Bahr relaxed. It was not Adams' office. He was not eager to talk to anybody in DEPCO right now, but an AA priority was hard to sidestep. "Ask him to wait. I'll be up as soon as I can."

He turned into a small white room. The polygraph operator was ready, and a sterile tray rested on the desk. "All right," Bahr said to the doctor. "Bring Cullen in."

Two DIA men led Cullen into the room, a grey-haired man of about sixty with a wrinkled, haggard look, stooped and squinting as if the glaring white walls hurt his eyes. He was leaning heavily on his two escorts, obviously on the verge of nervous collapse. His eyes had the raw, unnatural brightness of amphetamine-induced wakefulness.

Bahr motioned him to the PG seat, held out his wallet with ID card showing. "I'm Julian Bahr, Dr. Cullen. Director DIA. We'd like to ask you some questions."

"Please," Cullen said dully. "Let me sleep. I've been questioned for days, I can't think any more."

"We'll be as brief as possible," Bahr pressed him. He nodded, and the technicians strapped one of the Gronklin polygraph receptors around Cullen's chest.

The old man shook his head feebly. "Let me alonel I can't answer any more questions."

"Who's been asking you questions?"

"I don't know, I don't know. Somebody. My mind is a blank."

Bahr's jaw settled grimly. "Your name is James Cullen?" Cullen did not answer.

"Dr. Cullen, I have some idea of what you've been through. If what we think is right, more than forty of your colleagues are going through the same thing right now. Don't you want to help stop that?"

The old man shook his head helplessly. "I don't know anything. I'm tired. I don't remember what happened."

"We'll help you remember."

"Does my family know I'm safe?"

Bahr's fist clenched at the digression. "They'll be told. Now just answer yes or no to my questions." He eased back in his chair and rolled the polygraph paper ahead. "You are a professor of Vanner-Elling principles at the University of Michigan?"

Again Cullen did not answer. Bahr smashed his hand down on the desk, noticing with satisfaction the sudden change of blood pressure at the noise. "I think you're tired," he said solicitously. "I think you'd better have a little stimulation."

"Please . . ."

"Just a little adrenalin and amphetamine. You'll feel like a new man." The technician clamped Cullen's arm down, deliberately missing the vein twice. In a minute Cullen's heart was thumping desperately against the chest constrictor, his eyes blinking rapidly. "Have another dose ready in case he begins to doze off," Bahr said.

Cullen was really quite co-operative after that, and his memory became remarkably clear, at least in places. There were aggravating holes in his story, but the pattern was clear enough.

He had been abducted from his home in Ann Arbor sometime Sunday night. He could not remember how, nor what his captors had looked like. He did recall, vaguely, a long ride somewhere in some sort of vehicle, a strange room, and blindingly bright fights.

And the questions . . .

"Who was questioning you?"

"I couldn't see. Just a voice. An odd voice."

"A human voice?"

"No. Definitely not . . . not what I heard." The old man hesitated. "It didn't make sense, but I was sure it was a tik-talker."

Bahr's eyebrows went up, and he glanced excitedly at the technician. The electronic tik-talker, which converted punched tape patterns into speech sounds, had first been developed for long-distance speech communication, particularly useful when scrambled signals were necessary. Scrambled voice, bouncing off a fluctuating ionosphere, was likely to emerge Irom the descrambler as a series of moans, pops and whisties. The uk-talker reduced speech to a burst of seven pulse characters, reassembling and unscrambling them at the receiving end. It was quite reliable, but the speech itself always had the tonal curiosities of electronically sliced language, and was easily identified by anyone who had ever heard it before.

"You've heard a tik-talker before?" Bahr asked.

"We've used them at the Center. For distant communications and translation purposes."

"And what were the questions like?"

Here Cullen was very clear. He had been asked hundreds of questions about his work at Michigan, especially with regard to the Vanner-Elling equations and their current application to controlling the psychological and economic stability of the country since the economic collapse of the crash in 1995. He had been asked about the poll-taking functions, the work of the machines in outlining production schedules and anticipating psychological soft-spots in various segments of society.

He had refused to answer questions on one very highly classified project, and was given repeated low-voltage electroshocks until he passed out. He could not remember being reawakened. His next recollection was wandering in confusion through the downtown Los Angeles streets until the police picked him up for vagrancy.

He also refused to tell Bahr what the project was, or anything about it, even though Bahr threatened him with more amphetamine. Cullen knew about security, and nothing short of a BRINT unrestricted examination would have gotten topsec information out of him. Bahr made a note on the spot to give Cullen a type 4 background check as soon as things quieted down; Bahr did not like people to refuse him anything.

The following six men, far more co-operative, had also been picked up, as far as they knew, from their homes on Sunday night by unidentifiable captors. There were two sociologists, a biologist, two linguists, and one of the few physicists in the country still working on physics. They had all been questioned intensively about their respective fields, never seeing their questioners and all confirming the curious sing-song of a tik-talker intermediary. One of them had been indiscreet enough, after two hours of electroshock, to divulge certain information about a topsec project he was connected with for DEPCO. It showed on the PG, of course, and Bahr made a note to frighten as much information out of the man as he could about DEPCO research plans before turning him over to DEPCO for prosecution.

This procedure was not ultimately carried out, due to the subject's suicide sometime after the interview, which annoyed Bahr considerably. Bahr did not as a rule allow people to change his plans for him.

But the pattern was unmistakably clear, when all the data had been gathered. All seven men had been abducted by someone, taken somewhere, and systematically drained of information, then dumped in widely distributed areas in a state of confusion and extreme nervous exhaustion.

Bahr slammed the folders shut and went down to the room where the repatriates had been herded after their interrogation. Dr. Petri was hovering there, anxiously awaiting permission to administer sedation. Bahr shrugged oS his protests, and nodded to the two DIA men standing guard at the door. One of them was a tall, heavy man with a crew cut and a hard, convict's face; he returned the nod briefly, and straightened his shoulders automatically when Bahr came into the room.

The repatriates looked up apathetically as Bahr put a heavy foot up on a chair and faced them. "All right, we're through questioning you for now," Bahr said. "When Dr. Petri is satisfied that you're in good medical shape, you'll be released." He watched the sagging heads, heard the tiny sigh of relief around the room. "However, you will be kept under full security surveillance."

It was the equivalent of house arrest. The sagging heads jerked up again in protest.

"But you've already questioned us," Cullen said feebly.

"Obviously you must realize that under the circumstances we can't assume that anydiing you've told us is true," Bahr said.

"But surely the polygraph records. . . ."

"May mean nothing at all. I realize that we've never found Occidentals who could beat our polygraph system, under suitable drug treatment. Unfortunately, the results are inconclusive with Orientals, who have a different notion of truth, and particularly with yogis, who can control their sympathetic system."

Cullen was sitting up now, his face red with anger. "Mr. Bahr, we have certain legal rights."

"As of now, Dr. Cullen, you have no legal rights," Bahr said sharply. "Until proven otherwise, we are forced to assume that your abductors were alien creatures who are engaged in the first steps in an invasion. You men have been in contact with those aliens . . . the only ones who have been in contact with them. From the manner in which you were abducted, it seems obvious that the aliens are able to penetrate our cities without detection, either in disguise as humans, or by using and controlling humans. All right, you add it up. If your abductors have techniques of mind control I hat we don't know about, you men may be dangerous pawns. We can't take the risk that you're not."

He paused for it to sink in. "Now, if you have that straight, we'll get on. You will be released in the custody oE Mr. Yost." He indicated the hard-faced man with the crew-cut. "You will be responsible to Mr. Yost for everything you do or say. You will answer no questions and make no statements. If I find a single quote, admission, or good guess in any of the TV-casts, Mr. Yost will be in charge of improving your understanding of security."

Yost led them away to the recovery room. Bahr had seen the spark of grudging admiration in Yost's eyes, and he smiled in satisfaction. Yost was a former 801st lieutenant who had been in a Texas penitentiary for rape, assault, and a dozen other crimes of violence before he had volunteered. In Texas he had been a prison bully; in the 801st he found his calling, and had toughened his guerrilla platoon, and subsequently his DIA field unit, into a sharp, violently dangerous force. Yost believed in only one thing—power—and to him Bahr was power. He was afraid of Bahr, and hated him, but he was willing to obey him to the point of death. Bahr knew this, and depended on it. He recognized the advantages of a subordinate whom everybody feared and hated, who would do his dirty work for him.

And he was quite sure that by the time the repatriates were released, they would have transferred their hate and fear permanently from him to Yost.

He pushed back his chair and went upstairs to where the committee from DEPCO was waiting.

The Department of Control, the sprawling, multi-faceted, interlocking bureau which held the ultimate, final and definitive executive power of the Vanner-Elling Stability Government in its hands, was a love organization.

It had taken Julian Bahr several years and hundreds of contacts with DEPCO men at all levels of importance, from top-level executive sessions with the Joint Chiefs right down to the most casual contacts at cocktail parties, to realize the fundamental truth of that fact and, realizing it, to fully comprehend its implications. Libby Allison had denied it vigorously, and just as vigorously (if unconsciously) proved it