Читать книгу All the Colors of Darkness - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 9

CHAPTER 5

It was not the best speech in the long career of Thomas J. Watkins III, but it was his most important. “The mission of the Universal Transmitting Company,” he said, “has been everywhere misunderstood. I have read dozens of surveys, I have heard lectures and debates and discussions and interviews. The gist of this uncontrolled flow of words has been the erroneous assumption that Universal Trans stood poised for the ultimate conquest of linear space.

“These self-appointed experts could not be more mistaken. Man has long since conquered space on this planet. Given the necessary amount of money and time, man has, for years, been able to go anywhere on the surface of the Earth and stay as long as he liked. Universal Trans has changed only the temporal qualification.

“The relationship between time and distance has plagued man since the Pleistocene, and the great transportational developments of the past century and a half have not altered that relationship; they have merely alleviated it. Now the matter transmitter has effaced it completely. Let me repeat: the matter transmitter represents man’s ultimate victory over time. You, wherever you are, are no more distant from me—in time—than these gentlemen sitting around the table with me. The next room is now no further away—in time—than the next hemisphere.

“Since this fact has not been even partially understood, no one has evaluated its significance, not even the officers of Universal Trans. We have been far too busy with the practical problem of making our transmitters work. But we do know that we are today in the second day of a new era. The transmitter will have a greater immediate impact upon civilization than any other invention in history. By comparison, the notable career of the automobile will appear as no more than a ripple upon the pages of time. And further—”

Watkins leaned forward and touched a button. The television screen darkened. “Enough of that,” he said.

“But very nicely put,” said the man at his right.

This was Charles Grossman, whose position as treasurer of Universal Trans had been reduced to a purely nominal one until the previous day. He had just read a report on the receipts for the first day’s business, and he was in a jovial mood. “What I especially liked,” he went on, “was the way you left the implication that one still needs money to travel, even if Universal Trans has eliminated the time requirement. How long do you suppose we’ll get away with charging airlines rates?”

“Too long,” Watkins said. “At present we need all the money we can get, to clear up our debts and expand our operations. But the time will come when lower rates will give us enough additional business to make them profitable. That’s when the railroads and the bus companies will start screaming. Right now we’re only competing with the airlines. Where were we when that program came on? Oh—the Police Commissioner. He wanted us to call off the lobby demonstration so he could restore order. We were happy to oblige. We needed the transmitters, and that crowd was scaring away paying passengers.”

Grossman chuckled. “We certainly don’t want that to happen.”

“Next item,” Watkins said. “We have telegrams from everywhere and everybody. Anyone want to read them?”

He glanced around the table. There were only six men present, including himself. It had been planned as a full board meeting, but some directors were not available on short notice, and others hadn’t wanted to brave the crowd on Eighth Avenue.

“I have three secretaries sorting them out,” Watkins said. “Some of them should be answered, I suppose—the President, members of Congress, heads of foreign governments, and so on. I’ll see that it’s taken care of. Well, gentlemen, that completes the agenda, unless any of you have business that we should consider. Yes, Miller?”

Carl Miller, a small, dark, intense-looking man, asked matter-of-factly, “What’s being done about the freight business?”

Watkins concealed his amusement. Miller was a late-comer to the Board, by virtue of a large block of stock he had purchased during the Universal Transmitting Company’s darkest days, as well as his control of an impressive number of proxies. He’d had faith in the company, and he’d made himself useful, but he was something of a fanatic on the subject of freight. Watkins preferred to develop the passenger service first. The company would show a greater profit on passenger operations, and there were fewer related problems. Passengers accepted the responsibility for transporting themselves to and from the terminals, and they didn’t have to be stored until called for.

“Right now we haven’t fully solved the problem of passenger luggage,” Watkins said. “But we aren’t forgetting the freight potential. Arnold has a special transmitter on the drawing boards, designed to handle freight. My feeling is that the freight operation should be kept entirely separate from our passenger operations. I’m certain that in the long run we can set up freight terminals more easily than we can expand and adapt our passenger terminals to handle freight. We also have inquiries from the postal authorities and from several large corporations about the possibility of leasing transmitters from us. The whole matter should be thoroughly explored. Would you like to head a committee to look into it, Miller?”

Miller nodded. “I agree that it wouldn’t be wise to jump into it without extensive planning. On the other hand—”

The door opened. Watkins turned with a smile, and waved. “Come in, Ted. We were just—what’s the matter?”

Grossman took one look at Arnold’s face, and threw up his hands despairingly. “Here it is. I thought things were going too well.”

Arnold wearily pulled up a chair and sat down to tell them about the missing passenger.

“How is that possible?” Watkins asked.

“It isn’t possible,” Arnold said.

“But it happened.”

“It seems to have happened.”

“Where could a passenger go?” Miller demanded. “Into the ninth dimension, or something?”

“Put it another way,” said Vaughan, a vice president. “How many dimensions are there between transmitter stations? If you engineers really understood how the thing works—”

Arnold interrupted angrily. “We know how the transmitter works. Let’s get that straight right now. We don’t know why it works, but we have the how completely under control. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be moving passengers today. There is no ‘between’ when you transmit. You are either at your point of departure or at your destination. If something happens before you leave, you don’t go. If something happens after you arrive, you’re already there. Look.” He snatched a blank piece of paper from Grossman, and drew large squares in two diagonal corners. “These are your two transmitter stations.” He brought the corners together, so that the squares were adjacent. “This is what the transmitter does. As long as it is operating properly, the two stations are locked together. If it doesn’t operate properly—” he smoothed out the paper “—the passenger doesn’t go anywhere.”

“But one has gone—somewhere,” Watkins said.

“One seems to have gone somewhere. We have not lost a passenger. We have apparently lost a passenger.”

“The passenger would no doubt find that distinction very consoling,” Vaughan said dryly.

“Good Lord!” Grossman exclaimed. “Another lawsuit!”

Watkins turned to a man at the far end of the table. “Harlow, what are the legal implications of this?”

“There aren’t any,” Harlow said promptly. “The legal aspects are already taken care of. The company’s liability is clearly stated upon each ticket, and is covered by the free insurance given to the passenger. The liability is the insurance company’s headache. You don’t need a lawyer for this. You need a scientist—or the police.”

“If we’d started out with freight,” Miller said, “we wouldn’t have had problems like this.”

“What police?” Grossman wanted to know. “New York or Honolulu? Or any of three thousand places in between?”

“The FBI?” Harlow suggested.

Watkins shook his head. “No. No police. Not if we can help it. We can’t afford bad publicity just when we’re getting started.”

“The publicity will be a lot worse if we don’t handle this properly,” Miller said.

Grossman banged on the table. “Look here. What if the insurance company should decide to cancel our policy? We convinced them there wouldn’t be any claims, and here we are only in the second day, and—bang! If we had to stop giving free insurance because we couldn’t get anyone to underwrite it, that would kill us.”

“We should have started with freight,” Miller said.

“How about a private detective?” Arnold asked. “I know a good one.”

Watkins looked around the table. “What do you think? If there’s no scientific explanation for this, a detective certainly wouldn’t do any harm.”

Four heads nodded. Miller said, “I still think we should call in the police.”

“Not yet,” Watkins said. “Get your detective, Ted.”

Arnold telephoned Darzek’s office, alerted the Paris Terminal of Universal Trans, and was waiting for Darzek when he stepped through to New York. “Come along,” he said. “I have a job for you.”

“Leggo!” Darzek protested. “I don’t want a job. I’ve had a long evening with a very untractable young lady, I’m tired, and I’m late for an appointment.”

“Evening?”

“In Paris it’s evening. Night, now.”

“Oh,” Arnold said. “You can use the phone in my office to cancel your appointment, and then I’ll take you upstairs.”

Black would have been an appropriate color for the room, Darzek thought. The faces were glum except for Arnold’s, which was angry. Watkins seemed calmly rational, but his pallor was deathlike.

Arnold spoke, and then Watkins. Darzek listened and watched the faces around the table. Grossman, the plump treasurer, was working at being heroic in the face of adversity. Miller, after one outburst on the virtues of the freight business, sulked in silence. Harlow, the company’s legal advisor, had lost interest and was looking at Monday’s market reports. The two vice presidents, Vaughan and Cohen, were not listening so much as waiting for an opening to deliver their own gloomy pronouncements.

Arnold was speaking again. “Everything was clear on both ends. She walked through the transmitter here in New York. Plunk, her handbag came sailing through in Honolulu. We haven’t found a trace of her since.”

“Anything in the handbag?” Darzek asked.

“A billfold with identification and fourteen bucks, plus the usual feminine clutter.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“I’ll get it,” Arnold said.

The handbag was produced, and placed on the table. Darzek took one glance at it and started to laugh. The others stared at him, shock and indignation blended in their expressions—exactly, Darzek thought, as if he’d just told an obscene joke in church.

“Now I’ll tell you what happened,” Darzek said. “You’ve been had. First this woman stirred up enough fuss to get herself noticed by a lot of people. She did that so you couldn’t claim afterwards that she’d never been here. Then she walked up to the transmitter, chucked her handbag through, and went back to the gate for another round of arguments. After that she ran out on you. Ducked over into another line, maybe, and left you with a monstrous mystery on your hands.”

The room was silent. Harlow had laid aside his newspaper, and Miller leaned forward and gazed at Darzek, open-mouthed.

“It may be that we were making the mystery overly complicated,” Watkins said finally, “but you’re making it too simple. You’re assuming—”

“I’m assuming nothing. I was there. I stood behind that woman when I bought my ticket, and I had a good opportunity for a close-up of this handbag. It’s unusual, and it interested me. I was waiting in line at Gate Nine while she was waiting at Gate Ten, and I was watching when her turn came. I saw her start down the passageway towards the transmitter. She had this handbag, not over her shoulder, but in her hand. I saw her come back without it. Obviously she shifted it around in front of her, so your gate attendant couldn’t see what she was doing, and tossed it through. I wanted to wait and see what the hell was going on, but my turn came, so I dropped it. I don’t know how she managed the disappearing act, but I’m certain it was managed.”

Murmurs of approval came from around the table. “How do you like that?”

“Lucky thing for us—”

“Bright fellow, to spot that.”

Watkins rapped for order. “You’re an extremely observant young man, Mr. Darzek.”

“I earn my living by being observant.”

“That’s all right as far as it goes,” Arnold said. “Smith says—Smith was the attendant on Gate Ten—Smith says, and I quote.” He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and read. “‘I had my eyes on her every minute. She wasn’t an easy dame to take your eyes off. She started up there as if she was going on through, and then she turned around and came back, and said, “Are you sure everything is all right? I mean, it’s a long way to Honolulu, and I’d hate to fall in the ocean. Salt water isn’t good for my hair.” And lots of crap like that. I said, “Lady, if you don’t want to make the trip, just step aside. There’s people waiting.” Finally I called Mr. Douglas, and he asked her if she wanted her money back, and all of a sudden she turned and walked on through as if nothing had happened, but Honolulu didn’t give me an acceptance light. I waited, and then I called Mr. Douglas again.’ So we’re all right up to where Darzek left for Paris. She walked up to the transmitter and got rid of the handbag. Why, incidentally?”

“To magnify the mystery,” Darzek said.

“Of course. If she’d disappeared without a trace, we might not have known we had a mystery. A handbag without a woman attached screams of foul play. She got rid of the handbag, and then she turned around and came back. Darzek left at that moment, but it wouldn’t have helped us if he’d stayed to watch. Only the gate attendant could see the transmitter, and Smith swears he saw her step through. And she couldn’t have gone anywhere but into the transmitter. She couldn’t leave the passageway without coming back through the gate.”

“What about Honolulu?” Darzek asked. “Could she have got through there without being seen?”

Arnold shook his head. “I’ve checked. Believe me, I’ve checked. I’ve been onto everyone who was anywhere near that Honolulu receiver. The only way she could have got through there without being seen was to turn invisible. For the time being I’m ruling out that possibility.”

“What do you want me to do?” Darzek asked Watkins.

“Find her.”

Darzek shook his head emphatically. “Now you are oversimplifying things. By this time she could be anywhere. I run a small agency, and the world is a rather large place.”

“Hire as many men as you need.”

“She probably was disguised,” Darzek said. “I suspect that her long blond hair was a wig, and also that she wasn’t accustomed to high heels. I’m certain I’d recognize her if I saw her again, disguised or not, but I’ve had practice. I’d have a tough time describing her so someone else could recognize her with her disguise off, or with another disguise on. What if she were to change to a red wig, unpad her figure, put on low heels, turn the mole on her cheek into a fancy birthmark, and do another disappearing act—say from your Los Angeles Terminal? Then you’d have two missing passengers, and there’s nothing to prevent her from keeping that up indefinitely. I’d suggest that you forget about the blonde, and concentrate on figuring out how she did it.”

“Good Lord!” Grossman moaned. “This is worse than I thought.”

“There may be another way to look at this,” Darzek said. “If you’d be interested—”

“Certainly,” Watkins said. “What is it?”

“It seems to me that this problem has two angles. One is the mechanics of the disappearance—how the woman worked it, and where she went. If she actually stepped into that transmitter and didn’t come out where she was supposed to, that’s Arnold’s problem. I wouldn’t know where to start on it.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Arnold said. “But I agree. It’s my problem.”

“The other angle is that someone is obviously trying to embarrass Universal Trans. I’ll give you odds that the woman didn’t think this trick up all by herself. The question of who is doing it, and why, is a proper one for my type of investigation, and if you want me to take it on I will.”

“It seems a logical approach to the problem,” Watkins said. “I think we should accept.”

There were frowns around the table, but no objections.

“All right, Mr. Darzek,” Watkins said. “We’ll give you every assistance within our power, and naturally we all wish you a speedy success.”

“Do you have some kind of procedure in mind?” Miller asked.

“I have a number of moves in mind.”

“What kind of moves?”

“If you don’t mind,” Darzek said, “I think the fewer people who know about them the better.”

Miller flushed. “This is ridiculous!”

“Good Lord!” Grossman said. “If the company officers can’t be trusted—”

The door opened. Perrin, of the engineering staff, stumbled into the room, breathing heavily. He did not speak. He did not have to speak.

“Another one?” Arnold asked.

Perrin nodded. “Some old dame left on a Chicago hookup. All that got to Chicago was her umbrella.”

“Umbrella?” Darzek said quickly.