Vulcan's Hammer Page 7

  A decided bifurcation of society seems in the making. Be certain your report on educational bias is complete. I will need all the relevant facts.

  After a pause, Vulcan 3 added: I sense a rapidly approaching crisis.

  “What kind of crisis?” Dill demanded nervously.

  Ideological. A new orientation appears to be on the verge of verbalization. A Gestalt derived from the experience of the lowest classes. Reflecting their dissatisfaction.

  “Dissatisfaction? With what?”

  Essentially, the masses reject the concept of stability. In the main, those without sufficient property to be firmly rooted are more concerned with gain than with security. To them, society is an arena of adventure. A structure in which they hope to rise to a superior power status.

  “I see,” Dill said dutifully.

  A rationally controlled, stable society such as ours defeats their desires. In a rapidly altering, unstable society the lowest classes would stand a good chance of seizing power. Basically, the lowest classes are adventurers, conceiving life as a gamble, a game rather than a task, with social power as the stakes.

  “Interesting,” Dill said. “So for them the concept of luck plays a major role. Those on top have had good luck. Those—” But Vulcan 3 was not interested in his contribution; it had already continued.

  The dissatisfaction of the masses is not based on economic deprivation but on a sense of ineffectuality. Not an increased standard of living, but more social power, is their fundamental goal. Because of their emotional orientation, they arise and act when a powerful leader-figure can coordinate them into a functioning unit rather than a chaotic mass of unformed elements.

  Dill had no reply to that. It was evident that Vulcan 3 had sifted the information available, and had come up with uncomfortably close inferences. That, of course, was the machine’s forte; basically it was a device par excellence for performing the processes of deductive and inductive reasoning. It ruthlessly passed from one step to the next and arrived at the correct inference, whatever it was.

  Without direct knowledge of any kind, Vulcan 3 was able to deduce, from general historic principles, the social conflicts developing in the contemporary world. It had manufactured a picture of the situation which faced the average human being as he woke up in the morning and reluctantly greeted the day. Stuck down here, Vulcan 3 had, through indirect and incomplete evidence, imagined things as they actually were.

  Sweat came out on Dill’s forehead. He was dealing with a mind greater than any one man’s or any group of men’s. This proof of the prowess of the computer—this verification of Greenstreet’s notion that a machine was not limited merely to doing what man could do, but doing it faster . . . Vulcan 3 was patently doing what a man could not do no matter how much time he had available to him.

  Down here, buried underground in the dark, in this constant isolation, a human being would go mad; he would lose all contact with the world, all ideas of what was going on. As time progressed he would develop a less and less accurate picture of reality; he would become progressively more hallucinated. Vulcan 3, however, moved continually in the opposite direction; it was, in a sense, moving by degrees toward inevitable sanity, or at least maturity—if, by that, was meant a clear, accurate, and full picture of things as they really were. A picture, Jason Dill realized, that no human being has ever had or will ever have. All humans are partial. And this giant is not!

  “I’ll put a rush on the educational survey,” he murmured. “Is there anything else you need?”

  The statistical report on rural linguistics has not come in. Why is that? It was under the personal supervision of your subcoordinator, Arthur Graveson Pitt.

  Dill cursed silently. Good lord! Vulcan 3 never mislaid or lost or mistook a single datum among the billions that it ingested and stored away. “Pitt was injured,” Dill said aloud, his mind racing desperately. “His car overturned on a winding mountain road in Colorado. Or at least that’s the way I recall it. I’d have to check to be sure, but—”

  Have his report completed by someone else. I require it. Is his injury serious?

  Dill hesitated. “As a matter of fact, they don’t think he’ll live. They say—”

  Why have so many T-class persons been killed in the past year? I want more information on this. According to my statistics only one-fifth of that number should have died of natural causes. Some vital factor is missing. I must have more data.

  “All right,” Dill muttered. “We’ll get you more data; anything you want.”

  I am considering calling a special meeting of the Control Council. I am on the verge of deciding to question the staff of eleven Regional Directors personally.

  At that Dill was stunned; he tried to speak, but for a time he could not. He could only stare fixedly at the ribbon of words. The ribbon moved inexorably on.

  I am not satisfied with the way data is supplied. I may demand your removal and an entirely new system of feeding.

  Dill’s mouth opened and closed. Aware that he was shaking visibly, he backed away from the computer. “Unless you want something else,” he managed, “I have business. In Geneva.” All he wanted to do was get out of the situation, away from the chamber.

  Nothing more. You may go.

  As quickly as possible, Dill left the chamber, ascending by express lift to the surface level. Around him, in a blur, guards checked him over; he was scarcely aware of them.

  What a going-over, he thought. What an ordeal. Talk about the Atlanta psychologists—they’re nothing compared with what I have to face, day after day.

  God, how I hate that machine, he thought. He was still trembling, his heart palpitating; he could not breathe, and for a time he sat on a leather-covered couch in the outer lounge, recovering.

  To one of the attendants he said, “I’d like a glass of some stimulant. Anything you have.”

  Presently it was in his hand, a tall green glass; he gulped it down and felt a trifle better. The attendant was waiting around to be paid, he realized; the man had a tray and a bill.

  “Seventy-five cents, sir,” the attendant said.

  To Dill it was the final blow. His position as Managing Director did not exempt him from these annoyances; he had to fish around in his pocket for change. And meanwhile, he thought, the future of our society rests with me. While I dig up seventyfive cents for this idiot.

  I ought to let them all get blown to bits. I ought to give up.

  William Barris felt a little more relaxed as the cab carried him and Rachel Pitt into the dark, overpopulated, older section of the city. On the sidewalks clumps of elderly men in seedy garments and battered hats stood inertly. Teenagers lounged by store windows. Most of the store windows, Barris noticed, had metal bars or gratings protecting their displays from theft. Rubbish lay piled up in alleyways.

  “Do you mind coming here?” he asked the woman beside him. “Or is it too depressing?”

  Rachel had taken off her coat and put it across her lap. She wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt, probably the one she had had on when the police arrested her; it looked to him like something more suited for house use. And, he saw, her throat was streaked with what appeared to be dust. She had a tired, wan expression and she sat listlessly.

  “You know, I like the city,” she said, after a time.

  “Even this part?”

  “I’ve been staying in this section,” she said. “Since they let me go.”

  Barris said, “Did they give you time to pack? Were you able to take any clothes with you?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “What about money?”

  “They were very kind.” Her voice had weary irony in it. “No, they didn’t let me take any money; they simply bundled me into a police ship and took off for Europe. But before they let me go they permitted me to draw enough money from my husband’s pension payment to take care of getting me back home.” Turning her head she finished, “Because of all the red tape, it will be several months before the regula
r payments will be forthcoming. This was a favor they did me.”

  To that, Barris could say nothing.

  “Do you think,” Rachel said, “that I resent the way Unity has treated me?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Rachel said, “You’re right.”

  Now the cab had begun to coast up to the entrance of an ancient brick hotel with a tattered awning. Feeling somewhat dismayed by the appearance of the Bond Hotel, Barris said, “Will this be all right, this place?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “In fact, this is where I would have had the cab take us. I had intended to bring you here.”

  The cab halted and its door swung open. As Barris paid it, he thought, Maybe I shouldn’t have let it decide for me. Maybe I ought to get back in and have it drive on. Turning, he glanced up at the hotel.

  Rachel Pitt had already started up the steps. It was too late.

  Now a man appeared in the entrance, his hands in his pockets. He wore a dark, untidy coat, and a cap pulled down over his forehead. The man glanced at her and said something to her.

  At once Barris strode up the steps after her. He took her by the arm, stepping between her and the man. “Watch it,” he said to the man, putting his hand on the pencil beam which he carried in his breast pocket.

  In a slow, quiet voice the man said, “Don’t get excited, mister.” He studied Barris. “I wasn’t accosting Mrs. Pitt. I was merely asking when you arrived.” Coming around behind Barris and Rachel, he said, “Go on inside the hotel, Director. We have a room upstairs where we can talk. No one will bother us here. You picked a good place.”

  Or rather, Barris thought icily, the cab and Rachel Pitt picked a good place. There was nothing he could do; he felt, against his spine, the tip of the man’s heat beam.

  “You shouldn’t be suspicious of a man of the cloth, in regards to such matters,” the man said conversationally, as they crossed the grimy, dark lobby to the stairs. The elevator, Barris noticed, was out of order; or at least it was so labeled. “Or perhaps,” the man said, “you failed to notice the historic badge of my vocation.” At the stairs the man halted, glanced around, and removed his cap.

  The stern, heavy-browed face that became visible was familiar to Barris. The slightly crooked nose, as if it had been broken once and never properly set. The deliberately short-cropped hair that gave the man’s entire face the air of grim austerity.

  Rachel said, “This is Father Fields.”

  The man smiled, and Barris saw irregular, massive teeth. The photo had not indicated that, Barris thought. Nor the strong chin. It had hinted at, but not really given, the full measure of the man. In some ways Father Fields looked more like a toughened, weathered prize fighter than he did a man of religion.

  Barris, face to face with him for the first time, felt a complete and absolute fear of the man; it came with a certitude that he had never before known in his life.

  Ahead of them, Rachel led the way upstairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Barris said, “I’d be interested to know when this woman went over to you.” He indicated Rachel Pitt, who stood by a window of the hotel room, gazing meditatively out at the buildings and rooftops of Geneva.

  “You can see Unity Control from here,” Rachel said, turning her head.

  “Of course you can,” Father Fields said in his hoarse, grumbling voice. He sat in the corner, in a striped bathrobe and fleece-lined slippers, a screw driver in one hand, a light fixture in the other; he had gone into the bathroom to take a shower, but the light wasn’t working. Two other men, Healers evidently, sat at a card table poring over some pamphlets stacked up between them in wired bundles. Barris assumed that these were propaganda material of the Movement, about to be distributed.

  “Is that just coincidence?” Rachel asked.

  Fields grunted, ignoring her as he worked on the light fixture. Then, raising his head, he said brusquely to Barris, “Now listen. I won’t lie to you, because it’s lies that your organization is founded on. Anyone who knows me knows I never have need of lying. Why should I? The truth is my greatest weapon.”

  “What is the truth?” Barris said.

  “The truth is that pretty soon we’re going to run up that street you see outside to that big building the lady is looking at, and then Unity won’t exist.” He smiled, showing his malformed teeth. But it was, oddly, a friendly smile. As if, Barris thought, the man hoped that he would chime in—possibly smile back in agreement.

  With massive irony, Barris said, “Good luck.”

  “Luck,” Fields echoed. “We don’t need it. All we need is speed. It’ll be like poking at some old rotten fruit with a stick.” His voice twanged with a regional accent of his origin; Barris caught the drawl of Taubmann’s territory, the Southern States that formed the rim of South America.

  “Spare me your folksy metaphors,” Barris said.

  Fields laughed. “You stand in error, Mister Director.”

  “It was a simile,” Rachel agreed, expressionlessly.

  Barris felt himself redden; they were making fun of him, these people, and he was falling into it. He said to the man in the striped bathrobe, “I’m amazed at your power to draw followers. You engineer the murder of this woman’s husband, and after meeting you she joins your Movement. That is impressive.”

  For a time Fields said nothing. Finally he threw down the light fixture. “Must be a hundred years old,” he said. “Nothing like that in the United States since I was born. And they call this area ‘modern.’” He scowled and plucked at his lower lip. “I appreciate your moral indignation. Somebody did smash in that poor man’s head; there’s no doubt about that.”

  “You were there too,” Barris said.

  “Oh, yes,” Fields said. He studied Barris intently; the hard dark eyes seemed to grow and become even more wrathful. “I do get carried away,” he said. “When I see that lovely little suit you people wear, that gray suit and white shirt, those shiny black shoes.” His scrutiny traveled up and down Barris. “And especially, I get carried away by that thing you all have in your pockets. Those pencil beams.”

  Rachel said to Barris, “Father Fields was once burned by a tax collector.”

  “Yes,” Fields said. “You know your Unity tax collectors are exempt from the law. No citizen can take legal action against them. Isn’t that lovely?” Lifting his arm, he pulled back his right sleeve; Barris saw that the flesh had been corroded away to a permanent mass of scar tissue, from the man’s wrist to his elbow. “Let’s see some moral indignation about that,” he said to Barris.

  “I have it,” Barris said. “I never approved of the general tax-collecting procedures. You won’t find them in my area.”

  “That’s so,” Fields said. His voice lost some of its ferocity; he seemed to cool slightly. “That’s a fact about you. Compared to the other Directors, you’re not too bad. We have a couple of people in and around your offices. We know quite a bit about you. You’re here in Geneva because you want to find out why Vulcan 3 hasn’t handed down any dogma about us Healers. It needles your conscience that old Jason Dill can toss your DQ forms back in your face and there’s nothing you can do. It is mighty odd that your machine hasn’t said anything about us.”

  To that, Barris said nothing.

  “It gives us sort of an advantage,” Fields said. “You boys don’t have any operating policy; you have to mark time until the machine talks. Because it wouldn’t occur to you to put together your own human-made policy.”

  Barris said, “In my area I have a policy. I have as many Healers as possible thrown into jail—on sight.”

  “Why?” Rachel Pitt asked.

  “Ask your dead husband,” Barris said, with animosity toward her. “I can’t understand you,” he said to her. “Your husband went out on his job and these people—”

  Fields interrupted, “Director, you have never been worked over by the Atlanta psychologists.” His voice was quiet. “This woman has. So was I, to some extent. To a very minor extent.
Not like she was. With her, they were in a hurry.”

  For a while no one spoke.

  There’s not much I can say, Barris realized. He walked over to the card table and picked up one of the pamphlets; aimlessly, he read the large black type.

  DO YOU HAVE ANY SAY IN RUNNING YOUR LIVES? WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU VOTED?

  “There has been no public election,” Fields said, “for twenty years. Do they teach that to the little kids in your schools?”

  “There should be,” Barris said.

  Fields said, “Mr. Barris—” His voice was tense and husky. “How’d you like to be the first Director to come over to us?” For an instant Barris detected a pleading quality; then it was gone. The man’s voice and face became stern. “It’ll make you look good as hell in the future history books,” he said, and laughed harshly. Then, once more picking up the light fixture, he resumed work on it. He ignored Barris; he did not even seem to be waiting for a reply.

  Coming over to Barris, Rachel said in her sharp, constricted fashion, “Director, he’s not joking. He really wants you to join the Movement.”

  “I imagine he does,” Barris said.

  Fields said, “You have a sense of what’s wrong. You know how wrong it is. All that ambition and suspicion. What’s it for? Maybe I’m doing you people an injustice, but honest to God, Mr. Barris, I think your top men are insane. I know Jason Dill is. Most of the Directors are, and their staffs. And the schools are turning out lunatics. Did you know they took my daughter and stuck her into one of their schools? As far as I know she’s there now. We never got into the schools too well. You people are really strong, there. It means a lot to you.”

  “You went to a Unity school,” Rachel said to Barris. “You know how they teach children not to question, not to disagree. They’re taught to obey. Arthur was the product of one of them. Pleasant, good-looking, well-dressed, on his way up—” She broke off.

  And dead, Barris thought.

  “If you don’t join us,” Fields said to him, “you can walk out the door and up the street to your appointment with Jason Dill.”