WHICH WAY DO I GO FOR JERICHO?

By Colin Kapp

What Tactical Intelligence wanted him to invent was a sonic laser—it was the method they used to get his mind to bridge the gap between optics and sound waves that was so nasty.

* * * *

Horstman

‘Good luck, Horstman!’

Those had been Maidment’s last words when he left Horstman there—as if luck was all that was needed. The details of the preparation had been meticulously studied. Every aspect of authenticity had been explored, every item of continuity checked half a hundred times. Maidment had carried out his part of the job with the precision of a master, but the cold sweat which troubled Horstman’s brow was his own personal contribution to the credibility of the scene. Now the planning was over: from this point on it was all for real.

Reality! The reorientation shock of the transition from the months of preparation to the truths of here and now, was an emotional implosion which drained Horstman of energy and reinforced the feeling which had caused him to vomit on to the filthy floorboards. His leg which had been so skilfully twisted in hospital became literally what it had been meant to represent—a sickening encumbrance and a continuous source of pain. The virus infection which had resulted from deliberate injection, made him wish that he was dead.

Maidment was a perfectionist. Even in assigning tasks, his touch had been as sure. Horstman had been cast as a sickly, crippled coward. While the first two attributes had been ably contrived, the third was both spontaneous and authentic. Horstman had no doubt of his ability to play his appointed role. The haunted look in his eyes was no artifice and the cringing fear in his guts was a depressant only slightly aided by the virus infection.

He had borne the weeks of preparation with stoicism, watching his body wasting away through Maidment’s minimum-survival diet and agreeing numbly to undergo deteriorative surgery; knowing that the job had to be done and that there was none more suited than himself to do it. But the confidence and the resolve had fled with the loss of bodyweight and sinew. The pitiful wretch he was now had almost nothing except memories in common with the confident technicians who had undertaken to do the job. Though he had not before paused to consider the effect of body condition on the mind, he could now offer the fact his personal testimony: it was a factor grossly underrated.

Shortly the sound of great engines outside the building told him that the last units of the combat-group were being pulled out. This was a planned withdrawal from the battle-front—planned to look like the consolidation of an army too thinly stretched for survival. Horstman had been told that the troops would pull back fully thirty kilometres before they re-established a line and held it. The hidden reason behind the withdrawal was the measure of their desperation : they were giving up this entire area in order to leave behind them a sick and crippled coward called Horstman.

As the vibrations of the heavy engines died, an unusual stillness closed around the ruined town. Seldom if ever in this theatre of war was true quietness experienced. On this chill autumn afternoon, however, the silence closed to a degree approaching absolute. Even the rumble of distant shockfire had ceased to trouble the tense air. One whole hour was marked by a hiatus, an hour of expectancy and dreadful speculation; a tight-wound spring—waiting to uncoil.

Horstman’s appreciation of the drama of the moment was spoiled by the cruel ache of his leg and by the griping pain in his intestine acknowledging equally the virus and his apprehension about the terror to come. Around the ruined shops and houses, wild cats hazarded their lives in encounters with the carnivorous rodents contesting their right to survive. Perhaps out there too were a few remnants of refugee humanity, sharing burrows in the rubble; men and women who had grown too tired or too sick to continue running even from an advancing army. In the main, such activity as there was left in the township was carried on at levels below Horstman’s audible threshold. Only occasionally did he detect the sound of movements in the otherwise still ruins, but he sensed the presences acutely. In life these phantoms were mostly silent: only the dying forgot themselves and screamed.

It was not for these that he consciously listened. The enemy obviously had not anticipated a withdrawal and was acting cautiously and suspiciously. They were slow to follow through. Their first attentions were concentrated above the ground, risking no more than a couple of hedge-hopping aircraft which moved in at near Mach-one looking for the presence of war-machines or concealed troop emplacements. Finding nothing from the air, they would presumably send in remote-controlled reconnaissance crawlers, followed at a discreet distance by patrols, but always keeping the range covered by the full weight of their heavy armour, entrenched back in the line of the farther hills. While they warily explored their unasked opportunity, they would be fully prepared to ensure it could not be turned into a major defeat. Ground which they had lost with such a shocking cost in lives was seldom regained without a similar investment.

As the sounds of war were renewed, Horstman was able to slowly put together an idea of their pattern of attack. He was immediately sick again. He froze as the first of the reconnaissance crawlers went past his shattered room. These were lighter cousins of the dreadful greuelmech, the war-machines whose coming had so disastrously accelerated the trend into total war. Although unmanned, the crawlers’ sensory arrays were better at personnel detection than any team of dogs and even these small and mobile engines were equipped with lasers and cannons which their remote operators could use with an undisturbed accuracy of aim.

Horstman crouched on the floor and watched them through a hole where the sandbags only half stopped the draught coming through the broken wall. It was growing dusk, but he knew that with the range of sensors the war-machines carried, neither half-light nor darkness would lower their efficiency one bit. In this war, human limitations were the ones that got you killed.

He bit his lip to make himself concentrate on things other than the cold and the pain in his leg and his personal misery. He must be alert and analytical when the patrols came. The whole reason for the withdrawal—the whole reason for his being there at all—lay crucially in the observations he had to make while under infantry fire and after, when the whole sad township lay in the hands of the enemy.

It was little comfort to know he was not yet quite alone. Somewhere out there a couple of Maidment’s suicide squad would be hoping to escape the war-machines and engage the enemy patrols with sniper fire. Their personal function would be abortive. They would be killed, probably with little effect on the enemy. But the returning shots and the rest of the answering fire would be of vital interest to the sick cripple cowering in a cold ruin in the midst of no-man’s-land.

As the war-machine passed by, he began to hear a second wave of sounds: trucks and armoured personnel carriers halting just short of the town’s edge, presumably discharging those increasingly precious elements of war—men. For both sides, men were becoming in perilously short supply. In this theatre they were reserved strictly for combing the area of a particularly valuable prize, a prize like five square kilometres of a once habitable township now reduced to rubble, rats, refugees and sundry forms of plague.

Then he heard the first shots. Conventional s.h.e. projectiles. The suicide squad must have opened fire. The answers came quickly and viciously. With their own men too far advanced into the township to call on artillery to obliterate resistance in the ruins, the patrols on the spot took care of the detail themselves. This was precisely as Maidment had planned. The returning fusillade was a crossfire pattern from perhaps twenty carbines throwing nearly a hundred projectiles into a sector of the ruins in not more than ninety seconds.

Horstman patted the cloth plugs carefully into his ears, gritted his teeth and waited. If the Intelligence information given to him was even half correct, the next couple of minutes was going to be decidedly rough. Information had it that the enemy carbines were throwing some sort of reactive shell with a delayed effect. One shell could knock out a tank or a blockhouse, kill a platoon or destroy a trench full of soldiers. Even some war-machines had fallen to them.

The only known fact was that these projectiles did not explode. They were the source of some kind of reaction which no one had yet survived. Nor, from the limited circumstances of their use, had any yet been captured. It was Horstman’s job to define what that reaction was. This was why he went in as a cripple rather than a soldier. He stood a chance of living a little longer if the carbines were not pointed directly at him.

Thirty seconds later, all hell broke loose.

Horstman listened with patent disbelief when the first resonant howl split the air. So violent was the intensity of its effect that he clearly felt the floor vibrate. This was followed by a second and a third howl and then a rising crescendo of noise formed from a series of distinct sonic tones which beat together, reinforced and cancelled-out and rose to a complex and almost unendurable intensity.

The amplitude of each note had to be experienced to be believed. Though the cacophony originated from a point not less than half a kilometre distant, the broadcast power made the earth tremble and set up such power resonances in the damaged building that the cracked walls disintegrated further, and what was left of the ceiling plaster detached in large pieces and fell to the floor. It was credible that had the effect been any nearer, the building itself would have crumbled into pieces.

So this was the rumoured Jericho Effect! Horstman, from his work with large transducers, tried to estimate how many kilowatts of power would be needed to liberate a sonic effect like that. He failed. Large sonic sources were normally carefully matched into a load to minimise attenuation. These present sources were random, uncoupled, un-directed, and heedless of the tight demands of the principles of resonance. Thus wastefully employed, their effectiveness was probably only a thousandth part of their true potential—yet even so they contained such power that the earth at half a kilometre distance shook with their thunder and sand from the sandbags danced in patterns on the floor, indicating the brief and playful tides of node and anti-node.

After a further minute the noise began to quieten. As the harmonic complexities grew less, Horstman allowed his screwed-up face to slacken and took the cloth plugs from his ears. There was no doubt from the tonal qualities that each sonic generator put forth a pure, unmodulated sine wave. Had he been asked to produce notes of similar intensity he would have hazarded a need for nearly a ton of equipment and a heavy concrete base to ensure its survival. That such a powerful and prolonged effect would have come from a projectile capable of being fired from a short carbine was neither logical nor credible.

He was now faced with the same enigma which Maidment had brought to him before the present exercises had been planned. Apparently the enemy had access to powerful and extremely destructive sonic sources and all the evidence pointed to the idea that these sources were capable of being delivered by hand weapons. Horstman was at first inclined to suspect the enemy of using an elaborate trick designed to suggest the existence of a weapon which could not actually be built. A little further consideration told him that Maidment’s suicide squad must certainly have been destroyed by the sonic attack and there was therefore no point in the enemy exercising the trick at this time. Not unless they suspected that someone like Horstman was crouched somewhere out in the ruins.

This last thought reminded him that he had work to do to ensure his own survival. Although it was now nearly dark, he hauled out the long pole with the tattered white sheet attached and propped it up with bricks against the wall outside. In his weakened condition, this cost him considerable effort and the ache in his leg brought tears to his eyes. Returning inside, he became conscious of the dangers of exposure to the increasing cold. Painfully he explored the area of the room to discover which corner was less affected by the cruel draught. Having settled on the least inhospitable spot, he dragged towards it the pieces of cloth, sacking and paper which had been provided for his bed and proceeded to arrange these fragments over himself methodically to conserve his body heat.

He had no food left, nor had he any hopes of obtaining any. Taking his empty belly to bed with him along with his other miseries, he lay in the darkness listening for sounds which might tell him of the advancing patrols and trying to analyse his impressions of the sonic weapons they had used. The sole item of consolation for his sufferings lay in the knowledge of the whereabouts of Maidment’s powerful but cleverly disguised transmitters, of which there were several, which he must use to report his collected data at the point where his continued habitation of enemy territory could serve no further purpose. At that point, Maidment had promised to send in a commando force to get him out...

The cold, the hunger, the pain in his legs, the gripe in his guts and the problems on his mind, all conspired to render sleep an unlikely proposition. Thus the startled shock of his awakening was accompanied by completely genuine surprise. His return to consciousness coincided with the door being smashed open and a tall, dark, helmeted figure appearing in silhouette against the red of the morning sunrise. Horstman’s groan as he attempted to raise his shoulders from the floor was also totally authentic. So was the fear in his eyes as he watched the point of the long steel blade which probed at his stomach.

‘Outside!’

Horstman managed to stagger to his feet, and crossed the room, dragging his twisted leg behind him. In the open air, the unwarming light of the early sun glinted off two more carbine barrels, but these wavered and were rested when the soldiers saw his condition. He studied the men curiously through bleared eyes, never before having seen the enemy in the flesh. They were less curious about him. After a perfunctory search of the room, the first soldier followed him out, looked him up and down and then swore more in sympathy than in anger.

‘No damn sniper, you. No damn anything, soon. You have papers?’

As if to reinforce the point of his infirmity, Horstman’s throat acquired a rattle and he coughed unhealthily. From the pocket of his coat he produced his papers and held them out. They were forgeries which could pass any inspection. The nearest soldier looked at the worn and dirty cards with some distaste and did not bother to take them.

‘Why you stay here, eh?’

The soldier did not really expect a reply. Horstman’s twisted leg and sickly appearance suggested that he had no option but to stay in the township, regardless of the pressures. Feeling in his pouch, one of the soldiers produced a stick of high-nutrition food compress and pressed it into Horstman’s hand.

‘You have water?’

‘Some,’ mumbled Horstman.

‘If you want good water, you find some at our camp over there. This is no place for civilians, but I doubt if you’d stand transportation.’ His face showed that he was sure Horstman had very little time to live.

Horstman nodded and looked at the stick of compress in his hand. This was not the sort of leniency he had expected to receive at the hands of the dreadful enemy. His eyes asked the question: ‘Why?’

The soldiers were grimly amused, but walked away. They obviously had other, more important, things to do. Horstman was left to answer his own question. People were becoming rather scarce in the midst of total war—even sick and lame people were presumably better than sterile desolation. Strange how one’s sense of values altered when viewing the same problem from a different location.

The soldiers would probably not have dismissed him so casually had they realised the shrewd brain which was summing-up their equipment. Each man’s helmet was equipped with sound-absorbing ear protectors which rotated up away from the ears when not required, giving the helmets a heavy, bulbous look. The weapons the men carried were conventional short carbines, which did not appear to have been modified in any way. Their weapon pouches, too, seemed to be of a regular type. None of the ammunition, of course, was visible.

Despite his theoretical objections, Horstman became inclined to the view that these were some of the men who possessed sonic weapon potential, though he seriously doubted that any potent source of sonic energy could be thrown by a short carbine. He rather suspected that the sound weapon was different and substantially larger and would probably be located somewhere near where they had chosen to camp. Fortunately the invitation to obtain water from their stores gave him the pretext he needed to visit the site.

Sucking the protein-vitamin compress as he went, he dragged himself back to his room to look for a suitable water container. The only thing he could find was an already full glass bottle which Maidment had left him. Reluctantly he drank some and poured the remainder into the dust where it would not be noticed. He had reservations about being able to rely on the soldiers for much water and he hated to waste any of what little there was in the district which was potable. However, he had no other choice.

The thing that shocked him as he began to walk in search of the camp, was to find how severely his body had deteriorated. A minimum-survival diet and an injured leg were barely tolerable when under the watchful eyes of Maidment’s medics, but quite a different and more alarming proposition when alone in enemy territory in continuous cold and without any prospect of relief or hospitalisation. It took him nearly an hour to drag himself the bare kilometre to where he discerned a group of enemy trucks backed hard against a line of shattered autumn trees. As he approached, he was challenged by a sentry, who immediately lost interest when he saw the condition of the visitor. The soldier on the service truck was surprisingly humane.

‘Water? Take what you want, old ghost. We’ve enough to spare. Better drink that than puddles, eh? There’s enough ways for dying with epidemics. Are there many more of you out there?’

‘Perhaps.’ said Horstman, hoarsely, though he had seen no sign of other refugees that day. Probably they had all been killed or damaged by the sonic barrage of the previous evening. Just possibly some were still in hiding, too frightened of the soldiers to come out of their holes.

He took his bottle of water, which stank of chlorine, and dragged his way back out of the camp towards the room that he, perhaps ridiculously, had come to think of as home. Certainly it was the place to which Maidment had promised to direct his commandos when Horstman wanted out and therefore he was forced to remain within a reasonable radius.

As he went, he looked surreptitiously into the backs of the other trucks, expecting to see large generators and some sort of massive sonic transducers. They contained nothing of the sort. One truck was cunningly kitted-out as living quarters and the rest contained only a varied assortment of boxed and bottled stores. He knew the inference of this discovery, but was still reluctant to accept that a short carbine could throw any small device capable of producing such a shattering sonic output. Power to weight ratios alone precluded such a possibility. Only ...

Overhead a long-range artillery barrage was beginning. The hyper-velocity shells carpeted the land with their strange supersonic Shockwaves. Fortunately none of the projectiles were programmed to fall on the ruined township. Having ascertained that the ground was clear, the enemy apparently were concentrating on long-range artillery cover under which to bring up their ground-support troops and a great deal of mobile equipment. This included some rocket projectors and some new types of war-machine.

Horstman guessed that they meant to take full advantage of the withdrawal and probably to follow it up with a strong attack before the apparently retreating troops had time to fully consolidate their new positions. Knowing Maidment, he knew they were in for a big surprise. The new defence positions would have been carefully prepared for months behind the lines. The enemy were merely doing precisely what Maidment had intended them to do. Maidment consistently manipulated everything and everybody with a consummate mastery which claimed a very high order of genius. For Horstman, however, the game was spoiled by the knowledge that so many of Maidment’s pawns were expendable.

* * * *

All through the day the build-up of troops continued. A convoy of supply trucks moved in around the township and began to set up a field-supply depot. The area which yesterday had been deserted and tense, now broke into a different mood with the bustle of activity as support troops moved in behind the war-machines and began to lay down strong attack positions apparently in preparation for a further push ahead.

Horstman suffered no interference from the soldiers. Regarding him as an oddity which constituted no threat, he was permitted to drag himself unhindered through their installations. His obvious signs of sickness won him no friends, but occasionally one of the soldiers threw him some food. He appreciated that this latitude would change sharply when totalitarian authority moved in behind the brief front-line camaraderie. Horstman tried not to think about the coming of the dreaded Police Militia. With luck he would either be rescued or dead before they came.

His own occupation during the day was to attempt to locate and observe the members of the first patrol which had entered the township—the ones whom he knew for certain had sonic weapon potential. They were obviously a specialist group, because they had their own supplies and their own tight-knit organisation which was completely independent of the rest of the field. Painfully he explored the ruins in the area where the sonic reactions had taken place, hoping for clues or remnants, but finding none except that the very masonry itself had been pulverised where the liberation of energy had been greatest in intensity. The only cartridge cases he found in the ruins were those of common enemy design. Again and again he returned to the impossible conclusion that the sonic sources must have been fired from the short carbines. All previous Intelligence reports had indicated this to be the case and now even he could offer no alternative suggestion.

This made it of vital importance that he examine some of the ammunition used by the sonic patrol. He emptied his bottle of water over a piece of cloth and attempted to wash with its rough chill. Then he took his water bottle back to the line of trucks against the trees, intending to ask again for water. The sonic patrol appeared to be busy elsewhere, save for the solitary guard who waved him on with a nod of his head as though a more explicit movement would have been a waste of effort.

Not daring to believe his luck, Horstman moved between the trucks, filled the bottle himself and then turned towards the vehicle in which he judged the live munitions were kept. At this point the trucks were between him and the guard and the trees behind effectively screened him from observation. He was warily holding his breath as he ventured to look into the rear of the munitions truck, fearing that it might be occupied. There was nobody inside. The tailboard was down and the metal boxes on the racks bearing explosives warnings showed that he neared his goal.

A swift survey told him that it was all carbine calibre ammunition. A proportion of it, however, was segregated in bright yellow boxes which bore the single word harm en! in addition to the usual codes. One of the yellow boxes was off the rack and its seals were broken. With his fingertips outstretched, Horstman could almost touch it. In trying to gain a little extra reach he knocked his injured leg on the tailboard. The pain was so immense he all but screamed.

Then he heard soldiers coming round the trucks—the buzz of casual conversation. The chances were that they were merely proceeding to one of the other vehicles, but if they discovered him there he would certainly be shot. Ignoring the pain and summoning the last of his faded strength, Horstman gained foothold on the tailboard and dragged himself up on to the floor of the munitions truck. Here he lay, his breath hissing through his nostrils and his heart thumping in its cage as though it thought to burst a rib.

Soon the voices faded as the men took something from another truck and moved it noisily away. Heaving with relief, Horstman prized open the lid of the yellow box and explored inside the packing. His fingers contacted cartridges in clips of five ready for insertion in the short carbines. He took a clip out and examined it in wonderment, noting a conventional metal propellant case surmounted by bullets which appeared to be made of misty glass. But the factor which drew his fingers to lock in a convulsive spasm was inscribed on the clip itself. In red was printed simply:

7 KILHERTZ

His brain reeled. So the sonic projectile was a fact! In his hand he held a legend and the knowledge of it dazed his thoughts. He pulled himself together, spurred by the sudden certainty that he had already stayed too long. The drop from the tailboard was an agony both physical and in terms of mental apprehension. He endured it in silence only because of the precious clip of bullets in his pocket.

The water bottle stood against the half-tracks and he retained sufficient presence of mind to recover it before dragging himself as swiftly as he could firstly along the line of trees and then away from the vehicles altogether. This time he encountered no guard, nor anyone who might have been suspicious. However, the day was well advanced and he needed light. Therefore he forced himself to continue hurrying, though agony crossed his lips at every step. By the time he reached his room, broad bands of red cloud were stretched across the skyline and the evening light was fading. He needed to work fast.

Although he was exhausted, he spared no thought for his pain and discomfort. He took a cartridge from the clip and dropped the rest into his pocket. He held the one he had taken against the light, trying to determine what the bullet was made of and what mysteries it contained. On close inspection its translucency appeared to be the product of a fine spiral of parallel transparent threads locked together in some vitreous material of a refractive index different from the filaments themselves. Apart from glass, he knew of no substance possessing the properties which he found; a hardness which refused to acknowledge his nail and the density and specific heat which he deduced from the weight and coldness of the projectile in his hand.

Yet this same enigmatic projectile, he now knew for certain, contained considerably more energy than an equivalent amount of s.h.e. explosive and also a mechanism for liberating that energy in a controlled mode in the form of a high-intensity sonic wave. So what was it ? What was the secret of those spiral filaments locked so securely in a block of glass ?

The function of the glass intrigued him. Was it more than just a carrier? If a tightly-coiled spring is cast into a block of resin, the potential energy remains until the matrix is destroyed—then it gets out. He wondered if here was an analogy—if somehow the very substance of potential sound had been concentrated and trapped in a block of glass, impatiently waiting for its liberation. No, the whole idea was ridiculous! Sound was a vibration, a wave-motion, nothing more. Simply the low-frequency end of the electro-magnetic spectrum—possessing no material form—incapable of being quantised.

He stopped. Who said you can’t quantise sound? Why think merely in terms of photons? Think in terms of energy quantisation. Now try material form—think of granulated light on the Brewster-angle window of a laser. No, not material as the concept stands ... but when you’re playing at the extreme ends of the known physical realms, all sorts of unexpected things happen. Like superfluidity and superconductivity ...

So what happens, Horstman, if you make a sonic maser and experiment with its output under extremes of temperature and pressure? Are you quite, quite sure there’s no sonic analogue of superconductivity, no such animal as granulated sound, no way in which super-intensity coherent sound can’t be locked in stasis and sealed in glass? You know that somebody can do it and that’s half the battle. All you need to discover is how. Which way do I go for Jericho?

He stopped as the vision hit him. The intuitive leaps through physics for which he was noted, had transported his thinking suddenly to a new energy level, like the proverbial electron being excited into changing atomic shells in a pumped maser. He was shaking violently as the new concepts clicked into place and automatically he reached for pen and paper to trap the visions in outline formulae. The similarity between Lamb waves and electromagnetic waves in waveguide transmission, acquired a new perspective. The fact that optical laws of reflection and refraction could be applied equally to sound waves, was no longer an interesting coincidence.

He knew now how to make his sonic laser. And that was only the first step. Given a sonic source of sufficient intensity, he could see how the stasis problem could be approached. And beyond that...

Instead of pen and paper, his hand touched only a cold, damp sandbag. He returned to the agony of reality like a man broken out of a trance. It was nearly dark, cruelly cold and his guts felt as though tied in knots. The pain in his leg was more than sufficient to make the grey sweat trickle down his neck. Yet the burning conviction that he was on to something fantastically important raced through his brain like an overdose of a stimulating drug. He had to report his conclusions to Maidment, he had to implore the commandos to come and get him out and back to his laboratory where he could prove this new knowledge, formularise it, harness it—make it work.

He must... The sandbag split open as he pulled the cord-ring and gave him access to the handset. The transmit bulb was glowing as he placed the device before him and began to spill out words.

His last gesture was to break the cartridge apart, to separate the propellant cylinder from the glass-like projectile. He felt the cool propellant powder flow over his fingers, but his eyes were on the bullet, now scarcely to be seen, but still cold and heavy in his hands. Something was beginning to happen to it. Instinctively he knew he had made a grave mistake. A luminosity appeared, blue, fluorescent, as unknown fire. He dropped it as though it had suddenly grown hot. As its dim cascade of light hit the floor he judged its position to a nicety, heaved the sandbag on top of it, and headed at a gallop for the door.

And the room broke into thunder ...

Hands over his agonised ears, he hit the door full-tilt and bruised his forehead severely. He clawed at the latch and fled out into the darkness. Behind him, the scream of a terrifying seven Kilohertz hum built rapidly to an incredible maximum which shattered the ruins of which the room had been a part and was clearly discernible in the vibration of the ground and the shaking of his flesh as he ran.

He had no object in mind save distance and his eyes and brain were too clouded by pain and panic to choose him a course. Whether he ran against something, or whether somebody rose out of the darkness and hit him, he never knew. But one brilliant galaxy of lights burst across his perception and he dropped into a pit of blackness which had neither stars nor any constellations.

* * * *

Maidment

‘How is he, Doctor?’ Maidment’s voice lacked the tones of genuine concern.

The doctor’s ill-concealed anger was abortive as an expression of protest. If Maidment even noticed it, he gave no sign. Whereas Early felt her presence to be an intrusion, Maidment too obviously controlled the situation. Unfortunately, too many people credited Maidment with the value of the face he chose to adopt to meet a particular situation. Since he was an arch liar, most of the people were wrong.

The doctor, however, was different. He deliberately kept his back to Maidment to underscore his detestation.

‘Horstman’s as well as can be expected—after what you’ve done to him. If you want a layman’s list, he’s suffering from concussion, suspected fracture of the skull, a damaged eardrum, slight exposure, extreme malnutrition ... and if we manage to save his leg it’ll be a miracle. Apart from that, he was too susceptible to that damn virus you gave him. You ought to be tried as a criminal. I’d testify.’

‘How long will it take you to get him right?’

‘Right!’ The doctor nearly shouted the word. ‘Man, he’ll never be right again as long as he lives!’

‘Fit enough to return to work, I meant.’ Maidment maintained his infuriating calm.

Early was never quite sure whether Maidment’s determination not to be impressed was natural, or whether it was a carefully maintained pose. Whatever its origin, it was remarkably effective. The doctor glanced appealingly at Early, as if trying to gauge where her private sympathies lay.

‘Give me twelve weeks,’ said the doctor finally. ‘By then I’ll have him as fit as he’s ever going to be. That leg of his is a festering mess. Make no mistake about it, Maidment— you’re responsible. I’ll be sending a report on this to the Medical Directorate and a copy to Command Staff.’

‘Do that,’ said Maidment wearily. ‘I can give you four weeks. I want Horstman back at work by then, even if you have to amputate the leg.’

‘You want!’ For a moment the doctor appeared in danger of suffering a seizure. ‘Look here, Maidment, what the hell right have you to decide that Horstman’s got to lose a leg?’

‘The same right which causes Command to send men out to death by enemy fire. The right of necessity caused by involvement in total war.’ Maidment swung round for one of his classical attacks, his voice scathing. ‘You damn medics are out of touch. You still think that Man’s highest quality is mercy. I tell you it isn’t. Survival is all.’

The doctor choked on his reply, so Maidment continued.

‘Ask Horstman when he comes round. Tell him he’s got to stay here twelve weeks. He’ll go berserk. He’s got a job to do and I doubt if you’re big enough to stop him doing it.’

‘You’re insane!’ the doctor shouted finally.

By that time Maidment was well down the corridor, with Early nearly running to keep up with him. Maidment headed for the Administrators office. His call was brief and direct. He authorised the immediate expenditure of any sum required to provide Horstman with a prosthetic limb. Then he went back to his staff car, apparently unaware of the looks of fear and hatred to which he was treated by the hospital staff.

Early took the wheel and swung the big car out through the hospital gates and up on to the hill that led towards the moors.

‘That was rough!’ she said.

‘That’s Tactical Intelligence for you.’ His voice was quieter now, more contemplative. ‘You build up the great lie and then to make it come true you get trapped into living it. Like painting a picture so real you find yourself inhabiting a landscape of your own devising. A sort of do-it-yourself Creation kit. After a while you come to realise that the difference between a lie and a truth is simply the amount of homework you put into the detail. You can make a truth of anything if you put your mind to it.’

‘That’s a shabby philosophy.’ Early concentrated on the road, her quick confidence flinging the car round the tortuous bends with a skill that contained an element of inspired foresight.

‘My dear Early, survival is the prime requisite for any system of morality—because if you don’t survive, you don’t have anything to be moral about.’

‘And you think that justifies what you did to Horstman? If the enemy had been responsible, we’d have called it an atrocity.’

‘If the project fails, what I did to Horstman is an atrocity. But if it succeeds, it’ll have been a brilliant piece of Tactical Intelligence. You see, Early, the morality depends not upon the act but upon the outcome.’

‘And you don’t have any doubts of its outcome.’ Her voice had an edge of sarcasm.

‘Naturally I try to manipulate the odds, but it could still go sour,’ said Maidment. ‘Just before we got him out, Horstman indicated he thought he’d made a critical breakthrough. But considering the state of his body chemistry at the time, we don’t yet know how much of what he thought was reality and how much was illusion.’

‘I’ve been through his records and case-history pretty thoroughly and I don’t get the impression that he’s the type to have illusions.’

‘Normally, no. But he was severely undernourished and in a state involving both stress and shock. When you couple that with the damage to his leg and his reaction to the virus infection, the levels of histamine, adrenaline and sundry toxins in his bloodstream must have been way up. Quite enough to impair his self-critical faculty. Had he claimed to have met an archangel, we couldn’t have been surprised.’

‘So we don’t yet know whether all the suffering and effort is wasted?’

‘No. And that’s why I called you in. You’re the best Scientific Liaison Officer WarTech’s got and you’re familiar with the field in which Horstman will be working. Also, as a member of Tactical Intelligence, you’ll have all the support you need to ensure that this operation doesn’t snap back in our faces.’

‘You must be one of the Devil’s own children!’ said Early savagely. ‘You don’t give a damn about Horstman himself.’

‘He’s done his bit of suffering for the Motherland and he’ll probably make a major breakthrough in his own field of sonic physics. If you like, we’ll find him a medal or two. What more could any man ask of life?’

Early bit her lip hard. ‘So what extra do you want from me?’

‘I want you to take Horstman over completely. Shield him, nurse him, encourage him, work with him—do anything you have to in order to make his work a success. Our survival depends on us finding some new weaponry and Horstman’s the boy to come up with something big if he’s handled right. You’re going to handle him, Early—and regardless of what it costs you personally.’

‘Is that an order—sir?’

‘That’s an order,’ said Maidment. ’There’s a briefing party waiting to fill you in on the background details. Later I want you to go over the actual site and get the feel of the place itself. Authenticity and detail are of prime importance. The one thing which could destroy Horstman would be the suspicion that he’d been tricked and used.’

‘Which he has!’

‘As you say, Early, he has. Only now I’m making the burden yours. I created the lie—now it’s up to you to turn it into the truth,’

* * * *

Early

The roto-giro dropped her at the edge of the site and Early, trim in her green uniform under the heatless morning sun, made her way to where the local officer had come out of his caravan to meet her.

‘Ah! So you’re the one they call Early?’ He consulted his notes, then stiffened. ‘Aren’t you from Maidment’s outfit?’

‘That’s right!’ She handed him her pass and her letter of authority. The officer did not say he was impressed, but Early watched the tension go prickling right through him like a slow electric shock.

He looked her up and down curiously, then shook his head. ‘You don’t look the type,’ was his only comment.

Freed now from any restrictions formerly imposed in the name of Security, Early was free to roam where she liked, ask any questions of personnel working on the site and generally to seek as much background as she could about the person who would shortly be placed in her charge. True she had already seen the films and videotapes taken by the long-range and concealed infra-red cameras, but if she was to understand Horstman fully she needed first-hand knowledge of the traumatic environment to which he had been exposed. Maidment always insisted on absolute authenticity in Tactical Intelligence, and Maidment, unfortunately, was invariably right. The retreat that never took place had to be firmly authenticated, documented, re-described and built into the pages of history as a fact. Early shrugged. It was all part of the day’s work for a professional liar.

Her wanderings took her first almost to the centre of the ruined township. Standing in the middle of the ground, she was disturbed to realise how near it was to the actual frontline and just how credible it seemed that the enemy should be allowed to re-take this neck of land for a strategic purpose. The sound of shockfire echoed back and forth between the farther hills and the curious Shockwaves of the hyper-velocity shells high overhead predisposed her mind to think that anything could happen in this accursed spot. It was said to be something to do with the rate of rise-time in the acoustics ...

About a kilometre east, she found a feature which she recognised from her briefing. A group of captured enemy vehicles were backed up against a line of broken autumn trees. She recognised, too, some of the men who tended the smoking fire in the clearing at the front. The initiated called them Saltz’s private army, a mercenary-guerrilla group whose suicidal tendencies were pointed-up by the fact that the entire force of several hundred men was composed of defected enemy nationals. They engaged in combat using mainly captured enemy equipment and always wore enemy uniforms as a unique gesture of defiance and bravado. A trained military eye could tell them from the genuine enemy by certain details worn secretly on their clothes. Currently these details were absent.

Self-styled Colonel Saltz was a rogue, a gifted commander and a plausible liar. He was short, fat, irrepressible and indestructible. Both he and his army of mercenaries could be bought for any task which did not conflict with their pagan loyalties and it was an open question as to whether Saltz or Maidment was the more adept at using the other to further their own ends. Certainly payments to Saltz’s private army figured largely in the account books of Tactical Intelligence.

As Early approached, Saltz was sitting on a broken wall near the fire, holding a whole roast chicken, which ran grease liberally down his bare arms. He was tearing at the flesh of the bird with his singularly strong, white teeth, while at the same time maintaining a continuous flow of voluble discourse which provided intense amusement for his comrades. As soon as he noticed Early, he jumped up, threw the remains of the chicken under the wall and ran towards her grinning a wolfish welcome.

‘Early!, Maidment always promised me a bonus. But I didn’t think he would be generous like this.’

He made to encircle her waist with a greasy arm, but she neatly sidestepped his advance.

‘Knock it off, Colonel! This trip is strictly business.’

‘With you, Early, it’s always business.’ He pretended to be disappointed. ‘I tell you, you don’t know what it is to live. Come, relax with us! We have wine.’

‘Another day,’ said Early. ‘Is that where Horstman got his ammunition?’ She indicated the munitions truck against the hedge.

Saltz nodded, but there was a frown of disapproval on his face. ‘It was arranged there, just as Maidment said. But I don’t like what we had to do. Many times we make ambush, plant bombs, mix up a skirmish so that no one knows who the enemy really is. Man’s work. But this is the first time we are paid to trick a cripple who cannot help himself. Next time I think Maidment will want us to rob blind babies.’

‘Probably!’ said Early. ‘You should be more careful who you accept money from. Some people have nasty habits.’

He took the point with roguish acumen. Behind the game was a depth of human understanding.

‘And you, Early—why do you work for him ?’

“That’s a long story, Colonel, and most of it’s never been told. Some of it never will be.’

She passed on round behind the trucks and stood looking at the ammunition boxes. Saltz followed her and hooked the open yellow case towards him. He took out a clip of ammunition and, removing a cartridge from the clip, he broke the bullet free from the propellant case and held it up for her to see. Inside the bullet the veins of some phosphorus compound reacted to the air and atmospheric moisture and developed a slight phosphoritic glow which spread slowly deeper into the recesses of the glass.

Having watched the films of Horstman engaged in, a similar activity, Early flinched and almost waited for the coming of the sound she knew would not come. The continuing silence was an anticlimax from which she emerged to find Saltz’s eyes watching hers intently. He knew that the breaking of the cartridge held a far deeper significance for her than it had for him, but she shook her head at his tacit request for explanation. She had to build her life, probably for the next two years, around the maintenance of this fact she knew to be a lie. This required a degree of dedication which Saltz was never likely to comprehend. Nevertheless, it was comforting to know that someone, somewhere, had tried to understand.

She made her own way back along the road, retracing Horstman’s steps to where his ‘room’ had been, trying to imagine the mixture of fear, anxiety, pain and perplexity with which he had grappled over the selfsame ground. Again and again a little animal cried deep in her mind. The whole piece of scene-setting had been so utterly credible that many better men than the unworldly and academic Horstman would have been deceived. A little piece of history had been altered and presented to Horstman with such force and immediacy and sense of participation that it had all the characteristics of a real event. He would know beyond any reasonable doubt that what he had experienced and learned in those few hours was fact.

And what had Horstman learned? Apart from a minor deviation in battle history, which was irrelevant, Horstman had learned that the enemy really did have a small-calibre sonic weapon projectile, the so-called Jericho Effect. He had heard it, seen it, touched it, examined it and suffered from it. What more experience did a man need to convince him of the reality of a legend ?

Now Horstman was going to be given all the facilities he needed to make a sonic weapon of his own. He could do it, of course, because of his native ability and because it is always easier to re-invent something known to exist than it is to walk the perilous tightrope of the unsupported pioneer. Yet his truth was at pathetic variance with the fact that the enemy’s progress in sonic weaponry had actually stayed at the humble level of the bugle.

Around the ruins of the building where Horstman’s ‘room’ had been, a solitary sapper was recovering the mangled TV pickups and searching the rubble for an image-intensifier which might still be intact. Some engineers were engaged in unloading heavy digging equipment and a crane, with which to recover the very large electromagnetic sound transducer which had literally been buried under the concrete raft on which the ruin had been carefully constructed. Later they must dig up seven more transducers from the centre of the township and decide on the economics of recovering the ten kilometres of heavy power cable which led to the control blockhouse out of sight beyond the hill.

So much for the hardware of the myth. That part was easy. Far more difficult was the human contact follow-up—the constant editing of reports and rumours and personality to sustain a legend. Ahead of her were countless hours of living and talking about a lie as though it was the truth. In doing this she would be forming human relationships which would engender personal friendships and trust and yet could, never have any basis firmer than a wanton and brutal deception.

Longingly Early looked back towards the smoke which showed where the uncomplicated Saltz and his uncomplicated band of brigands filled their uncomplicated stomachs and told crude jokes which contained no element of deception save the occasional human weakness of boasting. The little animal which lived deep in Early clawed out piteously for release from the cage of obligation and was silenced by something called the right of necessity caused by involvement in total war.

Patiently she started checking through her notes to see if there was anything she had missed.

* * * *

Early was flushed when she arrived at Maidment’s office. The imperative words of his summons warned of trouble and the tone of his voice on the phone had hinted at a more than usual urgency. Had she not known him better she would have sworn that Maidment was seriously worried.

‘Sit down, Early.’ He seemed unusually preoccupied. ‘I gather you’re having some remarkable success with Horstman.’

‘Surely. It’s all in the reports.’

‘I’ve not read the latest crop. I’ve had other things on my mind.’

Early examined him curiously. Under his habitual coolness she could detect a tenseness which was foreign to his usual composure.

‘Something wrong?’ she asked.

‘Yes. But let’s start this thing from the beginning. How far has Horstman’s work gone?’

‘A long way. He’s already got his sonic maser working.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Maidment made an arch with his fingertips and leaned back in his chair, a picture of relaxed attention. Knowing him, Early was not deceived. There was the movement of a slight pulse in his neck which betrayed his agitation. In a way she felt almost let-down to know that there was perhaps something normal and human inside that cultivated exterior. Frowning, she scanned her notes.

‘He’s come up with a device which can produce a continuous beam of coherent sonic energy. It produces a tight band of longitudinal sound waves at a frequency of eleven kilohertz, with a beam diameter of about two millimetres and a cone angle of better than a milliradian. The beam power so far developed is around two kilowatts continuous, or in excess of a hundred kilowatts in Q-spoiled pulsed operation.’

‘And you’re quite sure of those power figures ?’

‘The decimal places are to be the subject of independent verification, but I’m quite sure of the overall picture.’

‘But do you know what the overall picture means?’

‘Yes. It means that he can comfortably chop down an oak tree with it at thirty metres distance. I’ve seen it demonstrated.’

‘Damn the oak trees! I was speaking about the speed of development to high power levels.’

‘You mean it’s too slow?’ She was puzzled.

‘Of course not. I mean it’s incredibly fast. Far faster than it ought to be in the circumstances. Hell, he’s got through five years’ work in six months!’

‘He’s been driving himself and everyone like a fanatic, but he didn’t waste time proving his theory. He plunged straight into production of this power device like it was already the state of the art. Wasn’t that the sort of progress you hoped to make when you set up this project?’

‘Only in theory. In practice, I’m a realistic. I’d have settled for a proved working hypothesis in twelve months. And that on the assumption that nothing had gone wrong in the interim.’

‘Nothing has gone wrong that I’m aware of.’

‘Forget it for the moment. Exactly what is this hardware that Horstman’s produced?’

‘In essence, a sonic laser. Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.’

‘Elaborate.’

‘The device depends on the principle of producing Lamb waves in a thin section of a nickel-chrome alloy. The alloy terminates in carbon-fibre end pieces having different sonic propagation velocities to the metal. These function to form a Fabry-Perot resonator in the alloy by reflection and also act as an analogue of Brewster-angle -windows by diffracting shear and Rayleigh waves out of the system into an attenuator. The whole thing is pumped by magnetostriction, the frequency of the pumping energy being critically tuned to the ‘cavity’ resonance. The main problem is to get the heat away fast enough to stop the nickel-chromium ‘cavity’ going above Curie point.’

‘All this in six months ? And he got that far on a prototype test rig?’ Maidment’s voice ran a little higher than usual. ‘Early, if anyone but you had told me, I’d not have believed it.’

‘He took off on the development like he’d been making them for years. Frankly he’s caused a rare stir among the theory boys, because such intensities of sound can’t be carried wholly by molecular vibration of the air. It looks as if there’s a whole new mechanism of sound-wave propagation involved. My guess is that sound waves are going to become respectable members of the electromagnetic spectrum, including the ability to be propagated through vacuum if the source is of sufficient intensity. But the point is that Horstman acted as if he’d been sure of this from the very first.’

‘Slow down, Early! You’re beginning to go at the same pace he is.’

‘Is that bad? It’s certainly getting results. His next step is to experiment with the coupling of high-intensity sonics and cryogenics. He has a theory that he’s going to find something called super-sonicity. The theory looks so sound that Melchior himself is coming over from Geneva to discuss the project. Given another twelve months, Horstman reckons to have cracked the problem of trapping sound in stasis. And if that can be done at one end of the electromagnetic spectrum, then it’s only a matter of time before the same principle can be applied right through.’

Maidment hit the desk with a hard blow that made her wince.

‘Early, will you kindly shut up! Can’t you see I’m thinking?’

She smiled tiredly. ‘Sorry! I guess I’m still trying to use the results to justify what we did to him.’

‘He wasn’t intended to lose that leg, you know. It wasn’t part of the plan.’

‘But it was part of the risk?’

‘True. But twisting his leg was the only thing we could think of to cement the atmosphere of authenticity out there on the field. You don’t find anyone living out in no-man’s-land in this war who could possibly run.’

‘So the end has justified the means?’ Early was critical and unconvinced.

‘Development-wise, it seems to have—but I’m hanged if I can explain how it managed to do so. Logically it should have blown-up in our faces.’

‘Explain that to me,’ said Early.

‘As an exercise in Tactical Intelligence, it’s been a classic case of incompetence. You don’t know it yet, but we missed something—something vital. After all the detail coverage and continuity we put into the job, we still left a flaw in the fabric wide enough to drive a tank-transporter through.’

‘If we did,’ said Early, ‘I’m sure I don’t know where.’

‘You would if you’d re-run the records as frequently as we have. When Horstman was examining the clip of five bullets, he took one out and split it open. Then we turned on the transducer. But do you know what he did with the other four bullets ? We missed it at first, because the room was falling to bits and the TV pickups were on the blink— but he put the other four in his pocket.’

Early scowled. ‘You mean he’s had those bullets all this time ?’

‘Yes. And it’s a fair bet that he’s tried the experiment again, under controlled conditions. When they failed to work he’d have wondered why. If he’s the type of man I think he is, it shouldn’t have taken him long to work out that he’d been taken for a ride and a pretty nasty ride at that.’

Early shook her head. ‘It doesn’t seem very likely. He’s given no sign of it. Yet if he suspected you, he must also have connected me with the duplicity. And he lost his leg because of it...’ Words failed her as the enormous implications made themselves apparent.

‘Precisely!’ said Maidment. ‘So why didn’t he blow the whole dirty scheme apart and expose it for the rotten deal it was? Why hasn’t he taken your forged reports on the enemy’s Jericho Effect and stuffed them down your pretty little throat? And why did he go ahead like a man possessed and produce this sonic maser? According to my calculations, he should have lost his motivation. If I’d been in his position I’d have come up here and taken a few individuals very precisely apart—leg or no leg.’

‘He may not have had the bullets,’ said Early, clutching at straws. ‘He could have lost them somewhere.’

‘Not a chance. We’ve had every centimetre of the field searched and we’ve accounted for every bullet save four. Besides which, the doctor at the hospital remembers that some ammunition was given to Horstman with his effects when he was discharged.’

‘So I’ve spent all this time on follow-up making a damn fool of myself?’

‘More than that, Early. You’ve been exposed to a hell of a risk. Remember Horstman’s considerable intellect and the even more considerable incentive we’ve given him for revenge, he could easily be plotting something very nasty. That’s why I want to pull you off the project. I’d hate to have to strain bits of homogenised Early out of the blasted oaks. Besides which, I can’t afford to place at risk the only member of my staff who really understands the technical paperwork.’

She shook her head. ‘Horstman’s not vindictive. He’s quite a kind and wonderful character when you get to know him. I think you’re worrying about nothing.’

‘I’m not wrong about the bullets, Early. They’re fact.’

‘Well, I still think I should stay with him.’

The impasse was broken by the telephone ringing. Maidment listened gravely.

‘Here? Very well, I’ll see him. But provide him with an escort and have the escort remain outside until he leaves.’

He dropped the receiver back on its rest and turned to Early.

‘That was the guard commander. Horstman’s at the gate. He knows you’re here and he wants to see us both. Looks as though this is the showdown.’

Early bit her lip. ‘It had to come sometime, so I suppose it’s better we get it over now. God, I feel rotten about this! He’s too damn nice ;..’

Horstman’s entrance, at least, was undramatic. If he was angry, he showed no sign of it. In his face they could read little but shrewd appraisal. Though his limp was apparent, the prosthetic limb was obviously effective and he moved easily and with confidence.

‘Ah, so there’s my Early!’ He glanced at Maidment. ‘You know, she’s been such a great comfort to me. When I couldn’t find her this evening, I guessed she might be here.’

‘A rare piece of deduction,’ said Maidment, exploring the situation carefully.

‘Not really!’ The scientist looked merely sage. ‘Your people have been making so many inquiries about me recently, it was only natural you’d involve Early. She is one of your Tactical Intelligence staff as well as being with WarTech, isn’t she ?’

‘She is.’ Maidment was trying to decide whether or not Horstman was armed. He came to no definite conclusion. ‘Well, what do you wish to see us about, Doctor Horstman?’

‘About these.’ Horstman put three glass-tipped cartridges on the table. ‘I think you’ve been looking for them. I don’t have the fourth or fifth. I’m sure you appreciate why.’ His face was suddenly concerned.

‘So you do know about the bullets?’ asked Early. ‘That they’re...’

‘Dummies ? My dear Early, I’ve known for months. But I didn’t dare to say—in case he took you away from me.’

‘And what happened out there on the field—do you know that was all fake too—that the whole thing was nothing but a trick?’ She ignored Maidment’s cautioning frown.

Horstman nodded gravely. ‘The first realisation was a brutal shock, I must admit. But any man who knowingly puts himself in the hands of professional liars takes full responsibility for his own disillusionment.’

‘You mean—you don’t mind?’ Early’s incredulity made her voice come out all ragged.

‘Mind? Like hell I minded!’ He glanced down to where his natural leg once used to be. ‘But if that’s all I lose in this war, I can’t complain. Millions have fared worse. I suppose it’s something of a compliment to have been worked over by the most professional team of constructive liars in the business. You see, I began finally to appreciate the point of what you were attempting to do—stimulating emission of inspiration. It’s rather clever, really. And that brings me to the real reason behind my visit here this evening.’

‘Go on,’ said Maidment and his voice carried no trace of emotion of any kind.

Horstman hesitated for a long second before replying.

‘I was wondering if you could re-create the precise conditions of those last ten minutes out in the field ... because I’d like to go over them again.’

Early could sense that Maidment behind the desk went almost rigid with disbelief. She continued to listen, but Horstman’s voice seemed to be coming to her from a great distance and she had to concentrate in order to follow the sense.

‘... and just before I broke that bullet... I had the whole concept quite clearly ... I was on the edge of a discovery so immense that the sonic maser and the stasis problems are almost without consequence ... I lost it when you started that transducer ... but for the moment I could see clear through to Jericho.’