did it without a murmur and right on target.'
'Good.'
'Now, as I was saying we could use this thing to
vastly step up the productive capacity of certain
key industries, and make possible the rapid
deployment of emergency supplies in a
disaster/crisis situation -'
Good , thought Cesare. We can use it to bomb the Ruskies.
'What?' roared Matriapoll when he got back and
they told him. 'You told it to junk itself and it
disappeared up its own asshole!'
'It was an honest mistake,' said Matriapoll's
foreman.
'They'll use it!They'll infest every nearby planet
and system they can lay their coordinates on!'
'It'll probably malfunction totally sooner or later;
don't worry about it.By the way, where's your other
Mate?I only see one.'
'Don't talk to me about it,' Matriapoll said huffily.
'The idiot took a Flyer for a joy-ride and collided
with an S.S.T.'
'You're sure this is going to work sir?'
'Sure it'll work,' Cesare said.They were sitting
with a whole load of I.M.C.C. people and military
and political types in the underground command-
post under the matter transmitter. 'We tested it by
sending the same number of dummy warheads right
round the world and back here.They were all bang-
on.It'll be a clean sweep.Nothing can go wrong.'
The Transporter, unduly sensitive to, amongst other
things, radiation, became somewhat mixed up
however, and, to cut a short story shorter, it blitzed
the Eastern seaboard of the United States of
America, messed the Atlantic up a bit, and bombed
Mauritania, Portugal and Ireland.After that it
jammed and never worked again.
Fosse thought that Mr Borges was taking it very
well, considering (there was talk of a law
suit).Cesare was on the phone, trying to trace
somebody.
'Anybody I know, sir?'
Cesare looked up from the telephone, his eyes
reflecting the embarrassing red splotches spread
over the giant world map on the far side of the
room. 'You remember Feldman?Professor
Feldman?'
'No, sir; I don't think I've ever met the person.'
'Doesn't matter; he's dead.But I'm getting hold of
his number two in Chicago; he's all right.I've heard
what it's like in the East.It sounds terrible: famine,
plague, cannibalism, anarchy, flooding, drought;
the works.There's fantastic scope for a pet project
of mine I've been nursing along for a few years
now.Called the Alternative Resources Project.It's
perfect for this situation.We're ideally placed to
take advantage of this.It's a peach, believe me.We
could clean up.'
Piece
Hi kid.Well, there I was about to do some reading
but instead I'm writing to you.I'll explain later, but
first a little story (bear with me - this is partly to
take my mind off things, including the book I was
starting to read, but also to set up the first of a
couple of coincidences.Anyway.)
It was 1975, I think; have to check my diaries to be
sure.I'd finished at Uni that spring and gone off
hitchhiking through Europe over the summer.Paris,
Bergen, Berlin, Venice, Rabat and Madrid defined
the limits of this whirlwind tour.Three months later
I was on my way home, and after staying with Aunt
Jess in Crawley, I'd used the last of my money to
buy a bus ticket from London to Glasgow (hitching
out of London was notoriously awful).Night bus,
and it took ages, staying off the motorways would
you believe.This was in the days before videos
and minibars and hostesses and even toilets on
buses.The old coach groaned and whined through
the rain-smeared darkness, stopping at breeze
block and Formica transport cafes; cold islands of
fluorescence in the night.
Especially then, buses were for the not so well
off.I was the scruffy hitcher with long hair and
jeans.I was sitting beside an old guy wearing shiny
trousers and a worn tweed jacket; thin limbs and
thick glasses.In front of us, an old lady reading
People's Friend ; behind, two lads with
yesterday's Sun . The usual girning baby and
harassed young mother, somewhere at the back.I
watched the sodium lights drift by in droplet lines
of orange, and alternated sitting upright in the
cramped seat, and sliding down into it, aching
knees against the back of the seat in front.And, for
the first couple of hours or so, I was reading some
SF novel (wish I could remember the name, but
can't).
Later I tried sleeping.It wasn't easy; you swung
fretfully in and out, never fully awake or
completely asleep, always conscious of the
growling gear changes and the creaky ache in
folded knees.Then the old guy started talking to me.
I'm one of these anti-social types - well, as you
know - who doesn't like to acknowledge the
presence of other people when I'm travelling; plus
I was quite shy back then (believe it or not), and I
really didn't want to talk to some old geezer I