Alternating Currents by Frederik Pohl Read Free Book Online Page B

dug up the dirt on you.’
     
    Her boyfriend yelped, but Candace just went on looking. I didn’t look back, but kept my eyes on Connick. He squinted his eyes, put his hands in his pockets and said, with considerable self-restraint, ‘You know I was only seventeen years old when that happened.’
     
    ‘Oh, sure. I know more. You had a nervous breakdown the year after your discharge, space cafard, as they call it on the soapies. Yellow fever is what we called it on the Moon.’
     
    He glanced quickly at his kids, the two that were his own and the one that was not, and said rapidly: ‘You know I could have had that DD reversed—‘
     
    ‘But you didn’t. The significant fact isn’t that you deserted. The significant fact is that you were loopy. And, I’d say, still are.’
     
    Timmy Brown stuttered: ‘One moment. I, Knafti, have asked that you cease—’
     
    But Connick brushed him aside. “Why, Gunnarsen?’
     
    ‘Because I intend to win this election. I don’t care what it costs - especially what it costs you.’
     
    ‘But, I, Knafti, have instructed—’ That was Timmy Brown trying again.
     
    ‘The Armistice Commission issued orders—’ That was Peyroles.
     
    ‘I don’t know which is worse, you or the bugs!’ And that was Candace’s little friend from the hospital, and they all were talking at once again. Even Knafti came dragging towards me on his golden slug’s belly, chirruping and hooting, and Timmy Brown was actually weeping as he tried to tell me I was wrong, I had to stop, the whole thing was against orders and why wouldn’t I desist ?
     
    I shouted: ‘Shut up, all of you!’
     
    They didn’t, but the volume level dropped minutely. I rode over it: ‘What the hell do I care what any of you want? I’m paid to do a job. My job is to make people act a certain way. I do it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be paid to make them act the opposite way, and I’ll do that, too. Anyway, who the hell are you to order me around? A stinkbug like you, Knafti? A GI quack like yourself, Whitling? Or you, Connick. A—’
     
    ‘A candidate for public office,’ he said clearly. And I give him much mana; he didn’t shout, but he talked right over me. ‘And as such I have an obligation—’
     
    But I out-yelled him anyway. ‘Candidate! You’re a candidate right up till the minute I tell the voters you’re a nut, Connick. And then you’re dead! And I will tell them, I promise, if—’
     
    I didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence, because all three of Connick’s kids were diving at me, his own two and the other one. They sent papers flying off Haber’s desk and smashed his sand-crystal decanter; but they didn’t get to my throat, where they clearly were aimed, because Connick and Timmy Brown dragged them back. Not easily.
     
    I allowed myself a sneer. ‘And what does that prove? Your kids like you, I admit - even the one from Mars. The one that Knafti’s people used for vivisection - that Knafti himself worked over, likely as not. Nice picture, right? Your bug-buddy there, killing babies, destroying kids ... or didn’t you know that Knafti himself was one of the boss bugs on the baby-killing project?’
     
    Timmy Brown shrieked wildly, ‘You don’t know what you are doing. It was not Knafti’s fault at all!’ His ashen face was haggard, his rotten teeth bared in a grimace. And he was weeping.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    If you apply heat to a single molecule it will take off like a torn with a spark under his tail, but you cannot say where it will go. If you heat a dozen molecules they will fling out in all directions, but you still do not know which directions they will be. If, however, you heat a few billion, about as many as are in a thimble of dilute gas, you know where they will go: they will expand. Mass action. You can’t tell what a single molecule may do - call it the molecule’s free will, if you like -but masses obey mass laws. Masses of anything; even so small a mass as the