Diplomatic Immunity Page 3

and excited, and Harrison and his helpers wereworking away at three crazy looking rigs. Cercy snatched the book fromMalley, looked up one item, and put it down.

  "Great work," he said. "We're all set now. Finished, Harrison?"

  "Just about." Harrison and ten helpers were screwing in the lastparts. "Will you tell me what this is?"

  "Me too," Malley put in.

  "I don't mean to be secretive," Cercy said. "I'm just in a hurry. I'llexplain as we go along." He stood up. "Okay, let's wake up theAmbassador."

  * * * * *

  They watched the screen as a bolt of electricity leaped from theceiling to the Ambassador's bed. Immediately, the Ambassador vanished.

  "Now he's a part of that stream of electrons, right?" Cercy asked.

  "That's what he told us," Malley said.

  "But still keeping his pattern, within the stream," Cercy continued."He has to, in order to get back into his own shape. Now we start thefirst disrupter."

  Harrison hooked the machine into circuit, and sent his helpers away.

  "Here's a running graph of the electron stream," Cercy said. "See thedifference?" On the graph there was an irregular series of peaks andvalleys, constantly shifting and leveling. "Do you remember when youhypnotized the Ambassador? He talked about his friend who'd beenkilled in space."

  "That's right," Malley nodded. "His friend had been killed bysomething that had just popped up."

  "He said something else," Cercy went on. "He told us that the basicorganizing force of the Universe usually stopped things like that.What does that mean to you?"

  "The organizing force," Malley repeated slowly. "Didn't Darrig saythat that was a new natural law?"

  "He did. But think of the implications, as Darrig did. If anorganizing principle is engaged in some work, there must be somethingthat opposes it. That which opposes organization is--"

  "Chaos!"

  "That's what Darrig thought, and what we should have seen. The chaosis underlying, and out of it there arose an organizing principle. Thisprinciple, if I've got it right, sought to suppress the fundamentalchaos, to make all things regular.

  "But the chaos still boils out in spots, as Alfern found out. Perhapsthe organizational pattern is weaker in space. Anyhow, those spots aredangerous, until the organizing principle gets to work on them."

  * * * * *

  He turned to the panel. "Okay, Harrison. Throw in the seconddisrupter." The peaks and valleys altered on the graph. They startedto mount in crazy, meaningless configurations.

  "Take Darrig's message in the light of that. Chaos, we know, isunderlying. Everything was formed out of it. The Gorgon Medusa wassomething that _couldn't be looked upon_. She turned men into stone,you recall, destroyed them. So, Darrig found a relationship betweenchaos and that which can't be looked upon. All with regard to theAmbassador, of course."

  "The Ambassador can't look upon chaos!" Malley cried.

  "That's it. The Ambassador is capable of an infinite number ofalterations and permutations. But _something_--the matrix--can'tchange, because then there would be nothing left. To destroy somethingas abstract as a pattern, we need a state in which no pattern ispossible. A state of chaos."

  The third disrupter was thrown into circuit. The graph looked as if adrunken caterpillar had been sketching on it.

  "Those disrupters are Harrison's idea," Cercy said. "I told him Iwanted an electrical current with absolutely no coherent pattern. Thedisrupters are an extension of radio jamming. The first alters theelectrical pattern. That's its purpose: to produce a state ofpatternlessness. The second tries to destroy the pattern left by thefirst; the third tries to destroy the pattern made by the first two.They're fed back then, and any remaining pattern is systematicallydestroyed in circuit ... I hope."

  "This is supposed to produce a state of chaos?" Malley asked, lookinginto the screen.

  For a while there was only the whining of the machines and the crazydoodling of the graph. Then, in the middle of the Ambassador's room, aspot appeared. It wavered, shrunk, expanded--

  What happened was indescribable. All they knew was that everythingwithin the spot had disappeared.

  "Switch it off" Cercy shouted. Harrison cut the switch.

  The spot continued to grow.

  "How is it we're able to look at it?" Malley asked, staring at thescreen.

  "The shield of Perseus, remember?" Cercy said. "Using it as a mirror,he could look at Medusa."

  "It's still growing!" Malley shouted.

  "There was a calculated risk in all this," Cercy said. "There's alwaysthe possibility that the chaos may go on, unchecked. If that happens,it won't matter much what--"

  The spot stopped growing. Its edges wavered and rippled, and then itstarted to shrink.

  "The organizing principle," Cercy said, and collapsed into a chair.

  "Any sign of the Ambassador?" he asked, in a few minutes.

  The spot was still wavering. Then it was gone. Instantly there was anexplosion. The steel walls buckled inward, but held. The screen wentdead.

  "The spot removed all the air from the room," Cercy explained, "aswell as the furniture and the Ambassador."

  "He couldn't take it," Malley said. "No pattern can cohere, in a stateof patternlessness. He's gone to join Alfern."

  Malley started to giggle. Cercy felt like joining him, but pulledhimself together.

  "Take it easy," he said. "We're not through yet."

  "Sure we are! The Ambassador--"

  "Is out of the way. But there's still an alien fleet homing in on thisregion of space. A fleet so strong we couldn't scratch it with anH-bomb. They'll be looking for us."

  He stood up.

  "Go home and get some sleep. Something tells me that tomorrow we'regoing to have to start figuring out some way of camouflaging aplanet."

  --ROBERT SHECKLEY

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