Vulcan's Hammer Read online

  “I have no appointment,” Barris said.

  “That’s right,” Fields admitted.

  Rachel screamed, pointing to the window.

  Coming across the sill, through the window and into the room, was something made of gleaming metal. It lifted and flew through the air. As it swooped it made a shrill sound. It changed direction and dropped at Fields.

  The two men at the card table leaped up and stared open-mouthed. One of them began groping for the gun at his waist.

  The metal thing dived at Fields. Covering his face with his arms, Fields flung himself to the floor and rolled. His striped bathrobe flapped, and one slipper shot from his foot and slid across the rug. As he rolled and grabbed out a heat beam and fired upward, sweeping the air above him. A burning flash seared Barris; he leaped back and shut his eyes.

  Still screaming, Rachel Pitt appeared in front of him, her face torn with hysteria. The air crackled with energy; a cloud of dense blue-gray matter obscured most of the room. The couch, the chairs, the rug and walls were burning. Smoke poured up, and Barris saw tongues of flame winking orange in the murk. Now he heard Rachel choke; her screams ceased. He himself was partly blinded. He made his way toward the door, his ears ringing.

  “It’s okay,” Father Fields said, his voice coming dimly through the crackling of energy. “Get those little fires out. I got the goddamn thing.” He loomed up in front of Barris, grinning crookedly. One side of his face was badly burned and part of his short-cropped hair had been seared away. His scalp, red and blistered, seemed to glow. “If you can help get the fires out,” he said to Barris in an almost courtly tone, “maybe I can find enough of the goddamn thing to get into it and see what it was.”

  One of the men had found a hand-operated fire extinguisher outside in the hall; now, pumping furiously, he was managing to get the fires out. His companion appeared with another extinguisher and pitched in. Barris left them to handle the fire and went back through the room to find Rachel Pitt.

  She was crouched in the far corner, sunk down in a heap, staring straight ahead, her hands clasped together. When he lifted her up, he felt her body trembling. She said nothing as he stood holding her in his arms; she did not seem aware of him.

  Appearing beside him, Fields said in a gleeful voice, “Hot dog, Barris—I found most of it.” He triumphantly displayed a charred but still intact metal cylinder with an elaborate system of antennas and receptors and propulsion jets. Then, seeing Rachel Pitt, he lost his smile. “I wonder if she’ll come out of it this time,” he said. “She was this way when she first came to us. After the Atlanta boys let her go. It’s catatonia.”

  “And you got her out of it?” Barris said.

  Fields said, “She came out of it because she wanted to. She wanted to do something. Be active. Help us. Maybe this blast was too much for her. She’s stood a lot.” He shrugged, but his face was an expression of great compassion.

  “Maybe I’ll see you again,” Barris said to him.

  “You’re leaving?” Fields said. “Where are you going?”

  “To see Jason Dill.”

  “What about her?” Fields said, indicating the woman in Barris’ arms. “Are you taking her with you?”

  “If you’ll let me,” Barris said.

  “Do what you want,” Fields said, eyeing him thoughtfully. “I don’t quite understand you, Director.” He seemed, in this moment, to have shed his regional accent. “Are you for us or against us? Or do you know? Maybe you don’t know; maybe it’ll take time.”

  Barris said, “I’ll never go along with a group that murders.”

  “There are slow murders and fast murders,” Fields said. “And body murders and mind murders. Some you do with evil schools.”

  Going past him, Barris went on out of the smoke-saturated room, into the hall outside. He descended the stairs to the lobby.

  Outside on the sidewalk he hailed a robot cab.

  At the Geneva field he put Mrs. Pitt aboard a ship that would carry her to his own region, North America. He contacted his staff by vidsender and gave them instructions to have the ship met when it landed in New York and to provide her with medical care until he himself got back. And he had one final order for them.

  “Don’t let her out of my jurisdiction. Don’t honor any request to have her transferred, especially to South America.”

  The staff member said acutely, “You don’t want to let this person get anywhere near Atlanta.”

  “That’s right,” Barris said, aware that without his having to spell it out his staff understood the situation. There was probably no one in the Unity structure who would not be able to follow his meaning. Atlanta was the prime object of dread for all of them, great and small alike.

  Does Jason Dill have that hanging over him too? Barris wondered as he left the vidbooth. Possibly he is exempt—certainly from a rational viewpoint he has nothing to fear. But the irrational fear could be there anyhow.

  He made his way through the crowded, noisy terminal building, headed in the direction of one of the lunch counters. At the counter he ordered a sandwich and coffee and sat with that for a time, pulling himself together and pondering.

  Was there really a letter to Dill accusing me of treason? he asked himself. Had Rachel been telling the truth? Probably not. It probably had been a device to draw him aside, to keep him from going on to Unity Control.

  I’ll have to take the chance, he decided. No doubt I could put out careful feelers, track the information down over a period of time; I might even know within a week. But I can’t wait that long. I want to face Dill now. That’s what I came here for.

  He thought, And I have been with them, the enemy. If such a letter exists, there is now what would no doubt be called “proof.” The structure would need nothing more; I would be tried for treason and convicted. And that would be the end of me, as a high official of the system and as a living, breathing human being. True, something might still be walking around, but it wouldn’t really be alive.

  And yet, he realized, I can’t even go back now, to my own region. Whether I like it or not I have met Father Fields face-to-face; I’ve associated with him, and any enemies I might have, inside or outside the Unity structure, will have exactly what they want—for the rest of my life. It’s too late to give up, to drop the idea of confronting Jason Dill. With irony, he thought, Father Fields has forced me to go through with it, the thing he was trying to prevent.

  He paid for his lunch and left the lunch counter. Going outside onto the sidewalk, he called another robot cab and instructed it to take him to Unity Control.

  Barris pushed past the battery of secretaries and clerks, into Jason Dill’s private syndrome of interconnected offices. At the sight of his Director’s stripe, the dark red slash on his gray coat-sleeve, officials of the Unity Control stepped obediently out of his path, leaving a way open from room to room. The last door opened—and abruptly he was facing Dill.

  Jason Dill looked up slowly, putting down a handful of reports. “What do you think you’re doing?” He did not appear at first to recognize Barris; his gaze strayed to the Director’s stripe and then back to his face. “This is out of the question,” Dill said, “your barging in here like this.”

  “I came here to talk to you,” Barris said. He shut the office door after him; it closed with a bang, startling the older man. Jason Dill half stood up, then subsided.

  “Director Barris,” he murmured. His eyes narrowed. “File a regular appointment slip; you know procedure well enough by now to—”

  Barris cut him off. “Why did you turn back my DQ form? Are you withholding information from Vulcan 3?”

  Silence.

  The color left Jason Dill’s face. “Your form wasn’t properly filled out. According to Section Six, Article Ten of the Unity—”

  “You’re rerouting material away from Vulcan 3; that’s why it hasn’t stated a policy on the Healers.” He came closer to the seated man, bending over him as Dill stared down at his papers on t
he desk, not meeting his gaze. “Why? It doesn’t make sense. You know what this constitutes. Treason! Keeping back data, deliberately falsifying the troughs. I could bring charges against you, even have you arrested.” Resting his hands on the surface of the desk, Barris said loudly, “Is the purpose of this to isolate and weaken the eleven Directors so that—”

  He broke off. He was looking down into the barrel of a pencil beam. Jason Dill had been holding it since he had burst into the man’s office. Dill’s middle-aged features twitched bleakly; his eyes gleamed as he gripped the small tube. “Now be quiet, Director,” Dill said icily. “I admire your tactics. This going on the offensive. Accusations without opportunity for me even to get in one word. Standard operating procedure.” He breathed slowly, in a series of great gasps. “Damn you,” he snapped, “sit down.”

  Barris sat down watchfully. I made my pitch, he realized. The man is right. And shrewd. He’s seen a lot in his time, more than I have. Maybe I’m not the first to barge in here, yelling with indignation, trying to pin him down, force admissions.

  Thinking that, Barris felt his confidence ebb away. But he continued to face the older man; he did not draw back.

  Jason Dill’s face was gray now. Drops of perspiration stood out on his wrinkled forehead; bringing out his handkerchief he patted at them. With the other hand, however, he still held the pencil beam. “We’re both a little calmer,” he said. “Which in my opinion is better. You were overly dramatic. Why?” A faint, distorted smile appeared on his lips. “Have you been practicing how you would make your entrance?”

  The man’s hand traveled to his breast pocket. He rubbed a bulge there; Barris saw that he had something in his inner pocket, something to which his hand had gone involuntarily. Seeing what he had done, Dill at once jerked his hand away.

  Medicine? Barris wondered.

  “This treason gambit,” Dill said. “I could try that, too. An attempted coup on your part.” He pointed at a control on the edge of his desk. “All this—your grand entrance—has of course been recorded. The evidence is there.” He pressed a stud, and, on the desk vidscreen, the Geneva Unity monitor appeared. “Give me the police,” Dill said. Sitting with the pencil beam still pointed at Barris, he waited for the line to be put through. “I have too many other problems to take time off to cope with a Director who decides to run amuck.”

  Barris said, “I’ll fight this all the way in the Unity courts. My conscience is clear; I’m acting in the interests of Unity, against a Managing Director who’s systematically breaking down the system, step by step. You can investigate my entire life and you won’t find a thing. I know I’ll beat you in the courts, even if it takes years.”

  “We have a letter,” Dill said. On the screen the familiar heavyjowled features of a police official appeared. “Stand by,” Dill instructed him. The police official’s eyes moved as he took in the scene of the Managing Director holding his gun on Director Barris.

  “That letter,” Barris said as steadily as possible, “has no factual basis for the charges it makes.”

  “Oh?” Dill said. “You’re familiar with its charges?”

  “Rachel Pitt gave me all the information,” Barris said. So she had been telling the truth. Well, that letter—spurious as its charges were—coupled with this episode, would probably be enough to convict him. The two would dovetail; they would create together the sort of evidence acceptable to the Unity mentality.

  The police official eyed Barris.

  At his desk, Jason Dill held the pencil beam steadily.

  Barris said, “Today I sat in the same room with Father Fields.”

  Reaching his hand out to the vidsender, Jason Dill reflected and then said, “I’ll ring you off and recontact you later.” With his thumb he broke the connection; the image of the police official, still staring at Barris, faded out.

  Jason Dill rose from his desk and pulled loose the power cable supplying the recording scanner which had been on since Barris entered the room. Then he reseated himself.

  “The charges in the letter are true!” he said with incredulity. “My God, it never occurred to me . . . ” Then, rubbing his forehead he said, “Yes, it did. Briefly. So they managed to penetrate to the Director level.” His eyes showed horror and weariness.

  “They put a gun on me and detained me,” Barris said. “When I got here to Geneva.”

  Doubt, mixed with distraught cunning, crossed the older man’s face. Obviously, he did not want to believe that the Healers had gotten so far up into Unity, Barris realized. He would grasp at any straw, any explanation which would account for the facts . . . even the true one, Barris thought bitingly. Jason Dill had a psychological need that took precedence over the habitual organizational suspicions.

  “You can trust me,” Barris said.

  “Why?” The pencil beam still pointed at him, but the conflicting emotions swept back and forth through the man.

  “You have to believe someone,” Barris said. “Sometime, somewhere. What is that you reach up and rub, there at your chest?”

  Grimacing, Dill glanced down at his hand; again it was at his chest. He jerked it away. “Don’t play on my fears,” he said.

  “Your fear of isolation?” Barris said. “Of having everyone against you? Is that some physical injury that you keep rubbing?”

  Dill said, “No. You’re guessing far too much; you’re out of your depth.” But he seemed more composed now. “Well, Director, ” he said. “I’ll tell you something. I probably don’t have long to live. My health has deteriorated since I’ve had this job. Maybe in a sense you’re right . . . it is a physical injury I’m rubbing. If you ever get where I am, you’ll have some deep-seated injuries and illnesses too. Because there’ll be people around you putting them there.”

  “Maybe you should take a couple of flying wedge squads of police and seize the Bond Hotel,” Barris said. “He was there an hour ago. Down in the old section of the city. Not more than two miles from here.”

  “He’d be gone,” Dill said. “He turns up again and again on the outskirts this way. We’ll never get him; there’re a million ratholes he can slither down.”

  Barris said, “You almost did get him.”

  “When?”

  “In the hotel room. When that robot tracking device entered and made for him. It almost succeeded in burning him up, but he was quite fast; he managed to roll away and get it first.”

  Dill said, “What robot tracking device? Describe it.” As Barris described it, Dill stared at him starkly. He swallowed noisily but did not interrupt until Barris had finished.

  “What’s wrong?” Barris said. “From what I saw of it, it seems to be the most effective counterpenetration weapon you have. Surely you’ll be able to break up the Movement with such a mechanism. I think your anxiety and preoccupation is excessive.”

  In an almost inaudible voice, Dill said, “Agnes Parker.”

  “Who is that?” Barris said.

  Seemingly not aware of him, Dill murmured, “Vulcan 2. And now a try at Father Fields. But he got away.” Putting down his pencil beam he reached into his coat; rummaging, he brought out two reels of tape. He tossed the tape down on the desk.

  “So that’s what you’ve been carrying,” Barris said with curiosity. He picked up the reels and examined them.

  Dill said, “Director, there is a third force.”

  “What?” Barris said, with a chill.

  “A third force is operating on us,” Jason Dill said, and smiled grotesquely. “It may get all of us. It appears to be very strong.”

  He put his pencil beam away, then. The two of them faced each other without it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The police raid on the Bond Hotel, although carried out expertly and thoroughly, netted nothing.

  Jason Dill was not surprised.

  In his office by himself he faced a legal dictation machine. Clearing his throat he said into it hurriedly, “This is to act as a formal statement in the event of my death, explain
ing the circumstances and reasons why I saw fit as Unity Managing Director to conduct sub rosa relations with North American Director William Barris. I entered into these relations knowing full well that Director Barris was under heavy suspicion concerning his position vis-à-vis the Healers’ Movement, a treasonable band of murderers and—” He could not think of the word so he cut off the machine temporarily.

  He glanced at his watch. In five minutes he had an appointment with Barris; he would not have time to complete his protective statement anyway. So he erased the tape. Better to start over later on, he decided. If he survived into the later on.

  I’ll go meet him, Jason Dill decided, and go on the assumption that he is being honest with me. I’ll cooperate with him fully; I’ll hold nothing back.

  But just to be on the safe side, he opened the drawer of his desk and lifted out a small container. From it he took an object wrapped up and sealed; he opened it, and there was the smallest heat beam that the police had been able to manufacture. No larger than a kidney bean.

  Using the adhesive agent provided, he carefully affixed the weapon inside his right ear. Its color blended with his own; examining himself in a wall mirror he felt satisfied that the heat beam would not be noticed.

  Now he was ready for his appointment. Taking his overcoat, he left his office, walking briskly.

  He stood by while Barris laid the tapes out on the surface of a table, spreading them flat with his hands.

  “And no more came after these,” Barris said.

  “No more,” Dill said. “Vulcan 2 ceased to exist at that point.” He indicated the first of the two tapes. “Start reading there.”

  This Movement may be of more significance than first appears. It is evident that the Movement is directed against Vulcan 3 rather than the series of computers as a whole. Until I have had time to consider the greater aspects, I suggest Vulcan 3 not be informed of the matter.

  “I asked why,” Dill said. “Look at the next tape.”

  Consider the basic difference between Vulcan 3 and preceding computer. Its decisions are more than strictly factual evaluations of objective data; essentially it is creating policy at a value level. Vulcan 3 deals with teleological problems . . . the significance of this cannot be immediately inferred. I must consider it at greater length.