Complete Fiction by Erik Fennel

Author:Erik Fennel [Fennel, Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-08T04:00:00+00:00

The click of the latch brought him to his feet, his hand moving instinctively to his armpit for the blast pistol he had left behind.

“Pen! You came!” Doris cried, and put her arms around him.

For a moment she clung, then pushed herself away.

He grasped her shoulders, “Why are you looking at me like that?” he demanded.

She buried her face in her hands and shuddered.

“They caught a Comp in Vizaudio Central today. Right in my department, a man I’ve talked with often and even eaten lunch with. And all the time he’d been making unnoticeable little changes that altered the whole psychological reaction, promoting neuroticism and disunity, undoing all our work. The Proserv liquidated him right there. Oh Pen, it was horrible!”

He mixed an extra strong drink and handed it to her. “Try not to think of it,” he advised.

She gulped it straight down, and after a few minutes recovered control of herself.

“I know all about the microtimer and special equipment you had on your helicar’s NRT unit,” she reminded him, returning to the subject she had brought up so many, many times. “And one night you told me some of your theories.”

Tension started building within him again. She guessed too much.

“I was just talking that night. Mostly nonsense,” he broke in quickly.

“No you weren’t,” she contradicted. “You had ideas that right now might mean—the difference. Darling, we need you here in War Center. You can’t be a slacker, not with your brains and S-S ability. Unless—” She left that thought unfinished.

There was no such thing as conscription. It was a war of technicians and advanced technologies, and all that was expected of the mass of the population was that they remain calm, follow their ordinary pursuits in so far as possible, and avoid hysterical demonstrations. War Center technicians were all volunteers, the pick of the Hemisphere’s brains.

Doris was almost crying again., Pen’s eyelid began to twitch.

“You need the Blue Ray,” he declared coldly. “You’re developing a psychosis.”

Her eyes blazed scornfully. Then she sighed. “Let’s not quarrel tonight.”

She left the bedroom door open as she went to change. He heard the shower start, and then a few minutes later she called something to him about fixing himself another drink. He looked up automatically as she passed the doorway, her tanned, unclothed body unhurrying and unashamed. She was deliberately using the ancient feminine weapon that had remained effective from the stone age to the teleportation era, but he knew instinctively that it was not for personal reasons alone. Doris was too honest to play it that way.

It was a lure, and even through the haze of fatigue that had become chronic he could feel the old desire for her rising again, But he would not allow himself to respond.

She dressed quickly and pirouetted so he could inspect her brief costume of shorts, halter and woven metal sandals. Her ring-curling auburn hair was casually arranged, for she had learned long ago that over-elaboration only annoyed Pen without impressing him. Still the feminine weapon, but more subtly now.

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