Vulcan's Hammer Page 9

  “And that’s it,” Dill said. “The end. Presumably Vulcan 2 did consider it at greater length. Anyhow, it’s a metaphysical problem; we’ll never know either way.”

  “These tapes look old,” Barris said. Examining the first one he said, “This is older than the other. By some months.”

  Jason Dill said, “The first tape is fifteen months old. The second—” He shrugged. “Four or five. I forget.”

  “This first tape was put out by Vulcan 2 over a year ago,” Barris said, “and from that time on, Vulcan 3 gave out no directives concerning the Healers.”

  Dill nodded.

  “You followed Vulcan 2’s advice,” Barris said. “From the moment you read this tape you ceased informing Vulcan 3 about the growth of the Movement.” Studying the older man he said, “You’ve been withholding information from Vulcan 3 without knowing why.” The disbelief on his face grew; his lips twisted with outrage. “And all these months, all this time, you went on carrying out what Vulcan 2 told you to do! Good God, which is the machine and which is the man? And you clasp these two reels of tape to your bosom—” Unable to go on, Barris clamped his jaws shut, his eyes furious with accusation.

  Feeling his own face redden, Dill said, “You must understand the relationship that existed between me and Vulcan 2. We had always worked together, back in the old days. Vulcan 2 was limited, of course, compared with Vulcan 3; it was obsolete—it couldn’t have held the authoritative position Vulcan 3 now holds, determining ultimate policy. All it could do was assist . . .” He heard his voice trail off miserably. And then resentment clouded up inside him; here he was, defending himself guiltily to his inferior officer. This was absurd!

  Barris said, “Once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat. No matter how highly placed.” His voice had an icy, deadly quality; in it there was no compassion for the older man. Dill felt his flesh wince at the impact. He turned, then, and walked away, his back to Barris. Not facing him, he said:

  “I admit I was partial to Vulcan 2. Perhaps I did tend to trust it too much.”

  “So you did find something you could trust. Maybe the Healers are right. About all of us.”

  “You detest me because I put my faith in a machine? My God, every time you read a gauge or a dial or a meter, every time you ride in a car or a ship, aren’t you putting your faith in a machine?”

  Barris nodded reluctantly. “But it’s not the same,” he said.

  “You don’t know,” Dill said. “You never had my job. There’s no difference between my faith in what these tapes tell me to do, and the faith the water-meter reader has when he reads the meter and writes down the reading. Vulcan 3 was dangerous and Vulcan 2 knew it. Am I supposed to cringe with shame because I shared Vulcan 2’s intuition? I felt the same thing, the first time I watched those goddamn letters flowing across that surface.”

  “Would you be willing to let me look at the remains of Vulcan 2?” Barris said.

  “It could be arranged,” Dill said. “All we need are papers that certify you as a maintenance repairman with top clearance. I would advise you not to wear your Director’s stripe, in that case.”

  “Fine,” Barris said. “Let’s get started on that, then.”

  At the entrance of the gloomy, deserted chamber, he stood gazing at the heaps of ruin that had been the old computer. The silent metal and twisted parts, fused together in a useless, shapeless mass. Too bad to see it like this, he thought, and never to have seen it the way it was. Or maybe not. Beside him, Jason Dill seemed overcome; his body slumped and he scratched compulsively at his right ear, evidently barely aware of the man whom he had brought.

  Barris said, “Not much left.”

  “They knew what they were doing.” Dill spoke almost to himself; then, with great effort, he roused himself. “I heard one of them in the corridor. I even saw it. The eyes gleaming. It was hanging around. I thought it was only a bat or an owl. I went on out.”

  Squatting down, Barris picked up a handful of smashed wiring and relays. “Has an attempt been made to reconstruct any of this?”

  “Vulcan 2?” Dill murmured. “As I’ve said, destruction was so complete and on such a scale—”

  “The components,” Barris said. He lifted a complex plastic tube carefully. “This, for instance. This wheeling valve. The envelope is gone, of course, but the elements look intact.”

  Dill eyed him doubtfully. “You’re advancing the idea that there might be parts of it still alive?”

  “Mechanically intact,” Barris said. “Portions which can be made to function within some other frame. It seems to me we can’t really proceed until we can establish what Vulcan 2 had determined about Vulcan 3. We can make good guesses on our own, but that might not be the same.”

  “I’ll have a repair crew make a survey on the basis which you propose,” Dill said. “We’ll see what can be done. It would take time, of course. What do you suggest in the meanwhile? In your opinion, should I continue the policy already laid down?”

  Barris said, “Feed Vulcan 3 some data that you’ve been holding back. I’d like to see its reaction to a couple of pieces of news.”

  “Such as?”

  “The news about Vulcan 2’s destruction.”

  Floundering, Dill said, “That would be too risky. We’re not sure enough of our ground. Suppose we were wrong.”

  I doubt if we are, Barris thought. There seems less doubt of it all time. But maybe we should at least wait until we’ve tried to rebuild the destroyed computer. “There’s a good deal of risk,” he said aloud. “To us, to Unity.” To everyone, he realized.

  Nodding, Jason Dill again reached up and plucked at his ear.

  “What do you have there?” Barris said. Now that the man had stopped carrying his two tape-reels he had evidently found something else to fall back on, some replacement symbol of security.

  “N-nothing,” Dill stammered, flushing. “A nervous tic, I suppose. From the tension.” He held out his hand. “Give me those parts you picked up. We’ll need them for the reconstruction. I’ll see that you’re notified as soon as there’s anything to look at.”

  “No,” Barris said. He decided on the spot, and, having done so, pushed on with as much force as he could muster. “I’d prefer not to have the work done here. I want it done in North America.”

  Dill stared at him in bewilderment. Then, gradually, his face darkened. “In your region. By your crews.”

  “That’s right,” Barris said. “What you’ve told me may all be a fraud. These reels of tape could easily be fakes. All I can be sure of is this: my original notion about you is correct, the notion that brought me here.” He made his voice unyielding, without any doubt in it. “Your withholding of information from Vulcan 3 constitutes a crime against Unity. I’d be willing to fight you in the Unity courts any time, as an act of duty on my part. Possibly the rationalizations you’ve given are true, but until I can get some verification from these bits and pieces . . . ” He swept up a handful of relays, switches, wiring.

  For a long, long time Dill was silent. He stood, as before, with his hand pressed against his right ear. Then at last he sighed. “Okay, Director. I’m just too tired to fight with you. Take the stuff. Bring your crew in here and load it, if you want; cart it out and take it to New York. Play around with it until you’re satisfied.” Turning, he walked away, out of the chamber and up the dim, echoing corridor.

  Barris, his hands full of the pieces of Vulcan 2, watched him go. When the man had disappeared out of sight, Barris once more began to breathe. It’s over, he realized. I’ve won. There won’t be any charge against me; I came to Geneva and confronted him—and I got away with it.

  His hands shaking with relief, he began sorting among the ruins, taking his time, beginning a thorough, methodical job.

  By eight o’clock the next morning the remains of Vulcan 2 had been crated and loaded onto a commercial transport. By eight-thirty Barris’ engineers had been able to get the last of the original wiring diagrams pertainin
g to Vulcan 2. And at nine, when transport finally took off for New York, Barris breathed a sigh of relief. Once the ship was off the ground, Jason Dill ceased to have authority over it.

  Barris himself followed in the ten o’clock passenger flight, the swift little luxurious ship provided for tourists and businessmen traveling between New York and Geneva. It gave him a chance to bathe and shave and change his clothes; he had been hard at work all night.

  In the first-class lounge he relaxed in one of the deep chairs, enjoying himself for the first time in weeks. The buzz of voices around him lulled him into a semidoze; he lay back, passively watching the smartly dressed women going up the aisles, listening to snatches of conversation, mostly social, going on around him.

  “A drink, sir?” the robot attendant asked, coming up by him. He ordered a good dark German beer and with it the cheese hors d’oeuvres for which the flight was famous.

  While he sat eating a wedge of port de salut, he caught sight of the headlines of the London Times which the man across from him was reading. At once he was on his feet, searching for the newspaper-vending robot; he found it, bought his own copy of the paper, and hurried back to his seat.

  DIRECTORS TAUBMANN AND HENDERSON

  CHARGE AUTHORITY IN ILLINOIS HEALERS

  VICTORY. DEMAND INVESTIGATION

  Stunned, he read on to discover that a carefully planned mass uprising of the Movement in Illinois rural towns had been coordinated with a revolt of the Chicago working class; together, the two groups had put an end—at least temporarily—to Unity control of most of the state.

  One further item, very small, also chilled him.

  NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTOR BARRIS UN-

  AVAILABLE. NOT IN NEW YORK

  They had been active during his absence; they had made good use of it. And not just the Movement, he realized grimly. Taubmann, also. And Henderson, the Director of Asia Minor. The two had teamed up more than once in the past.

  The investigation, of course, would be a function of Jason Dill’s office. Barris thought, I barely managed to handle Dill before this; all he needs is a little support from Taubmann, and the ground will be cut from under my feet. Even now, while I’m stuck here in mid-flight . . . Possibly Dill himself instigated this; they may already have joined forces, Dill and Taubmann— ganging up on me.

  His mind spun on, and then he managed to get hold of himself. I am in a good position, he decided. I have the remains of Vulcan 2 in my possession, and, most important of all, I forced Dill to admit to me what he has been doing. No one else knows! He would never dare take action against me, now that I have that knowledge. If I made it public . . .

  I still hold the winning hand, he decided. In spite of this cleverly timed demand for an investigation of my handling of the Movement in my area.

  That damn Fields, he thought. Sitting there in the hotel room, complimenting me as the “one decent Director,” and then doing his best to discredit me while I was away from my region.

  Hailing one of the robot attendants, he ordered, “Bring me a vidsender. One on a closed-circuit line to New York Unity.”

  He had the soundproof curtains of his chair drawn, and a few moments later he was facing the image of his sub-Director, Peter Allison, on the vidscreen.

  “I wouldn’t be alarmed,” Allison said, after Barris had made his concern clear. “This Illinois uprising is being put down by our police crews. And in addition it’s part of a worldwide pattern. They seem to be active almost everywhere, now. When you get back here I’ll show you the classified reports; most of the Directors have been keeping the activity out of the newspapers. If it weren’t for Taubmann and Henderson, this business in Illinois might have been kept quiet. As I get it, there’ve been similar strikes in Lisbon and Berlin and Stalingrad. If we could get some kind of decision from Vulcan 3—”

  “Maybe we will, fairly soon,” Barris said.

  “You made out satisfactorily in Geneva? You’re coming back with definite word from it?”

  “I’ll discuss it with you later,” Barris said, and broke the connection.

  Later, as the ship flew low over New York, he saw the familiar signs of hyperactivity there, too. A procession of brown-clad Healers moved along a side street in the Bowery, solemn and dignified in their coarse garments. Crowds watched in respectful admiration. There was a demolished Unity auto—destroyed by a mob, not more than a mile from his offices. When the ship began its landing maneuver, he managed to catch sight of chalked slogans on building walls. Posters. So much more in the open, he realized. Blatant. They had progressively less to fear.

  He had beaten the commercial transport carrying the remains of Vulcan 2 by almost an hour. After he had checked in at his offices and signed the formal papers regaining administrative authority from Allison, he asked about Rachel.

  Allison said, “You’re referring to the widow of that Unity man slain in South America?” Leafing through an armload of papers and reports and forms, the man at last came up with one. “So much has been going on since you were last here,” he explained. “It seems as if everything broke over us at once.” He turned a page. “Here it is. Mrs. Arthur Pitt arrived here yesterday at 2:30 A.M. New York time and was signed over to us by the personnel responsible for her safe transit from Europe. We then arranged to have her taken at once to the mental health institute in Denver.”

  Human lives, Barris thought. Marks on forms.

  “I think I’ll go to Denver,” he said. “For a few hours. A big transport will be coming in here from Unity Control any time now; make sure it’s fully guarded at all times and don’t let anyone pry into it or start uncrating the stuff inside. I want to be present during most of the process.”

  “Shall I continue to deal with the Illinois situation?” Allison asked, following after him. “It’s my impression that I’ve been relatively successful there; if you have time to examine the—”

  Barris said, “You keep on with that. But keep me informed.”

  Ten minutes later he was aboard a small emergency ship that belonged to his office, speeding across the United States toward Colorado. I wonder if she will be there, he asked himself. He had a fatalistic dread. They’ll have sent her on. Probably to New Mexico, to some health farm there. And when I get there, they’ll have transferred her to New Orleans, the rim-city of Taubmann’s domain. And from there, an easy, effortless bureaucratic step to Atlanta.

  But at the Denver hospital the doctor who met him said, “Yes, Director. We have Mrs. Pitt with us. At present she’s out on the solarium.” He pointed that way. “Taking things easy,” the doctor said, accompanying him part way. “She’s responded quite well to our techniques. I think she’ll be up and on her feet, back to normal, in a few days.”

  Out on the glass-walled balcony, Barris found her. She was lying curled up on a redwood lawn bench, her knees pulled up tightly against her, her arms wrapped around her calves, her head resting to one side. She wore a short blue outfit which he recognized as hospital convalescent issue. Her feet were bare.

  “Looks like you’re getting along fine,” he said awkwardly.

  For a time she said nothing. Then she stirred and said, “Hi. When did you get here?”

  “Just now,” he said, regarding her with apprehension; he felt himself stiffen. Something was still wrong.

  Rachel said, “Look over there.” She pointed, and he saw a plastic shipping carton lying open, its top off. “It was addressed to both of us,” she said, “but they gave it to me. Someone put it on the ship at a stop somewhere. Probably one of those men who clean up. A lot of them are Healers.”

  Grabbing at the carton, he saw inside it the charred metal cylinder, the half-destroyed gleaming eyes. As he gazed down he saw the eyes respond; they recorded his presence.

  “He repaired it,” Rachel said in a flat, emotionless voice. “I’ve been sitting here listening to it.”

  “Listening to it?”

  “It talks,” Rachel said. “That’s all it does; that’s all h
e could fix. It never stops talking. But I can’t understand anything it says. You try. It isn’t talking to us.” She added, “Father fixed it so it isn’t harmful. It won’t go anywhere or do anything.”

  Now he heard it. A high-pitched blearing, constant and yet altering each second. A continual signal emitted by the thing. And Rachel was right. It was not directed at them.

  “Father thought you would know what it is,” she said. “There’s a note with it. He says he can’t figure it out. He can’t figure out who it’s talking to.” She picked up a piece of paper and held it out. Curiously, she said, “Do you know who it’s talking to?”

  “Yes,” Barris said, staring down at the crippled, blighted metal thing deliberately imprisoned in its carton; Father Fields had taken care to hobble it thoroughly. “I guess I do.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The leader of the New York repair crew contacted Barris early the following month. “First report on reconstruction work, Director,” Smith reported.

  “Any results?” Neither Barris nor his chief repairman uttered the name Vulcan 2 aloud; this was a closed-circuit vidchannel they were using, but with the burgeoning of the Healers’ Movement absolute secrecy had to be maintained in every area. Already, a number of infiltrators had been exposed, and several of them had been employed in the communications media. The vidservice was a natural place. All Unity business sooner or later was put over the lines.

  Smith said, “Not much yet. Most of the components were beyond salvage. Only a fraction of the memory store still exists intact.”

  Becoming tense, Barris said, “Find anything relevant?”

  On the vidscreen, Smith’s sweat-streaked, grimy face was expressionless. “A few things, I think. If you want to drop over, we’ll show you what we’ve done.”