Add files from ibiblio as of 2025-03-08 11:02:42HEADmain

1 files changed, 6175 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/41714-0.txt b/41714-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba415bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/41714-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6175 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41714 ***
+
+                              the SYNDIC
+
+                          BY C. M. KORNBLUTH
+
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY SUSSMAN
+
+    [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction
+    Adventures Magazine December 1953 and March 1954. Extensive research
+    did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
+    publication was renewed.]
+
+
+    There have been a thousand tales of future Utopias and
+    possible civilizations. They have been ruled by benevolent
+    dictatorships and pure democracies, every form of government from
+    extreme right to absolute left. Unique among these is the easy-going
+    semi-anarchistic society ruled by THE SYNDIC.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     "It was not until February 14th that the Government declared a
+     state of unlimited emergency. The precipitating incident was the
+     aerial bombardment and destruction of B Company, 27th Armored
+     Regiment, on Fort George Hill in New York City. Local Syndic
+     leaders had occupied and fortified George Washington High School,
+     with the enthusiastic co-operation of students, faculty and
+     neighborhood. Chief among them was Thomas 'Numbers' Cleveland,
+     displaying the same coolness and organizational genius which had
+     brought him to pre-eminence in the metropolitan policy-wheel
+     organization by his thirty-fifth year.
+
+     "At 5:15 A.M. the first battalion of the 27th Armored took up
+     positions in the area as follows: A Company at 190th Street and St.
+     Nicholas Avenue, with the mission of preventing reinforcement of
+     the school from the I.R.T. subway station there; Companies B, C,
+     and D hill down from the school on the slope of Fort George Hill
+     poised for an attack. At 5:25 the sixteen Patton tanks of B Company
+     revved up and moved on the school, C and D Companies remaining in
+     reserve. The plan was for the tanks of B Company to surround the
+     school on three sides--the fourth is a precipice--and open fire if
+     a telephone parley with Cleveland did not result in an
+     unconditional surrender. There was no surrender and the tanks
+     attacked.
+
+     "Cleveland's observation post was in the tower room of the school.
+     Seeing the radio mast of the lead tank top the rise of the hill, he
+     snapped out a telephone order to contact pilots waiting for the
+     word at a Syndic field floating outside the seven mile limit. The
+     pilots, trained to split-second precision in their years of public
+     service, were airborn by 5:26, but this time their cargo was not
+     liquor, cigarettes or luggage. In three minutes, they were whipping
+     rocket bombs into the tanks of Company B; Cleveland's runners
+     charged the company command post; the trial by fire had begun.
+
+     "Before it ended North America was to see deeds as gallant and
+     strategy as inspired as any in the history of war: Cleveland's
+     historic announcement--'It's a great day for the race!'--his death
+     at the head of his runners in a charge on the Fort Totten garrison,
+     the firm hand of Amadeo Falcaro taking up the scattered reins of
+     leadership, parley, peace, betrayal and execution of hostages, the
+     Treaty of Las Vegas and a united Mob-Syndic front against
+     Government, O'Toole's betrayal of the Continental Press wire room
+     and the bloody battle to recapture that crucial nerve center, the
+     decisive march on Baltimore...."
+
+     B. Arrowsmith Hynde,
+
+     _The Syndic--a Short History_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "No accurate history of the future has ever been written--a fact
+     which I think disposes of history's claim to rank as a science.
+     Astronomers quail at the three-body problem and throw up their
+     hands in surrender before the four-body problem. Any given moment
+     in history is a problem of at least two billion bodies. Attempts at
+     orderly abstraction of manipulable symbols from the realities of
+     history seem to me doomed from the start. I can juggle mean
+     rain-falls, car-loading curves, birth-rates and patent
+     applications, but I cannot for the life of me fit the recurring
+     facial carbuncles of Karl Marx into my manipulations--not even,
+     though we know, well after the fact, that agonizing staphylococcus
+     aureus infections behind that famous beard helped shape
+     twentieth-century totalitarianism. In pathology alone the list
+     could be prolonged indefinitely: Julius Caesar's epilepsy,
+     Napoleon's gastritis, Wilson's paralysis, Grant's alcoholism,
+     Wilhelm II's withered arm, Catherine's nymphomania, George III's
+     paresis, Edison's deafness, Euler's blindness, Burke's stammer, and
+     so on. Is there anybody silly enough to maintain that the world
+     today would be what it is if Marx, Caesar, Napoleon, Wilson, Grant,
+     Wilhelm, Catherine, George, Edison, Euler and Burke--to take only
+     these eleven--were anything but what they were? Yet that is the
+     assumption behind theories of history which exclude the carbuncles
+     of Marx from their referents--that is to say, every theory of
+     history with which I am familiar....
+
+     "Am I then saying that history, past and future, is unknowable;
+     that we must blunder ahead in the dark without planning because no
+     plan can possibly be accurate in prediction and useful in
+     application? I am not. I am expressing my distaste for holders of
+     extreme positions, for possessors of eternal truths, for keepers of
+     the flame. Keepers of the flame have no trouble with the questions
+     of ends and means which plague the rest of us. They are quite
+     certain that their ends are good and that therefore choice of means
+     is a trivial matter. The rest of us, far from certain that we have
+     a general solution of the two-billion body problem that is
+     history, are much more likely to ponder on our means...."
+
+     F. W. Taylor,
+
+     _Organization, Symbolism and Morale_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Charles Orsino was learning the business from the ground up--even though
+"up" would never be very high. He had in his veins only a drop or two of
+Falcaro blood: enough so that room had to be made for him; not enough
+for it to be a great dearth of room. Counting heavily on the good will
+of F. W. Taylor, who had taken a fancy to him when he lost his parents
+in the Brookhaven Reactor explosion of '83, he might rise to a rather
+responsible position in Alky, Horsewire, Callgirl, recruitment and
+Retirement or whatever line he showed an aptitude for. But at 22 one
+spring day, he was merely serving a tour of duty as bagman attached to
+the 101st New York Police Precinct. A junior member of the Syndic
+customarily handled that job; you couldn't trust the cops not to squeeze
+their customers and pocket the difference.
+
+He walked absently through the not-unpleasant routine of the shakedown.
+His mind was on his early-morning practice session of polo, in which he
+had almost disgraced himself.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mr. Orsino; a pleasure to see you again. Would you like
+a cold glass of beer while I get the loot?"
+
+"No, but thanks very much, Mr. Lefko--I'm in training, you know. Wish I
+could take you up on it. Seven phones, isn't it, at ten dollars a
+phone?"
+
+"That's right, Mr. Orsino, and I'll be with you as soon as I lay off the
+seventh at Hialeah; all the ladies went for a plater named Hearthmouse
+because they thought the name was cute and left me with a dutch book. I
+won't be a minute."
+
+Lefko scuttled to a phone and dickered with another bookie somewhere
+while Charles absently studied the crowd of chattering, laughing
+horseplayers. ("Mister Orsino, did you come out to make a monkey of
+yourself and waste my time? Confound it, sir, you have just fifty round
+to a chukker and you must make them count!" He grinned unhappily. Old
+Gilby, the pro, could be abrasive when a bone-head play disfigured the
+game he loved. Charles had been sure Benny Grashkin's jeep would conk
+out in a minute--it had been sputtering badly enough--and that he would
+have had a dirt-cheap scoring shot while Benny changed mounts. But
+Gilby blew the whistle and wasn't interested in your fine-spun logic.
+"Confound it, sir, when will you young rufflers learn that you must
+crawl before you walk? Now let me see a team rush for the goal--and I
+mean _team_, Mr. Orsino!")
+
+"_Here_ we are, Mr. Orsino, and just in time. There goes the seventh."
+
+Charles shook hands and left amid screams of "Hearthmouse! Hearthmouse!"
+from the lady bettors watching the screen.
+
+High up in the Syndic Building, F. W. Taylor--Uncle Frank to
+Charles--was giving a terrific tongue-lashing to a big, stooped old man.
+Thornberry, president of the Chase National Bank, had pulled a butch and
+F. W. Taylor was blazing mad about it.
+
+He snarled: "One more like this, Thornberry, and you are out on your
+padded can. When a respectable member of the Syndic chooses to come to
+you for a line of credit, you will in the future give it without any
+tom-fool quibbling about security. You bankers seem to think this is the
+middle ages and that your bits of paper still have their old black
+magic.
+
+"Disabuse yourself of the notion. Nobody except you believes in it. The
+Inexorable Laws of Economics are as dead as Dagon and Ishtar, and for
+the same reason. No more worshippers. You bankers can't shove anybody
+around any more. You're just a convenience, like the non-playing banker
+in a card game.
+
+"What's real now is the Syndic. What's real about the Syndic is its own
+morale and the public's faith in it. Is that _clear_?"
+
+Thornberry brokenly mumbled something about supply and demand.
+
+Taylor sneered. "Supply and demand. Urim and Thummim. Show me a supply,
+Thornberry, show me a--oh, hell. I haven't time to waste re-educating
+you. Remember what I told you and don't argue. Unlimited credit to
+Syndic members. If they overdo it, _we'll_ rectify the situation. Now,
+get out." And Thornberry did, with senile tears in his eyes.
+
+At Mother Maginnis' Ould Sod Pub, Mother Maginnis pulled a long face
+when Charles Orsino came in. "It's always a pleasure to see you, Mr.
+Orsino, but I'm afraid this week it'll be no pleasure for you to see
+me."
+
+She was always roundabout. "Why, what do you mean, Mrs. M.? I'm always
+happy to say hello to a customer."
+
+"It's the business, Mr. Orsino. It's the business. You'll pardon me if I
+say that I can't see how to spare twenty-five dollars from the till, not
+if my life depended on it. I can go to fifteen, but so help me--"
+
+Charles looked grave--graver than he felt. It happened every day. "You
+realize, Mrs. Maginnis, that you're letting the Syndic down. What would
+the people in Syndic Territory do for protection if everybody took your
+attitude?"
+
+She looked sly. "I was thinking, Mr. Orsino, that a young man like you
+must have a way with the girls--" By a mighty unsubtle maneuver, Mrs.
+Maginnis' daughter emerged from the back room at that point and began
+demurely mopping the bar. "And," she continued, "sure, any young lady
+would consider it an honor to spend the evening with a young gentleman
+from the Syndic--"
+
+"Perhaps," Charles said, rapidly thinking it over. He would infinitely
+rather spend the evening with a girl than at a Shakespeare revival as he
+had planned, but there were drawbacks. In the first place, it would be
+bribery. In the second place, he might fall for the girl and wake up
+with Mrs. Maginnis for his mother-in-law--a fate too nauseating to
+contemplate for more than a moment. In the third place, he had already
+bought the tickets for himself and bodyguard.
+
+"About the shakedown," he said decisively. "Call it fifteen this week.
+If you're still doing badly next week, I'll have to ask for a look at
+your books--to see whether a regular reduction is in order."
+
+She got the hint, and colored. Putting down fifteen dollars, she said:
+"Sure, that won't be necessary. I'm expecting business to take a turn
+for the better. It's sure to pick up."
+
+"Good, then." To show there were no hard feelings, he stayed for a
+moment to ask: "How are your husbands?"
+
+"So-so. Alfie's on the road this week and Dinnie's got the rheumatism
+again but he can tend bar late, when it's slow."
+
+"Tell him to drop around to the Medical Center and mention my name, Mrs.
+Maginnis. Maybe they can do something for him."
+
+She glowed with thanks and he left.
+
+It was pleasant to be able to do things for nice people; it was pleasant
+to stroll along the sunny street acknowledging tipped hats and friendly
+words. (That team rush for the goal had been a sorry mess, but not his
+fault--quite. Vladek had loosed a premature burst from his fifty caliber
+at the ball, and sent it hurling off to the right; they had braked and
+backed with much grinding of gears to form V again behind it, when
+Gilby blew the whistle again.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A nervous youngster in the National Press Service New York drop was
+facing his first crisis on the job. Trouble lights had flashed
+simultaneously on the Kansas City-New York, Hialeah-New York and
+Boston-New York trunks. He stood, paralyzed.
+
+His supervisor took it in in a flash and banged open the circuit to
+Service. To the genial face that appeared on the screen, he snapped:
+"Trace Hialeah, Boston and Kansas City--in that order, Micky."
+
+Micky said: "Okay, pal," and vanished.
+
+The supervisor turned to the youngster. "Didn't know what to do?" he
+asked genially. "Don't let it worry you. Next time you'll know. You
+noticed the order of priority?"
+
+"Yes," the boy gulped.
+
+"It wasn't an accident that I gave it to him that way. First, Hialeah
+because it was the most important. We get the bulk of our revenue from
+serving the horse rooms--in fact, I understand we started as a horse
+wire exclusively. Naturally the horse-room customers pay for it in the
+long run, but they pay without pain. Nobody's forcing them to improve
+the breed, right?
+
+"Second, Boston-New York trunk. That's common-carrier while the Fair
+Grounds isn't running up there. We don't make any profit on
+common-carrier service, the rates are too low, but we owe it to the
+public that supports us.
+
+"Third, Kansas City-New York. That's common carrier too, but with one
+terminal in Mob Territory. No reason why we should knock ourselves out
+for Regan and his boys, but after the other two are traced and closed,
+we'll get around to them. Think you got it straight now?"
+
+"Yes," the youngster said.
+
+"Good. Just take it easy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The supervisor moved away to do a job of billing that didn't need
+immediate doing; he wanted to avoid the very appearance of nagging the
+boy. He wondered too, if he'd really put it over, and decided he hadn't.
+Who could, after all. It took years on the wires to get the feel. Slowly
+your motivation changed. You started by wanting to make a place for
+yourself and earn some dough. After years you realized, not with a
+blinding flash, but gradually, that you were working for quite another
+reason. Nice gang here that treats you right. Don't let the Syndic down.
+The customers pay for their fun and by God, you see that they get it or
+bust a gut trying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On his way to the 101st Precinct station house, the ears of Charles
+Orsino burned as he thought of the withering lecture that had followed
+the blast on Gilby's whistle. "_Mister_ Orsino, is it or is it not your
+responsibility as team captain to demand that a dangerous ball be taken
+out of play? And did or did not that last burst from Mister Vladek beat
+the ball out of round, thus giving rise to a distinct possibility of
+dangerous ricochets?" The old man was right of course, but it had been a
+pocked and battered practice ball to start with; in practice sessions,
+you couldn't afford to be fussy--not with regulation 18 inch armor steel
+balls selling for thirty dollars each at the pro shop.
+
+He walked between the two green lamps of the precinct station and dumped
+his bag on the sergeant's desk. Immediately the sergeant started a tale
+of woe: "Mr. Orsino, I don't like to bother you with the men's personal
+troubles, but I wonder if you could come through with a hundred dollar
+present for a very deserving young fellow here. It's Patrolman Gibney,
+seven years in the old 101st and not a black mark against him. One
+citation for shooting it out with a burglar and another for nabbing a
+past-post crook at Lefko's horse room. Gibney's been married for five
+years and has two of the cutest kids you ever saw, and you know that
+takes money. Now he wants to get married again, he's crazy in love with
+the girl and his first wife don't mind, she says she can use a helping
+hand around the house, and he wants to do it right with a big wedding.
+
+"If he can do it on a hundred, he's welcome to it," Charles said,
+grinning. "Give him my best wishes." He divided the pile of bills into
+two orderly stacks, transferred a hundred dollars to one and pocketed
+the other.
+
+He dropped it off at the Syndic Building, had an uninteresting dinner in
+one of its cafeterias and went to his furnished room downtown. He read a
+chapter in F. W. Taylor's--Uncle Frank's--latest book, _Organization,
+Symbolism and Morale_, couldn't understand a word he read, bathed and
+got out his evening clothes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A thin and attractive girl entered a preposterously-furnished room in
+the Syndic Building, arguing bitterly with a white-bearded, hawk-nosed
+old man.
+
+"My dear ancestor," she began, with exaggerated patience.
+
+"God-damn it, Lee, don't call me an ancestor! Makes me feel as if I was
+dead already."
+
+"You might as well be for all the sense you're talking."
+
+"All right, Lee." He looked wounded and brave.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Edward--" She studied his face
+with suddenly-narrowed eyes and her tone changed. "Listen, you old
+devil, you're not fooling me for a minute. I couldn't hurt your feelings
+with the blunt edge of an axe. You're not talking me into anything. It'd
+just be sending somebody to his death. Besides, they were both
+accidents." She turned and began to fiddle with a semi-circular screen
+whose focus was a large and complicated chair. Three synchronized
+projectors bore on the screen.
+
+The old man said very softly: "And what if they weren't? Tom McGurn and
+Bob were good men. None better. If the damn Government's knocking us off
+one by one, something ought to be done. And you seem to be the only
+person in a position to do it."
+
+"Start a war," she said bitterly. "Sweep them from the seas. Wasn't Dick
+Reiner chanting that when I was in diapers?"
+
+"Yes," the old man brooded. "And he's still chanting it now that you're
+in--whatever young ladies wear nowadays. Promise me something, Lee. If
+there's another try, will you help us out?"
+
+"I am so sure there won't be," she said, "that I'll promise. And God
+help you, Edward, if you try to fake one. I've told you before and I
+tell you now that it's almost certain death."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charles Orsino studied himself in a three-way mirror.
+
+The evening suit was new; he wished the gunbelt was. The holster rode
+awkwardly on his hip; he hadn't got a new outfit since his eighteenth
+birthday and his chest had filled out to the last hole of the
+cross-strap's buckle since then. Well, it would have to wait; the
+evening would cost him enough as it was. Five bodyguards! He winced at
+the thought. But you had to be seen at these things and you had to do it
+right or it didn't count.
+
+He fell into a brief reverie of meeting a beautiful, beautiful girl at
+the theater, a girl who would think he was interesting and handsome and
+a wonderful polo player, a girl who would happily turn out to be in the
+direct Falcaro line with all sorts of powerful relations to speak up for
+him....
+
+Someone said on his room annunciator: "The limousine is here, Mr.
+Orsino. I'm Halloran, your chief bodyguard."
+
+"Very well, Halloran," he said casually, just as he'd practiced it in
+the bathroom that morning and rode down.
+
+The limousine was a beauty and the guards were faultlessly turned out.
+One was democratic with one's chief guard and a little less so with the
+others. As Halloran drove, Charles chatted with him about the play,
+which was Julius Caesar in modern dress. Halloran said he'd heard it was
+very good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their arrival in the lobby of the Costello created no sensation. Five
+bodyguards wasn't a lot of bodyguards, even though there seemed to be no
+other Syndic people there. So much for the beautiful Falcaro girl.
+Charles chatted with a television director he knew slightly. The
+director explained to him that the theater was sick, very sick, that
+Harry Tremaine,--he played Brutus--made a magnificent stage picture but
+couldn't read lines.
+
+By then Halloran was whispering in his ear that it was time to take
+their seats. Halloran was sweating like a pig and Charles didn't get
+around to asking him why. Charles took an aisle seat, Halloran was
+across the aisle and the others sat to his side, front and rear.
+
+The curtain rose on "New York--A Street."
+
+The first scene, a timekiller designed to let fidgeters subside and
+coughers finish their coughing, was a 3-D projection of Times Square,
+with a stylized suggestion of a public relations consultant's office
+"down in one" on the apron.
+
+When Caesar entered Orsino started, and there was a gratified murmur
+around the auditorium. He was made up as French Letour, one of the
+Mobsters from the old days--technically a hero, but one who had sailed
+mighty close to the wind. This promised to be interesting.
+
+"Peace, ho! Caesar speaks."
+
+And so to the apron where the soothsayer--public relations
+consultant--delivered the warning contemptuously ignored by
+Letour-Caesar, and the spotlight shifted to Cassius and Brutus for their
+long, foreboding dialogue. Brutus' back was to the audience when it
+started; he gradually turned--
+
+"What means this shouting? I do fear the people will choose Caesar for
+their king!"
+
+And you saw that Brutus was Falcaro--old Amadeo Falcaro himself, with
+the beard and hawk nose and eyebrows.
+
+Well, let's see now. It must be some kind of tortured analogy with the
+Treaty of Las Vegas when Letour made a strong bid to unite Mob and
+Syndic and Falcaro had fought against anything but a short-term,
+strictly military alliance. Charles felt kind of sore about Falcaro not
+getting the title role, but he had to admit that Tremaine played Falcaro
+as the gutsy magnifico he had been. When Caesar re-entered, the contrast
+became clear; Caesar-Letour was a fidgety, fear-ridden man. The rest of
+the conspirators brought on through Act One turned out to be good
+fellows all, fresh and hearty; Charles guessed everything was all right
+and he wished he could grab a nap. But Cassius was saying:
+
+"Him and his worth and our great need of him--"
+
+All very loyal, Charles thought, smothering a yawn. A life for the
+Syndic and all that, but a high-brow version. Polite and dignified, like
+a pavanne at Roseland. Sometimes--after, say, a near miss on the polo
+field--he would wonder how polite and dignified the great old days
+actually had been. Amadeo Falcaro's Third Year Purge must have been an
+affair of blood and guts. Two thousand shot in three days, the history
+books said, adding hastily that the purged were unreconstructed,
+unreconstructable thugs whose usefulness was past, who couldn't realize
+that the job ahead was construction and organization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And Halloran was touching Charles on the shoulder. "Intermission in a
+second, sir."
+
+They marched up the aisle as the curtain fell to applause and the rest
+of the audience began to rise. Then the impossible happened.
+
+Halloran had gone first; Charles was behind him, with the four other
+guards hemming him in. As Halloran reached the door to the lobby at the
+top of the aisle, he turned to face Charles and performed an
+inexplicable pantomime. It was quite one second before Charles realized
+that Halloran was tugging at his gun, stuck in the holster.
+
+The guard to the left of Charles softly said: "Jesus!" and threw himself
+at Halloran as the chief guard's gun came loose. There was a .45 caliber
+roar, muffled. There was another that crashed, unmuffled, a yard from
+Charles' right ear. The two figures at the head of the aisle collapsed
+limply and the audience began to shriek. Somebody with a very loud voice
+roared: "Keep calm! It's all part of the play! Don't get panicky! It's
+part of the play!"
+
+The man who was roaring moved up to the aisle door, fell silent, saw
+and smelled the blood and fainted.
+
+A woman began to pound the guard on Charles' right with her fists,
+yelling: "What did you do to my husband? You shot my husband!" She meant
+the man who had fainted; Charles peeled her off the bodyguard.
+
+Somehow they got into the lobby, followed by most of the audience. The
+three bodyguards held them at bay. Charles found he was deaf in his
+right ear and supposed it was temporary. Least of his worries. Halloran
+had taken a shot at him. The guard named Weltfisch had intercepted it.
+The guard named Donnel had shot Halloran down.
+
+He said to Donnel: "You know Halloran long?"
+
+Donnel, not taking his eyes from the crowd, said: "Couple of years, sir.
+He was just a guy in the bodyguard pool."
+
+"Get me out of here," Orsino said. "To the Syndic Building."
+
+In the big black car, he could almost forget the horror; he could hope
+that time would erase it completely. It wasn't like polo. That shot had
+been _aimed_.
+
+The limousine purred to a halt before the titanic bulk of the Syndic
+Building, was checked and rolled on into the Unrestricted Entrance. An
+elevator silently lifted the car and passengers past floors devoted to
+Alcohol Clerical, Alcohol Research, and Testing, Transport, Collections
+Audit and Control, Cleaning and Dying, Female Recruitment and
+Retirement, up, up, up, past sections and sub-sections Charles had never
+entered, Syndic member though he was, to an automatic stop at a floor
+whose indicator said: _enforcement and public relations_.
+
+It was only 9:45 P.M.; F. W. Taylor would be in and working. Charles
+said: "Wait here, boys," and muttered the code phrase to the door. It
+sprang open.
+
+F. W. Taylor was dictating, machine-gun fashion, to a mike. He looked
+dog-tired. His face turned up with a frown as Charles entered and then
+the frown became a beam of pleasure.
+
+"Charles, my boy! Sit down!" He snapped off the machine.
+
+"Uncle--" Charles began.
+
+"It was so kind of you to drop in. I thought you'd be at the theater."
+
+"I was, Uncle, but--"
+
+"I'm working on a revision for the next edition of _Organization,
+Symbolism and Morale_. You'd never guess who inspired it."
+
+"I'm sure I wouldn't, Uncle. Uncle--"
+
+"Old Thornberry, President of the Chase National. He had the infernal
+gall to refuse a line of credit to young McGurn. _Bankers!_ You won't
+believe it, but people used to _beg_ them to take over their property,
+tie up their incomes, virtually enslave them. People _demanded_ it. The
+same way they demanded inexpensive liquor, tobacco and consumer goods,
+clean women and a chance to win a fortune and our ancestors obliged
+them. Our ancestors were sneered at in their day, you know. They were
+called criminals when they distributed goods and services at a price
+people could afford to pay."
+
+"Uncle!"
+
+"Hush, boy, I know what you're going to say. You can't fool the people
+forever! When they'd had enough hounding and restriction, they rose in
+their might.
+
+"The people demanded freedom of choice, Falcaro and the rest rose to
+lead them in the Syndic and the Mob and they drove the Government into
+the sea."
+
+"Uncle Frank--"
+
+"From which it still occasionally ventures to annoy our coastal cities,"
+F. W. Taylor commented. He warmed to his subject. "You should have seen
+the old boy blubber. The last of the old-time bankers, and they deserved
+everything they got. They brought it on themselves. They had what they
+called laissez-faire, and it worked for awhile until they got to
+tinkering with it. They demanded things called protective tariffs, tax
+remissions, subsidies--regulation, regulation, regulation, always of the
+other fellow. But there were enough bankers on all sides for everybody
+to be somebody else's other fellow. Coercion snowballed and the
+Government lost public acceptance. They had a thing called the public
+debt which I can't begin to explain to you except to say that it was
+something written on paper and that it raised the cost of everything
+tremendously. Well, believe me or not, they _didn't_ just throw away the
+piece of paper or scratch out the writing on it. They let it ride until
+ordinary people couldn't afford the pleasant things in life."
+
+"Uncle--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A cautious periscope broke the choppy water off Sea Island, Georgia. At
+the other end of the periscope were Captain Van Dellen of the North
+American Navy, lean as a hound, and fat little Commander Grinnel.
+
+"You might take her in a little closer, Van," said Grinnel mildly.
+
+"The exercise won't do you any lasting damage," Van Dellen said. Grinnel
+was very, very, near to a couple of admirals and normally Van Dellen
+gave him the kid-glove treatment in spite of ranking him. But this was
+_his_ ship and no cloak and dagger artist from an O.N.I. desk was
+telling him how to con it.
+
+Grinnel smiled genially at the little joke. "I could call it a
+disguise," he said patting his paunch, "but you know me too well."
+
+"You'll have no trouble with a sea like this," Van Dellen said, strictly
+business. He tried to think of some appropriate phrase to recognize the
+danger Grinnel was plunging into with no resources except quick wits, a
+trick ring and a pair of guns. But all that bubbled up to the top of his
+head was; thank God I'm getting rid of this bastardly little Sociocrat.
+He'll kill me some day if he gets a clean shot and the chance of
+detection is zero. Thank God I'm a Constitutionist. We don't go in for
+things like that--or do we? Nobody ever tells me anything. A hack of a
+pigboat driver. And this little bastard's going to be an admiral some
+day. But that boy of mine'll be an admiral. He's brainy, like his
+mother.
+
+Grinnel smiled and said: "Well, this would be it, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Eh?" Van Dellen asked. "Oh. I see what you mean. Chuck!" he called a
+sailor. "Break out the Commander's capsules. Pass the word to stand by
+for ejection."
+
+The Commander was fitted, puffing, into the capsule. He growled at the
+storekeeper: "You sure this was just unsealed? It feels sticky already."
+
+A brash jayee said: "I saw it unsealed myself three minutes ago,
+Commander. It'll get stickier if we spend any more time talking. You
+have"--he glanced at his chronometer--"seventeen minutes now. Let me
+snap you in."
+
+The Commander huddled down after a searching glance at the jayee's face
+which photographed it forever in his memory. The top snapped down. Some
+day--some happy day--that squirt would very much regret telling him off.
+He gave an okay sign to Van Dellen who waved back meagerly and managed a
+smile. Three crewmen fitted the capsule into its lock.
+
+Foomf!
+
+It was through the hatch and bobbing on the surface. Its color matched
+the water's automatically. Grinnel waggled the lever that aimed it
+inshore and began to turn the propellor crank. He turned fast; the
+capsule--rudders, crank, flywheel, shaft and all--would dissolve in
+approximately fifteen minutes. It was his job to be ashore when that
+happened.
+
+And ashore he'd be practically a free agent with the loosest sort of
+roving commission, until January 15th. Then his orders became most
+specific.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Charles Orsino squirmed in the chair. "Uncle--" he pleaded.
+
+"Yes," F. W. Taylor chuckled, "Old Amadeo and his colleagues were called
+criminals. They were called bootleggers when they got liquor to people
+without worrying about the public debt or excise taxes. They were called
+smugglers when they sold cheap butter in the south and cheap margerine
+in the north. They were called counterfeiters when they sold cheap
+cigarettes and transportation tickets. They were called high-jackers
+when they wrested goods from the normal inflation-ridden chain of
+middlemen and delivered them at a reasonable price to the consumers.
+
+"They were criminals. Bankers were pillars of society.
+
+"Yet these bankers who dominated society, who were considered the voice
+of eternal truth when they spoke, who thought it was insanity to
+challenge their beliefs, started somewhere and perhaps they were the
+best thing for their day and age that could be worked out...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Father Ambrosius gnawed at a bit of salt herring, wiped his hands, dug
+through the litter in his chest and found a goose quill and a page of
+parchment. He scrubbed vigorously with a vinegar-soaked sponge, at the
+writing on the parchment and was pleased to see that it came off nicely,
+leaving him a clean surface to scribble his sermon notes on. He cut the
+quill and slit it while waiting for the parchment to dry, wondering idly
+what he had erased. (It happened to be the last surviving copy of
+Tacitus' _Annals_, VII. i-v.)
+
+To work then. The sermon was to be preached on Sexagesima Sunday, a
+prelude to the solemn season of Lent. Father Ambrosius' mind wandered in
+search of a text. Lent ... salt herring ... penitence ... the capital
+sins ... avarice ... usury ... delinquent pew rent ... fat-headed young
+Sir Baldwin in his tumbledown castle on the hill ... salt herring now
+and _per saeculae saeculorum_ unless Sir Baldwin paid up his delinquent
+pew rent.
+
+At the moment, Sir Baldwin came swaggering into the cell. Father
+Ambrosius rose courteously and said, with some insincerity: "_Pax
+vobiscum._"
+
+"Eh?" asked Sir Baldwin, his silly blue eyes popping as he looked over
+his shoulder. "Oh, you meant me, padre. It don't do a bit of good to
+chatter at me in Latin, you know. The king's Norman is what I speak. I
+mean to say, if it's good enough for his majesty Richard, it's good
+enough for me, what? Now, what can I do for you, padre?"
+
+Father Ambrosius reminded him faintly: "You came to see me, Sir
+Baldwin."
+
+"Eh? Oh. So I did. I was huntin' stag, padre, and I lost him after
+chasin' the whole morning, and what I want to know is, who's the right
+saint chap to ask for help in a pickle like that? I mean to say, I
+wanted to show the chaps some good sport and we started this beast and
+he got clean away. Don't misunderstand me, padre, they were good chaps
+and they didn't rot me about it, but that kind of talk gets about and
+doesn't do one a bit of good, what? So you tell me like a good fellow
+who's the right saint chap to put the matter in the best light for me?"
+
+Father Ambrosius repressed an urge to grind his teeth, took thought and
+said: "St. Hubert, I believe, is interested in the stag hunt."
+
+"Right-oh, padre! St. Hubert it is. Hubert, Hubert. I shan't forget it
+because I've a cousin named Hubert. Haven't seen him for years, poor old
+chap. He had the fistula--lived on slops and couldn't sit his horse for
+a day's huntin'. Poor old chap. Well, I'm off--no, there's another thing
+I wanted. Suppose this Sunday you preach a howlin' strong sermon against
+usury, what? That chap in the village, the goldsmith fellow, has the
+infernal gall to tell me I've got to give him Fallowfield! Forty acres,
+and he has the infernal gall to tell me they aren't mine any more. Be a
+good chap, padre, and sort of glare at him from the pulpit a few times
+to show him who you mean, what?"
+
+"Usury _is_ a sin," Father Ambrosius said cautiously, "but how does
+Fallowfield enter into it?"
+
+Sir Baldwin twiddled the drooping ends of his limp, blond mustache with
+a trace of embarrassment. "Fact is, I told the chap when I borrowed the
+twenty marks that Fallowfield would stand as security. I ask you, padre,
+is it my fault that my tenants are a pack of lazy, thieving Saxon swine
+and I couldn't raise the money?"
+
+The parish priest bristled unnoticeably. He was pure Saxon himself. "I
+shall do what I can," he said. "And Sir Baldwin, before you go--"
+
+The young man stopped in the doorway and turned.
+
+"Before you go, may I ask when we'll see your pew rent, to say nothing
+of the tithe?"
+
+Sir Baldwin dismissed it with an airish wave of the hand. "I thought I
+just told you, padre. I haven't a farthing to my name and here's this
+chap in the village telling me to clear out of Fallowfield that I got
+from my father and his father before him. So how the devil--excuse
+me--can I pay rent and tithes and Peters pence and all the other things
+you priest chaps expect from a man, what?" He held up his gauntleted
+hand as Father Ambrosius started to speak. "No, padre, not another word
+about it. I know you'd love to tell me I won't go to heaven if I act
+this way. I don't doubt you're learned and all that, but I can still
+tell you a thing or two, what? The fact is, I _will_ go to Heaven. You
+see, padre, God's a gentleman and he wouldn't bar another gentleman over
+a trifle of money trouble that could happen to any gentleman, now would
+he?"
+
+The fatuous beam was more than Father Ambrosius could bear; his eyes
+fell.
+
+"Right-oh," Sir Baldwin chirped. "And that saint chap's name was St.
+Hubert. I didn't forget, see? Not quite the fool some people think I
+am." And he was gone, whistling a recheat.
+
+Father Ambrosius sat down again and glared at the parchment. Preach a
+sermon on usury for that popinjay. Well, usury _was_ a sin. Christians
+were supposed to lend to one another in need and not count the cost or
+the days. But who had ever heard of Sir Baldwin ever lending anything?
+Of course, he was lord of the manor and protected you against invasion,
+but there didn't seem to be any invasions anymore....
+
+Wearily, the parish priest dipped his pen and scratched on the
+parchment: RON. XIII ii, viii, XV i. "Whosoever resisteth the power
+resisteth the ordinance of God ... owe no man any thing ... we that are
+strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak...." A triple-plated
+text, which, reinforced by a brow of thunder from the pulpit should make
+the village goldsmith think twice before pressing his demand on Sir
+Baldwin. Usury _was_ a sin.
+
+There was a different knock on the door frame.
+
+The goldsmith, a leather-aproned fellow named John, stood there twisting
+his cap in his big, burn scarred hands.
+
+"Yes, my son? Come in." But he scowled at the fellow involuntarily. He
+should know better than to succumb to the capital sin of avarice. "Well,
+what is it?"
+
+"Father," the fellow said, "I've come to give you this." He passed a
+soft leather purse to the priest. It clinked.
+
+Father Ambrosius emptied it on his desk and stirred the broad silver
+coins wonderingly with his finger. Five marks and eleven silver pennies.
+No more salt herring until Lent! Silver forwarded to his bishop in an
+amount that would do credit to the parish! A gilding job for the image
+of the Blessed Virgin! Perhaps glass panes in one or two of the church
+windows!
+
+And then he stiffened and swept the money back into the purse. "You got
+this by sin," he said flatly. "The sin of avarice worked in your heart
+and you practiced the sin of usury on your fellow Christians. Don't give
+this money to the Church; give it back to your victims."
+
+"Father," the fellow said, nearly blubbering, "excuse me but you don't
+understand! They come to me and come to me. They say it's all right with
+them, that they're hiring the money the way you'd hire a horse. Doesn't
+that make sense? Do you think I _wanted_ to become a moneylender? No! I
+was an honest goldsmith and an honest goldsmith can't help himself. All
+the money in the village drifts somehow into his hands. One leaves a
+mark with you for safekeeping and pays you a penny the year to guard it.
+Another brings you silver coins to make into a basin, and you get to
+keep whatever coins are left over. And then others come to you and say
+'Let me have soandso's mark to use for a year and then I'll pay it back
+and with it another mark'. Father, they beg me! They say they'll be
+ruined if I don't lend to them, their old parents will die if they can't
+fee the leech, or their dead will roast forever unless they can pay for
+masses and what's a man to _do_?"
+
+"Sin no more," the priest answered simply. It was no problem.
+
+The fellow was getting angry. "Very well for you to sit there and say
+so, father. But what do you think paid for the masses you said for the
+repose of Goodie Howat's soul? And how did Tom the Thatcher buy his
+wagon so he could sell his beer in Glastonbury at a better price? And
+how did Farmer Major hire the men from Wealing to get in his hay before
+the great storm could ruin it? And a hundred things more. I tell you,
+this parish would be a worse place without John Goldsmith and he doesn't
+propose to be pointed at any longer as a black sinner! I didn't want to
+fall into usury but I did, and _when_ I did, I found out that those who
+hoist their noses highest at the moneylender when they pass him in the
+road are the same ones who beg the hardest when they come to his shop
+for a loan!"
+
+The priest was stunned by the outburst. John seemed honest, the facts
+were the facts--can good come out of evil? And there were stories that
+His Holiness the Pope himself had certain dealings with the
+Longobards--benchers, or bankers or whatever they called themselves....
+
+"I must think on this, my son," he said. "Perhaps I was over hasty.
+Perhaps in the days of St. Paul usury was another thing entirely.
+Perhaps what you practice is not _really_ usury but merely something
+that resembles it. You may leave this silver with me."
+
+When John left, Father Ambrosius squeezed his eyes tight shut and
+pressed the knuckles of both hands to his forehead. Things _did_ change.
+Under the dispensation of the Old Testament, men had more wives than
+one. That was sinful now, but surely Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were in
+heaven? Paul wrote his epistles to little islands of Christians
+surrounded by seas of pagans. Surely in those days it was necessary for
+Christians to be bound closely together against the common enemy,
+whereas in these modern times, the ties could be safely relaxed a
+trifle? How could sinning have paid for the repose of Goodie Howat's
+soul, got a better price for brewer Thatcher's ale and saved the village
+hay crop? The Devil was tricky, but not _that_ tricky, surely. A few
+more such tricks and the parish would resemble the paradise terrestrial!
+
+Father Ambrosius dashed from his study to the altar of the little stone
+church and began furiously to turn the pages of the huge metal-bound
+lectern Bible.
+
+"_For the love of money is the root of all evil--_"
+
+It burst on Father Ambrosius with a great light that the words of Paul
+were in reference not to _John Goldsmith's_ love of money but to _Sir
+Baldwin's_ love of money.
+
+He dashed back to his study and his pen began to squeak over the
+parchment, obliterating the last dim trace of Tacitus' _Annals_, VIII
+i.v. The sermon would be a scorcher, all right, but it wouldn't scorch
+John Goldsmith. It would scorch Sir Baldwin for ruthlessly and against
+the laws of God and man refusing to turn Fallowfield over to the
+moneylender. There would be growls of approval in the church that
+Sunday, and many black looks directed against Sir Baldwin for his
+attempt to bilk the parish's friend and benefactor, the moneylender.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And that," F. W. Taylor concluded, chuckling, "is how power passes from
+one pair of hands to another, and how public acceptance of the change
+follows on its heels. A strange thing--people always think that each
+exchange of power is the last that will ever take place."
+
+He seemed to be finished.
+
+"Uncle," Orsino said, "somebody tried to kill me."
+
+Taylor stared at him for a long minute, speechless. "What happened?" he
+finally asked.
+
+"I went formal to the theater, with five bodyguards. The chief guard,
+name of Halloran, took a shot at me. One of my boys got in the way. He
+was killed."
+
+Taylor's fingers began to play a tattoo on his annunciator board. Faces
+leaped into existence on its various screens as he fired orders.
+"Charles Orsino's chief bodyguard for tonight--Halloran. Trace him. The
+works. He tried to kill Orsino."
+
+He clicked off the board switches and turned grimly to Orsino. "Now
+you," he said. "What have _you_ been up to?"
+
+"Just doing my job, uncle," Orsino said uneasily.
+
+"Still bagman at the 101st?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Fooling with any women?"
+
+"Nothing special, uncle. Nothing intense."
+
+"Disciplined or downgraded anybody lately?"
+
+"Certainly not. The precinct runs like a watch. I'll match their morale
+against any outfit east of the Mississippi. Why are you taking this so
+heavy?"
+
+"Because you're the third. The other two--your cousin Thomas McGurn and
+your uncle Robert Orsino--didn't have guards to get in the way. One
+other question."
+
+"Yes, uncle."
+
+"My boy, _why_ didn't you tell me about this when you first came in?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+A family council was called the next day. Orsino, very much a junior,
+had never been admitted to one before. He knew why the exception was
+being made, and didn't like the reason.
+
+Edward Falcaro wagged his formidable white beard at the thirty-odd
+Syndic chiefs around the table and growled: "I think we'll dispense with
+reviewing production and so on. I want to talk about this damn gunplay.
+Dick, bring us up to date."
+
+He lit a vile cigar and leaned back.
+
+Richard W. Reiner rose.
+
+"Thomas McGurn," he said, "killed April 15th by a burst of eight machine
+gun bullets in his private dining room at the Astor. Elsie Warshofsky,
+his waitress, must be considered the principal suspect, but--"
+
+Edward Falcaro snapped: "Suspect, hell! She killed him, didn't she?"
+
+"_I was about to say_, but the evidence so far is merely cumulative.
+Mrs. Warshofsky jumped--fell--or was pushed--from the dining room
+window. The machine gun was found beside the window.
+
+"There are no known witnesses. Mrs. Warshofsky's history presents no
+unusual features. An acquaintance submitted a statement--based, she
+frankly admitted, on nothing definite--that Mrs. Warshofsky sometimes
+talked in a way that led her to wonder if she might not be a member of
+the secret terrorist organization known as the D.A.R. In this
+connection, it should be noted that Mrs. Warshofsky's maiden name was
+Adams.
+
+"Robert Orsino, killed April 21st by a thermite bomb concealed in his
+pillow and fuzed with a pressure-sensitive switch. His valet, Edward
+Blythe, disappeared from view. He was picked up April 23rd by a posse on
+the beach of Montauk Point, but died before he could be questioned.
+Examination of his stomach contents showed a lethal quantity of sodium
+fluoride. It is presumed that the poison was self-administered."
+
+"Presumed!" the old man snorted, and puffed out a lethal quantity of
+cigar smoke.
+
+"Blythe's history," Reiner went on blandly, "presents no unusual
+features. It should be noted that a commerce-raider of the so-called
+United States Government Navy was reported off Montauk Point during the
+night of April 23rd-24th by local residents.
+
+"Charles Orsino, attacked April 30th by his bodyguard James Halloran in
+the lobby of the Costello Memorial Theater. Halloran fired one shot
+which killed another bodyguard and was then himself killed. Halloran's
+history presents no unusual features except that he had a considerable
+interest in--uh--history. He collected and presumably read obsolete
+books dealing with pre-Syndic Pre-Mob America. Investigators found by
+his bedside the first volume of a work published in 1942 called _The
+Growth of The American Republic_ by Morison and Commager. It was opened
+to Chapter Ten, The War of Independence!"
+
+Reiner took his seat.
+
+F. W. Taylor said dryly: "Dick, did you forget to mention that
+Warshofsky, Blythe and Halloran are known officers of the U. S. Navy?"
+
+Reiner said: "You are being facetious. Are you implying that I have
+omitted pertinent facts?"
+
+"I'm implying that you artistically stacked the deck. With a rumor, a
+dubious commerce-raider report and a note on a man's hobby, you want us
+to sweep the bastards from the sea, don't you--just the way you always
+have?"
+
+"I am not ashamed of my expressed attitude on the question of the
+so-called United States Government and will defend it at any proper time
+and place."
+
+"Shut the hell up, you two," Edward Falcaro growled. "I'm trying to
+think." He thought for perhaps half a minute and then looked up,
+baffled. "Has anybody got any ideas?"
+
+Charles Orsino cleared his throat, amazed at his own temerity. The old
+man's eyebrows shot up, but he grudgingly said: "I guess you can say
+something, since they thought you were important enough to shoot."
+
+Orsino said: "Maybe it's some outfit over in Europe or Asia?"
+
+Edward Falcaro asked: "Anybody know anything about Europe or Asia?
+Jimmy, you flew over once, didn't you? To see about Anatolian poppies
+when the Mob had trouble with Mex labor?"
+
+Jimmy Falcaro said creakily: "Yeah. It was a waste of time. They have
+these little dirt farmers scratching out just enough food for the family
+and maybe raising a quarter-acre of poppy. That's _all_ there is from
+the China Sea to the Mediterranean. In England--Frank, you tell 'em. You
+explained it to me once."
+
+Taylor rose. "The forest's come back to England. When finance there lost
+its morale and couldn't hack its way out of the paradoxes that was the
+end. When that happens you've got to have a large, virile criminal class
+ready to take over and do the work of distribution and production. Maybe
+some of you know how the English were. The poor beggars had civilized
+all the illegality out of the stock. They couldn't do anything that
+wasn't respectable. From sketchy reports, I gather that England is now
+forest and a few hundred starving people. One fellow says the men still
+wear derbies and stagger to their offices in the city.
+
+"France is peasants, drunk three-quarters of the time.
+
+"Russia is peasants, drunk _all_ the time.
+
+"Germany--well, there the criminal class was _too_ big and _too_ virile.
+The place is a cemetery."
+
+He shrugged: "Say it, somebody. The Mob's gunning for us."
+
+Reiner jumped to his feet. "I will _never_ support such a hypothesis!"
+he shrilled. "It is _mischievous_ to imply that a century of peace has
+been ended, that our three-thousand-mile border with our friend to the
+West--"
+
+Taylor intoned satirically: "_Un_-blemished, my friends, by a _single_
+for-ti-fi-_ca_-tion--"
+
+Edward Falcaro yelled: "Stop your damn foolishness, Frank Taylor! This
+is no laughing matter."
+
+Taylor snapped: "Have you been in Mob Territory lately?"
+
+"I have," the old man said. He scowled.
+
+"How'd you like it?"
+
+Edward Falcaro shrugged irritably. "They have their ways, we have ours.
+The Regan line is running thin, but we're not going to forget that Jimmy
+Regan stood shoulder to shoulder with Amadeo Falcaro in the old days.
+There's such a thing as loyalty."
+
+F. W. Taylor said: "There's such a thing as blindness."
+
+He had gone too far. Edward Falcaro rose from his chair and leaned
+forward, bracing himself on the table. He said flatly: "This is a
+statement, gentlemen. I won't pretend I'm happy about the way things are
+in Mob Territory. I won't pretend I think old man Regan is a balanced,
+dependable person. I won't pretend I think the Mob clients are enjoying
+anywhere near the service that Syndic clients enjoy. I'm perfectly aware
+that on our visits of state to Mob Territory we see pretty much what our
+hosts want us to see. But I cannot believe that any group which is
+rooted on the principles of freedom and service can have gone very
+wrong.
+
+"Maybe I'm mistaken, gentlemen. But I cannot believe that a descendant
+of Jimmy Regan would order a descendant of Amadeo Falcaro murdered. We
+will consider every other possibility first. Frank, is that clear?"
+
+"Yes," Taylor said.
+
+"All right," Edward Falcaro grunted. "Now let's go about this thing
+systematically. Dick, you go right down the line with the charge that
+the Government's responsible for these atrocities. I hate to think that
+myself. If they are, we're going to have to spend a lot of time and
+trouble hunting them down and doing something about it. As long as they
+stick to a little commerce-raiding and a few coastal attacks, I can't
+say I'm really unhappy about them. They don't do much harm, and they
+keep us on our toes and--maybe this one is most important--they keep our
+client's memories of the bad old days that we delivered them from alive.
+That's a great deal to surrender for the doubtful pleasures of a long,
+expensive campaign. If assassination's in the picture I suppose we'll
+have to knock them off--but we've got to be _sure_."
+
+"May I speak?" Reiner asked icily.
+
+The old man nodded and re-lit his cigar.
+
+"I have been called--behind my back, naturally--a fanatic," Reiner
+said. He pointedly did not look anywhere near F. W. Taylor as he spoke
+the word. "Perhaps this is correct and perhaps fanaticism is what's
+needed at a time like this. Let me point out what the so-called
+Government stands for: brutal 'taxation,' extirpation of gambling,
+denial of life's simple pleasures to the poor and severe limitation of
+them to all but the wealthy, sexual prudery viciously enforced by penal
+laws of appalling barbarity, endless regulation and coercion governing
+every waking minute of the day. That was its record during the days of
+its power and that would be its record if it returned to power. I fail
+to see how this menace to our liberty can be condoned by certain
+marginal benefits which are claimed to accrue from its continued
+existence." He faltered for a moment as his face twisted with an
+unpleasant memory. In a lower, unhappier voice, he went on: "I--I was
+alarmed the other day by something I overheard. Two small children were
+laying bets at the Kiddy Counter of the horse room I frequent, and I
+stopped on my way to the hundred-dollar window for a moment to hear
+their childish prattle. They were doping the forms for the sixth at
+Hialeah, I believe, when one of them digressed to say: 'My Mommy doesn't
+play the horses. She thinks all the horse rooms should be closed.'
+
+"It wrung my heart, gentlemen, to hear that. I wanted to take that
+little boy aside and tell him: 'Son, your Mommy doesn't have to play the
+horses. Nobody has to play the horses unless he wants to. But as long as
+one single person wants to lay a bet on a horse and another person is
+willing to take it, nobody has the right to say the horse rooms should
+be closed.' Naturally I did not take the little boy aside and tell him
+that. It would have been an impractical approach to the problem. The
+_practical_ approach is the one I have always advocated and still do.
+Strike at the heart of the infection! Destroy the remnants of Government
+and cauterize the wound so that it will never re-infect again. Nor is my
+language too strong. When I realize that the mind of an innocent child
+has been corrupted so that he will prattle that the liberties of his
+brothers must be infringed on, that their harmless pleasures must be
+curtailed, my blood runs cold and I call it what it is: _treason_."
+
+Orsino had listened raptly to the words and joined in a burst of
+spontaneous applause that swept around the table. He had never had a
+brush with Government himself and he hardly believed in the existence of
+the shadowy, terrorist D.A.R., but Reiner had made it sound so near and
+menacing!
+
+But Uncle Frank was on his feet. "We seem to have strayed from the
+point," he said dryly. "For anybody who needs his memory refreshed, I'll
+state that the point is two assassinations and one near miss. I fail to
+see the connection, if any with Dick Reiner's paranoid delusions of
+persecution. I especially fail to see the relevance of the word
+'treason.' Treason to what--us? The Syndic is not a government. It must
+not become enmeshed in the symbols and folklore of a government or it
+will be first chained and then strangled by them. The Syndic is an
+organization of high morale and easy-going, hedonistic personality. The
+fact that it succeeded the Government occurred because the Government
+had become an organization of low morale and inflexible, puritanic,
+sado-masochistic personality. I have no illusions about the Syndic
+lasting forever, and I hope nobody else here has. Naturally I want it to
+last our lifetime, my children's lifetime, and as long after that as I
+can visualize my descendants, but don't think I have any burning
+affection for my unborn great-great grandchildren. Now, if there is
+anybody here who doesn't want it to last that long, I suggest to him
+that the quickest way to demoralize the Syndic is to adopt Dick Reiner's
+proposal of a holy war for a starter. From there we can proceed to an
+internal heresy hunt, a census, excise taxes, income taxes and wars of
+aggression. Now, what about getting back to the assassinations?"
+
+Orsino shook his head, thoroughly confused by now. But the confusion
+vanished as a girl entered the room, whispered something in the ear of
+Edward Falcaro and sat down calmly by his side. He wasn't the only one
+who noticed her. Most of the faces there registered surprise and some
+indignation. The Syndic had a very strong tradition of masculinity.
+
+Edward Falcaro ignored the surprise and indignation. He said placidly:
+"That was very interesting, Frank, what I understood of it. But it's
+always interesting when I go ahead and do something because it's the
+smart thing to do, and then listen to you explain my reasons--including
+fifty or sixty that I'm more than positive never crossed my mind."
+
+There was a laugh around the table that Charles Orsino thought was
+unfair. He knew, Edward Falcaro knew, and everybody knew that Taylor
+credited Falcaro with sound intuitive judgment rather than analytic
+power. He supposed the old man--intuitively--had decided a laugh was
+needed to clear the air of the quarrel and irrelevance.
+
+Falcaro went on: "The way things stand now, gentlemen, we don't know
+very much, do we?" He bit a fresh cigar and lighted it meditatively.
+From a cloud of rank smoke he said: "So the thing to do is find out
+more, isn't it?" In spite of the beard and the cigar, there was
+something of a sly, teasing child about him. "So what do you say to
+slipping one of our own people into the Government to find out whether
+they're dealing in assassination or not?"
+
+Charles Orsino alone was naive enough to speak; the rest knew that the
+old man had something up his sleeve. Charles said: "You can't do it,
+sir! They have lie-detectors and drugs and all sorts of things--" His
+voice died down miserably under Falcaro's too-benign smile and the looks
+of irritation verging on disgust from the rest. The enigmatic girl
+scowled. _Goddam them all!_ Charles thought, sinking into his chair and
+wishing he could sink into the earth.
+
+"The young man," Falcaro said blandly, "speaks the truth--no less true
+for being somewhat familiar to us all. But what if we have a way to get
+around the drugs and lie-detectors, gentlemen? Which of you bold fellows
+would march into the jaws of death by joining the Government, spying on
+them and trying to report back?"
+
+Charles stood up, prudence and timidity washed away by a burning need to
+make up for his embarrassment with a grandstand play. "I'll go, sir," he
+said very calmly. _And if I get killed that'll show 'em; then they'll be
+sorry._
+
+"Good boy," Edward Falcaro said briskly, with a well-that's that air.
+"The young lady here will take care of you."
+
+Charles steadily walked down the long room to the head of the table,
+thinking that he must be cutting a rather fine figure. Uncle Frank
+ruined his exit by catching his sleeve and halting him as he passed his
+seat. "Good luck, Charles," Uncle Frank whispered. "And for Heaven's
+sake, keep a better guard up. Can't you see the old devil planned it
+this way from the beginning?"
+
+"Good-bye, Uncle Frank," Charles said, suddenly feeling quite sick as he
+walked on. The young lady rose and opened the door for him. She was
+graceful as a cat, and a conviction overcame Charles Orsino that he was
+the canary.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Max Wyman shoved his way through such a roar of voices and such a crush
+of bodies as he had never known before. Scratch Sheet Square was bright
+as day--brighter. Atomic lamps, mounted on hundred-story buildings hosed
+and squirted the happy mob with blue-white glare. The Scratch Sheet's
+moving sign was saying in fiery letters seventy-five feet tall: "_11:58
+PM EST ... December 31st ... Cops say two million jam NYC streets to
+greet New Year ... 11:59 PM EST ... December 31st ... Falcaro jokes on
+TV 'Never thought we'd make it' ... 12:00 midnight January 1st ... Happy
+New Year ..._"
+
+The roar of voices had become insane. Max Wyman held his head, hating
+it, hating them all, trying to shut them out. Half a dozen young men
+against whom he was jammed were tearing the clothes off a girl. They
+were laughing and she was too, making only a pretense of defending
+herself. It was one of New York's mild winter nights. Wyman looked at
+the white skin not knowing that his eyes gloated. He yelled curses at
+her, and the young men. But nobody heard his whiskey-hoarsened young
+voice.
+
+Somebody thrust a bottle at him and made mouths, trying to yell: "Happy
+New Year!" He grabbed feverishly at the bottle and held it to his mouth,
+letting the liquor gurgle once, twice, three times. Then the bottle was
+snatched away, not by the man who had passed it to him. A hilarious fat
+woman plastered herself against Wyman and kissed him clingingly on the
+mouth, to his horror and disgust. She was torn away from him by a
+laughing, white-haired man and turned willingly to kissing him instead.
+
+Two strapping girls jockeyed Wyman between them and began to tear _his_
+clothes off, laughing at their switcheroo on the year's big gag. He
+clawed out at them hysterically and they stopped, the laughter dying on
+their lips as they saw his look of terrified rage. A sudden current in
+the crowd parted Wyman from them; another bottle bobbed on the sea of
+humanity. He clutched at it and this time did not drink. He stuffed it
+hurriedly under the waistband of his shorts and kept a hand on it as the
+eddy of humanity bore him on to the fringes of the roaring mob.
+
+"_Syndic leaders hail New Year ... Taylor praises Century of Freedom ...
+12:05 AM EST January 1st ..._"
+
+Wyman was mashed up against a girl who first smiled at his young face
+invitingly ... and then looked again. "Get away from me!" she shrieked,
+pounding on his chest with her small fists. You could hear individual
+voices now, but the crowd was still dense. She kept screaming at him and
+hitting him until suddenly Scratch Sheet Square Upramp loomed and the
+crowd fizzed onto it like uncorked champagne, Wyman and the screaming
+girl carried along the moving plates underfoot. The crowd boiled onto
+the northbound strip, relieving the crush; the girl vanished,
+whimpering, into the mob.
+
+Wyman, rubbing his ear mechanically, shuffled with downcast eyes to the
+Eastbound ramp and collapsed onto a bench gliding by at five miles per
+hour. He looked stupidly at the ten-mile and fifteen-mile strips, but
+did not dare step onto them. He had been drinking steadily for a month.
+He would fall and the bottle would break.
+
+He lurched off the five-mile strip at Riverside Downramp. Nobody got off
+with him. Riverside was a tangle of freightways over, under and on the
+surface. He worked there.
+
+Wyman picked his way past throbbing conveyors roofed against pilferage,
+under gurgling fuel and water and waste pipes, around vast metal
+warehouses and storage tanks. It was not dark or idle in Riverside.
+Twenty-four hours was little enough time to bring Manhattan its daily
+needs and carry off its daily waste and manufactures. Under daylight
+atomics the transport engineers in their glass perches read the dials
+and turned the switches. Breakdown crews scurried out from emergency
+stations as bells clanged to replace a sagging plate, remag a failing
+ehrenhafter, unplug a jam of nylon bales at a too-sharp corner.
+
+He found Breakdown Station 26, hitched his jacket over the bottle and
+swayed in, drunk enough to think he could pretend he was sober. "Hi," he
+said hoarsely to the shift foreman. "Got jammed up in the celebration."
+
+"We heard it clear over here," the foreman said, looking at him closely.
+"Are you all right, Max?"
+
+The question enraged him. "'Smatter?" he yelled. "Had a couple, sure.
+Think 'm drunk? Tha' wha' ya think?"
+
+"Gee," the foreman said wearily. "Look, Max, I can't send you out
+tonight. You might get killed. I'm trying to be reasonable and I wish
+you'd do as much for me. What's biting you, boy? Nobody has anything
+against a few drinks and a few laughs. I went on a bender last month
+myself. But you get so Goddammed _mean_ I can't stand you and neither
+can anybody else."
+
+Wyman spewed obscenity at him and tried to swing on him. He was
+surprised and filled with self-pity when somebody caught his arm and
+somebody else caught his other arm. It was Dooley and Weintraub, his
+shift-mates, looking unhappy and concerned.
+
+"Lousy rats!" Wyman choked out. "Leas' a man's buddies c'd do is back'm
+up...." He began to cry, hating them, and then fell asleep on his feet.
+Dooley and Weintraub eased him down onto the floor.
+
+The foreman mopped his head and appealed to Dooley: "He always like
+this?" He had been transferred to Station 26 only two weeks before.
+
+Dooley shrugged. "You might say so. He showed up about three months ago.
+Said he used to be a breakdown man in Buffalo, on the yards. He knew the
+work all right. But I never saw such a mean kid. Never a good word for
+anybody. Never any fun. Booze, booze, booze. This time he really let
+go."
+
+Weintraub said unexpectedly: "I think he's what they used to call an
+alcoholic."
+
+"What the hell's that?" the foreman demanded.
+
+"I read about it. It's something they used to have before the Syndic. I
+read about it. Things were a lot different then. People picking on you
+all the time, everybody mad all the time. The girls were scared to give
+it away and the boys were scared to take it--but they did anyway and it
+was kind of like fighting with yourself _inside_ yourself. The fighting
+wore some people out so much they just couldn't take it any more.
+Instead of going on benders for a change of pace like sensible people,
+they boozed _all_ the time--and they had a fight inside themselves
+about _that_ so they boozed harder." He looked defensive at their
+skeptical faces. "I _read_ it," he insisted.
+
+"Well," the foreman said inconclusively, "I heard things used to be
+pretty bad. Did these alcoholers get over it?"
+
+"I don't know," Weintraub admitted. "I didn't read that far."
+
+"Hm. I think I'd better can him." The foreman was studying their faces
+covertly, hoping to read a reaction. He did. Both the men looked
+relieved. "Yeh. I think I'd better can him. He can go to the Syndic for
+relief if he has to. He doesn't do us much good here. Put some soup on
+and get it down him when he wakes up." The foreman, an average kindly
+man, hoped the soup would help.
+
+But at about three-thirty, after two trouble calls in succession, they
+noticed that Wyman had left leaving no word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fat little man struggled out of the New Year's eve throng; he had
+been caught by accident. Commander Grinnel did not go in for
+celebrations. When he realized that January fifteenth was now fifteen
+days away, he doubted that he would ever celebrate again. It was a
+two-man job he had to do on the fifteenth, and so far he had not found
+the other man.
+
+He rode the slidewalk to Columbus Square. He had been supplied with a
+minimum list of contacts. One had moved, and in the crazily
+undisciplined Syndic Territory it was impossible to trace anybody.
+Another had died--of too much morphine. Another had beaten her husband
+almost to death with a chair leg and was in custody awaiting trial. The
+Commander wondered briefly and querulously: why do we always have such
+unstable people here? Or does that louse Emory deliberately saddle me
+with them when I'm on a mission? Wouldn't put it past him.
+
+The final contact on the list was a woman. She'd be worthless for the
+business of January fifteenth; that called for some physical strength,
+some technical knowledge, and a residual usefulness to the Government.
+Professor Speiser had done some good work here on industrial sabotage,
+but taken away from the scene of possible operations, she'd just be a
+millstone. He had his record to think of.
+
+Sabotage--
+
+If a giggling threesome hadn't been looking his way from a bench across
+the slidewalk, he would have ground his teeth. In recent weeks, he had
+done what he estimated as an easy three million dollars worth of damage
+to Mob Territory industry. And the stupid fools hadn't _noticed_ it!
+Repair crews had rebuilt the fallen walls, mechanics had tut-tutted over
+the wrecked engines and replaced them, troubleshooters had troubleshot
+the scores of severed communications lines and fuel mains.
+
+He had hung around.
+
+"Sam, you see this? Melted through, like with a little thermite bomb.
+How in the hell did a thing like that happen?"
+
+"I don't know. I wasn't here. Let's get it fixed kid."
+
+"Okay ... you think we ought to report this to somebody?"
+
+"If you want to. I'll mention it to Larry. But I don't see what he can
+do about it. Must've been some kids. You gotta put it down as fair wear
+and tear. But boys will be boys."
+
+Remembering, he did grind his teeth. But they were at Columbus Square.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Professor Speiser lived in one of the old plastic brick faculty houses.
+Her horsy face, under a curling net, looked out of the annunciator
+plate. "Yes? What is it?"
+
+"Professor Speiser, I believe you know my daughter, Miss _Freeman_. She
+asked me to look you up while I was in New York. Have I come much too
+late?"
+
+"Oh, dear. Why, no. I suppose not. Come in, Mr.--Mr. Freeman."
+
+In her parlor, she faced him apprehensively. When she spoke she rolled
+out her sentences like the lecturer she was. "Mr. Freeman--as I suppose
+you'd prefer me to call you--you asked a moment ago whether you'd come
+too late. I realize that the question was window-dressing, but my answer
+is quite serious. You have come too late. I have decided to dissociate
+myself from--let us say, from your daughter, Miss Freeman."
+
+The Commander asked only: "Is that irrevocable?"
+
+"Quite. It wouldn't be fair of me to ask you to leave without an
+explanation. I am perfectly willing to give one. I realize now that my
+friendship with Miss Freeman and the work I did for her stemmed from,
+let us say a certain vacancy in my life."
+
+He looked at a picture on her desk of a bald, pleasant-faced fellow with
+a pipe.
+
+She followed his eyes and said with a sort of shy pride: "That is Dr.
+Mordecai, of the University's Faculty of Dentistry. Like myself, a
+long-time celibate. We plan to marry."
+
+The Commander said: "Do you feel that Dr. Mordecai might like to meet my
+daughter?"
+
+"No. I do not. We expect to have very little time for outside
+activities, between our professional careers and our personal lives.
+Please don't misunderstand, Mr. Freeman. I am still your daughter's
+friend. I always shall be. But somehow I no longer find in myself an
+urgency to express the friendship. It seems like a beautiful dream--and
+a quite futile one. I have come to realize that one can live a full life
+without Miss Freeman. Now, it's getting quite late--"
+
+He smiled ruefully and rose. "May I wish you every happiness, Professor
+Speiser?" he said, extending his hand.
+
+She beamed with relief. "I was so afraid you'd--"
+
+Her face went limp and she stood swaying drunkenly as the needle in the
+ring popped her skin.
+
+The Commander, his face as dead as hers, disconnected his hand and
+sheathed the needle carefully again. He drew one of his guns, shot her
+through the heart and walked out of the apartment.
+
+Old fool! She should have known better.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Max Wyman stumbled through the tangle of Riveredge, his head a pot of
+molten lead and his legs twitching under him as he fled from his shame.
+
+Dimly, as if with new eyes, he saw that he was not alone. Riveredge was
+technically uninhabited. Then what voices called guardedly to him from
+the shadows: "Buddy--buddy--wait up a minute, buddy--did you score? Did
+you score?"
+
+He lurched on and the voices became bolder. The snaking conveyors and
+ramps sliced out sectors of space. Storage tanks merged with inflow
+mains to form sheltered spots where they met. No spot was without its
+whining, appealing voice. He stood at last, quivering, leaning against a
+gigantic I-beam that supported a heavy-casting freightway. A scrap sheet
+of corrugated iron rested against the bay of the I-beam, and the sheet
+quivered and fell outward. An old man's voice said: "You're beat, son.
+Come on in."
+
+He staggered a step forward and collapsed on a pallet of rags as
+somebody carefully leaned the sheet back into place again.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Max Wyman woke raving with the chuck horrors. There was somebody there
+to hand him candy bars, sweet lemonade, lump sugar. There was somebody
+to shove him easily back into the pallet of rags when he tried to
+stumble forth in a hunt for booze. On the second day he realized that
+it was an old man whose face looked gray and paralyzed. His name was T.
+G. Pendelton, he said.
+
+After a week, he let Max Wyman take little walks about their part of
+Riverside--but not by night. "We've got some savage people here," he
+said. "They'd murder you for a pint. The women are worse. If one calls
+to you, don't go. You'll wind up dumped through a manhole into the
+Hudson. Poor folk."
+
+"You're _sorry_ for them?" Wyman asked, startled. It was a new idea to
+him. Since Buffalo, he had never been sorry for anybody. Something awful
+had happened there, some terrible betrayal ... he passed his bony hand
+across his forehead. He didn't want to think about it.
+
+"Would I live here if I weren't?" T. G. asked him. "Sometimes I can help
+them. There's nobody else to help them. They're old and sick and they
+don't fit anywhere. That's why they're savage. You're young--the only
+young man I've ever seen in Riveredge. There's so much outside for the
+young. But when you get old it sometimes throws you."
+
+"The Goddammed Syndic," Wyman snarled, full of hate.
+
+T. G. shrugged. "Maybe it's too easy for sick old people to get booze.
+They lose somebody they spent a life with and it throws them. People
+harden into a pattern. They always had fun, they think they always will.
+Then half of the pattern's gone and they can't stand it, some of them.
+You got it early. What was the ringing bell?"
+
+Wyman collapsed into the bay of the I-beam as if he'd been kicked in the
+stomach. A wave of intolerable memory swept over him. A ringing bell, a
+wobbling pendulum, a flashing light, the fair face of his betrayer, the
+hateful one of Hogan, stirred together in a hell brew. "Nothing," he
+said hoarsely, thinking that he'd give his life for enough booze to
+black him out. "Nothing."
+
+"You kept talking about it," T. G. said. "Was it real?"
+
+"It couldn't have been," Wyman muttered. "There aren't such things. No.
+There was her and that Syndic and that louse Hogan. I don't want to talk
+about it."
+
+"Suit yourself."
+
+He did talk about it later, curiously clouded though it was. The years
+in Buffalo. The violent love affair with Inge. The catastrophic scene
+when he found her with Regan, king-pin mobster. The way he felt turned
+inside-out, the lifetime of faith in the Syndic behind him and the
+lifetime of a faith in Inge ahead of him, both wrecked, the booze, the
+flight from Buffalo to Erie, to Pittsburgh, to Tampa, to New York. And
+somehow, insistently, the ringing bell, the wobbling pendulum and the
+flashing light that kept intruding between episodes of reality.
+
+T. G. listened patiently, fed him, hid him when infrequent patrols went
+by. T. G. never told him his own story, but a bloated woman who lived
+with a yellow-toothed man in an abandoned storage tank did one day, her
+voice echoing from the curving, windowless walls of corrugated plastic.
+She said T. G. had been an alky chemist, reasonably prosperous,
+reasonably happy, reasonably married. His wife was the faithful kind and
+he was not. With unbelievable slyness she had dulled the pain for years
+with booze and he had never suspected. They say she had killed herself
+after one frightful week-long debauche in Riveredge. T. G. came down to
+Riveredge for the body and returned after giving it burial and drawing
+his savings from the bank. He had never left Riveredge since.
+
+"Worsh'p the grun' that man walks on," the bloated woman mumbled. "Nev'
+gets mad, nev' calls you hard names. Give y'a bottle if y' need it. Talk
+to y' if y' blue. Worsh'p that man."
+
+Max Wyman walked from the storage tank, sickened. T. G.'s charity
+covered that creature and him.
+
+It was the day he told T. G.: "I'm getting out of here."
+
+The gray, paralyzed-looking face almost smiled. "See a man first?"
+
+"Friend of yours?"
+
+"Somebody who heard about you. Maybe he can do something for you. He
+feels the way you do about the Syndic."
+
+Wyman clenched his teeth. The pain still came at the thought. Syndic,
+Hogan, Inge and betrayal. God, to be able to hit back at them!
+
+The red ride ebbed. Suddenly he stared at T. G. and demanded: "Why? Why
+should you put me in touch? What is this?"
+
+T. G. shrugged. "I don't worry about the Syndic. I worry about people.
+I've been worrying about you. You're a little insane, Max, like all of
+us here."
+
+"God damn you!"
+
+"He has...."
+
+Max Wyman paused a long time and said: "Go on, will you?" He realized
+that anybody else would have apologized. But he couldn't and he knew
+that T. G. knew he couldn't.
+
+The old man said: "A little insane. Bottled-up hatred. It's better out
+of you than in. It's better to sock the man you hate and stand a chance
+of having him sock you back than it is just to hate him and let the
+hate gnaw you like a grave-worm."
+
+"What've you got against the Syndic?"
+
+"Nothing, Max. Nothing against it and nothing for it. What I'm for is
+people. The Syndic is people. You're people. Slug 'em if you want and
+they'll have a chance to slug you back. Maybe you'll pull down the
+Syndic like Samson in the temple; more likely it'll crush you. But
+you'll be _doing_ something about it. That's the great thing. That's the
+thing people have to learn--or they wind up in Riveredge."
+
+"You're crazy."
+
+"I told you I was, or I wouldn't be here."
+
+The man came at sunset. He was short and pudgy, with a halo of wispy
+hair and the coldest, grimmest eyes that Wyman had ever seen. He shook
+hands with Wyman, and the young man noted simultaneously a sharp pain in
+his finger and that the stranger wore an elaborate gold ring. Then the
+world got hazy and confused. He had a sense that he was being asked
+questions, that he was answering them, that it went on for hours and
+hours.
+
+When things quite suddenly came into focus again, the pudgy man was
+saying: "I can introduce myself now. Commander Grinnel, of the North
+American Navy. My assignment is recruiting. The preliminary examination
+has satisfied me that you are no plant and would be a desirable citizen
+of the N. A. Government. I invite you to join us."
+
+"What would I do?" Wyman asked steadily.
+
+"That depends on your aptitudes. What do you think you would like to
+do?"
+
+Wyman said: "Kill me some Syndics."
+
+The commander stared at him with those cold eyes. He said at last: "It
+can probably be arranged. Come with me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They went by train to Cape Cod. At midnight on January 15th, the
+commander and Wyman left their hotel room and strolled about the
+streets. The commander taped small packets to the four legs of the
+microwave relay tower that connected Cape Cod with the Continental Press
+common carrier circuits and taped other packets to the police station's
+motor pool gate.
+
+At 1:00 A.M., the tower exploded and the motor pool gate fused into an
+impassible puddle of blue-hot molten metal. Simultaneously, fifty men in
+turtle-neck sweaters and caps appeared from nowhere on Center Street.
+Half of them barricaded the street, firing on citizens and cops who came
+too close. The others systematically looted every store between the
+barricade and the beach.
+
+Blinking a flashlight in code, the commander approached the deadline
+unmolested and was let through with Wyman at his heels. The goods, the
+raiders, the commander and Wyman were aboard a submarine by 2:35 and
+under way ten minutes later.
+
+After Commander Grinnel had exchanged congratulations with the sub
+commander, he presented Wyman.
+
+"A recruit. Normally I wouldn't have bothered, but he had a rather
+special motivation. He could be very useful."
+
+The sub commander studied Wyman impersonally. "If he's not a plant."
+
+"I've used my ring. If you want to get it over with, we can test him and
+swear him in now."
+
+They strapped him into a device that recorded pulse, perspiration,
+respiration, muscle-tension and brainwaves. A sweatered specialist came
+and mildly asked Wyman matter-of-fact questions about his surroundings
+while he calibrated the polygraph.
+
+Then came the pay-off. Wyman did not fail to note that the sub commander
+loosened his gun in his holster when the questioning began.
+
+"Name, age and origin?"
+
+"Max Wyman. Twenty-two. Buffalo Syndic Territory."
+
+"Do you like the Syndic?"
+
+"I hate them."
+
+"What are your feelings toward the North American Government?"
+
+"If it's against the Syndic, I'm for it."
+
+"Would you rob for the North American Government?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"Would you kill for it?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"Have you any reservations yet unstated in your answers?"
+
+"No."
+
+It went on for an hour. The questions were re-phrased continuously;
+after each of Wyman's firm answers, the sweatered technician gave a
+satisfied little nod. At last it ended and he was unstrapped from the
+device.
+
+Max was tired.
+
+The sub commander seemed a little awed as he got a small book and read
+from it: "Do you, Max Wyman, solemnly renounce all allegiances
+previously held by you and pledge your allegiance to the North American
+Government?"
+
+"I do," the young man said fiercely.
+
+In a remote corner of his mind, for the first time in months, the bell
+ceased to ring, the pendulum to beat and the light to flash.
+
+Charles Orsino knew again who he was and what was his mission.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+It had begun when the girl led him through the conference room door.
+Naturally one had misgivings; naturally one didn't speak up. But the
+vault-like door far downstairs was terrifying when it yawned before you
+and even more so when it closed behind you.
+
+"What is this place?" he demanded at last. "Who are you?"
+
+She said: "Psychology lab."
+
+It produced on him the same effect that "alchemy section" or "Division
+of astrology" would have on a well-informed young man in 1950. He
+repeated flatly: "Psychology lab. If you don't want to tell me, very
+well. I volunteered without strings." Which should remind her that he
+was a sort of hero and should be treated with a certain amount of
+dignity and that she could save her corny jokes.
+
+"I meant it," she said, fiddling busily with the locks of yet another
+vault-like door. "I'm a psychologist. I'm also by the way, Lee
+Falcaro--since you asked."
+
+"The old man--Edward Falcaro's line?" he asked.
+
+"Simon pure. He's my father's brother. Father's down in Miami, handling
+the tracks and gaming in general."
+
+The second big door opened on a brain-gray room whose air had a
+curiously dead feel to it. "Sit down," she said, indicating a very
+unorthodox chair. He did, and found that the chair was the most
+comfortable piece of furniture he had ever known. Its contact with his
+body was so complete that it pressed nowhere, it poked nowhere. The girl
+studied dials in its back nevertheless and muttered something about
+adjusting it. He protested.
+
+"Nonsense," she said decisively. She sat down herself in an ordinary
+seat. Charles shifted uneasily in his chair to find that it moved with
+him. Still no pressure, still no poking.
+
+"You're wondering," she began, "about the word 'psychology'. It has a
+bad history and people have given it up as a bad job. It's true that
+there isn't pressure nowadays to study the human mind. People get along.
+In general what they want they get, without crippling effort. In your
+uncle Frank Taylor's language, the Syndic is an appropriately-structured
+organization of high morale and wide public acceptance. In my language
+the Syndic is a father-image which does a good job of fathering. In good
+times, people aren't introspective.
+
+"There is, literally, no reason why my line of the family should have
+kept up a tradition of experimental psychology. Way, way back, old
+Amadeo Falcaro often consulted Professor Oscar Sternweiss of the
+Columbia University psychology faculty--he wasn't as much of a dashing
+improvisor as the history books make him out to be. Eventually one of
+his daughters married one of Sternweiss' sons and inherited the
+Sternweiss notebooks and library and apparatus. It became an irrational
+custom to keep it alive. When each academic school of psychology managed
+to prove that every other school of psychology was dead wrong and
+psychology collapsed as a science, the family tradition was unaffected;
+it stood outside the wrangling.
+
+"Now, you're wondering what this has to do with trying to slip you into
+the Government."
+
+"I am," Charles said fervently. If she'd been a doll outside the Syndic,
+he would minutes ago have protested that all this was foolish and walked
+out. Since she was not only in the Syndic, but in the Falcaro line, he
+had no choice except to hear her babble and _then_ walk out. It was all
+rot, psychology. Id, oversoul, mind-vectors, counseling,
+psychosomatics--rot from sick-minded old men. Everybody knew--
+
+"The Government, we know, uses deinhibiting drugs as a first screening
+of its recruits. As an infallible second screening, they use a
+physiological lie-detector based on the fact that telling a lie causes
+tensions in the liar's body. We shall get around this by slipping you in
+as a young man who hates the Syndic for some valid reason--"
+
+"Confound it, you were just telling me that they can't be fooled!"
+
+"We won't fool them. You'll _be_ a young man who hates the Syndic. We'll
+tear down your present personality a gray cell at a time. We'll pump you
+full of Seconal every day for a quarter of a year.... We'll obliterate
+your personality under a new one. We'll bury Charles Orsino under a
+mountain of suggestions, compulsions and obsessions shoveled at you
+sixteen hours a day while you're too groggy to resist. Naturally the
+supplanting personality will be neurotic, but that works in with the
+mission."
+
+He struggled with a metaphysical concept, for the first time in his
+life. "But--but--how will I know I'm _me_?"
+
+"We think we can put a trigger on it. When you take the Government oath
+of allegiance, you should bounce back."
+
+He did not fail to note a little twin groove between her brows that
+appeared when she said _think_ and _should_. He knew that in a sense he
+was nearer death now than when Halloran's bullet had been intercepted.
+
+"Are you staying with it?" she asked simply.
+
+Various factors entered into it. _A life for the Syndic_, as in the
+children's history books. That one didn't loom very large. But multiply
+it by _it sounds like more fun than hot-rod polo_, and that by _this is
+going to raise my stock sky-high with the family_ and you had something.
+Somehow, under Lee Falcaro's interested gaze, he neglected to divide it
+by _if it works_.
+
+"I'm staying with it," he said.
+
+She grinned. "It won't be too hard," she said. "In the old days there
+would have been voting record, social security numbers, military
+service, addresses they could check on--hundreds of things. Now about
+all we have to fit you with is a name and a subjective life."
+
+It began that spring day and went on into late fall.
+
+The ringing bell.
+
+The flashing light.
+
+The wobbling pendulum.
+
+You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of
+Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic....
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mom fried pork sausages in the morning, you loved the smell of
+pumpernickel from the bakery in Vesey Street.
+
+Mr. Watsisname the English teacher with the mustache wanted you to go to
+college--
+
+    _Nay, ye can not, though ye had Argus eyes,
+    In abbeyes they haue so many suttyll spyes;
+    For ones in the yere they have secret vvsytacyons,
+    And yf ony prynce reforme...._
+
+--but the stockyard job was closer, they needed breakdown men--
+
+You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are--
+
+The ringing bell.
+
+The flashing light.
+
+The wobbling pendulum.
+
+And the pork sausages and the teacher with the mustache and poems you
+loved and
+
+_page 24, paragraph 3, maximum speed on a live-cattle walkway is three
+miles per hour: older walkways hold this speed with reduction gears
+coupled to a standard 18-inch ehrenhafter unit. Standard practice in new
+construction calls for holding speed by direct drive from a
+specially-wound ehrenhafter. This places a special obligation in
+breakdown maintenance men, who must distinguish between the two types,
+carry two sets of wiring diagrams and a certain number of
+mutually-uninterchangeable parts, though good design principles hold
+these to a minimum. The main difference in the winding of a standard
+18-incher and a lowspeed ehrenhafter rotor--_
+
+Of course things are better now, Max Wyman, you owe a great debt to Jim
+Hogan, Father of the Buffalo Syndic, who fought for your freedom in the
+great old days, and to his descendants who are tirelessly working for
+your freedom and happiness.
+
+And bow-happiness is a girl named Inge Klohbel now that you're almost a
+man.
+
+You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of
+Buffalo Syndic Territory.
+
+And Inge Klohbel is why you put away the crazy dream of scholarship, for
+her lips and hair and eyes and legs mean more to you than anything, more
+than
+
+_Later phonologic changes include palatal mutation; i.e., before_ cht
+_and_ hs _the diphthongs_ eo, io, _which resulted from breaking, became_
+ie (i, y) _as in_ cneoht, chieht, _and_ seox (_x equalling_ hs), siex,
+six, syx....
+
+the crazy dream of scholarship, what kind of a way is that to repay the
+Mob and
+
+The ringing bell.
+
+The flashing light.
+
+The wobbling pendulum.
+
+repay the Syndic and young Mike Hogan all over the neighborhood suddenly
+and Inge says he did stop and say hello but of course he was just being
+polite.
+
+so you hit the manuals hard and one day you go out on a breakdown call
+and none of the older men could figure out why the pump was on the blink;
+a roaring, chewing monster of a pump it was, sitting there like a dead
+husk and the cattlefeed backed up four miles to a storage tank in the
+suburbs and the steers in the yards bawling with hunger, and you traced
+the dead wire, you out with the spot-welder, a zip of blue flame and the
+pump began to chew again and you got the afternoon off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And there they were.
+
+_Lee Falcaro: (Bending over the 'muttering, twitching carcass)
+Adrenalin. Brighter picture and louder sound._
+
+_Assistant: (Opening a pinch cock in the tube that enters the arm,
+increasing video contrast, increasing audio): He's weakening._
+
+_Lee Falcaro: (In a whisper) I know. I know. But this is IT._
+
+_Assistant: (Inaudibly) You cold-blooded bitch._
+
+You are Max Wyman, you are Max Wyman,
+
+and you don't know what to do about the Syndic that betrayed you, about
+the girl who betrayed you with the living representative of the Syndic,
+about the dream of scholarship that lies in ruins, the love that lies in
+ruins after how many promises and vows, the faith of twenty years that
+lies in ruins after how many declarations.
+
+The ringing bell.
+
+The flashing light.
+
+The wobbling pendulum.
+
+And a double whiskey with a beer chaser.
+
+_Lee Falcaro: The alcohol. (It drips from a sterile graduate, trickles
+through the rubber tubing and into the arm of the mumbling, sweating
+carcass. The molecules mingle with the molecules of serum: In seconds
+they are washed against the cell-walls of the forebrain. The cell-walls
+their structure as the alcohol molecules bumble against them; the
+lattices of jelly that wall in the cytoplasm and nuclear jelly become
+thinner than they were. Streams of electrons that had coursed in
+familiar paths through chains of neurones find easier paths through the
+poison-thinned cell-walls. A "Memory" or an "Idea" or a "Hope" or a
+"Value" that was a configuration of neurones linked by electron streams
+vanishes when the electron streams find an easier way to flow a New
+"Memories," "Ideas," "Hopes" and "Values" that are configurations of
+neurones linked by electron streams are born.)_
+
+Love and loyalty die, but not as if they had never been. Their ghosts
+remain, Max Wyman and you are haunted by them. They hound you from
+Buffalo to Erie, but there is no oblivion deep enough in the Mex joints,
+or in Tampa tequila or Pittsburgh zubrovka or New York gin.
+
+You tell incurious people who came to the place on the corner for a shot
+and some talk that you're the best breakdown man that ever came out of
+Erie; you tell them women are no God-damn good, you tell them the
+Syndic--here you get sly and look around with drunken caution, lowering
+your voice--you tell them the Syndic's no God-damned good, and you
+drunkenly recite poetry until they move away, puzzled and annoyed.
+
+_Lee Falcaro: (Passing a weary hand across her forehead) well, he's had
+it. Disconnect the tubes, give him a 48-hour stretch in bed and then get
+him on the street pointed towards Riveredge._
+
+_Assistant: Does the apparatus go into dead storage?_
+
+_Lee Falcaro: (Grimacing uncontrollably) No. Unfortunately, no._
+
+_Assistant: (Inaudibly, as she plucks needle-tipped tubes from the
+carcass' elbows) who's the next sucker?_
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The submarine surfaced at dawn. Orsino had been assigned a bunk and, to
+his surprise, had fallen asleep almost at once. At eight in the morning,
+he was shaken awake by one of the men in caps.
+
+"Shift change," the man explained laconically.
+
+Orsino started to say something polite and sleepy. The man grabbed his
+shoulder and rolled him onto the deck, snarling: "You going to _argue_?"
+
+Orsino's reactions were geared to hot-rod polo--doing the split-second
+right thing after instinctively evaluating the roll of the ball, the
+ricochet of bullets, the probable tactics and strategy of the opposing
+four. They were not geared to a human being who behaved with the blind
+ferocity of an inanimate object. He just gawked at him from the deck,
+noting that the man had one hand on a sheath knife.
+
+"All right, buster," the man said contemptuously, apparently deciding
+that Orsino would stay put. "Just don't mess with the Guard." He rolled
+into the bunk and gave a good imitation of a man asleep until Orsino
+worked his way through the crowded compartment and up a ladder to the
+deck.
+
+There was a heavy, gray over-cast. The submarine seemed to be planing
+the water; salt spray washed the shining deck. A gun crew was forward,
+drilling with a five-incher. The rasp of a petty-officer singing out the
+numbers mingled with the hiss and gurgle of the spray. Orsino leaned
+against the conning tower and tried to comb his thoughts out clean and
+straight.
+
+It wasn't easy.
+
+He was Charles Orsino, very junior Syndic member, with all memories
+pertaining thereto.
+
+He was also, more dimly, Max Wyman with _his_ memories. Now, able to
+stand outside of Wyman, he could recall how those memories had been
+implanted--down to the last stab of the last needle. He thought some
+very bitter thoughts about Lee Falcaro--and dropped them, snapping to
+attention as Commander Grinnel pulled himself through the hatch. "Good
+morning, sir," he said.
+
+The cold eyes drilled him. "Rest," the commander said. "We don't play it
+that way on a pigboat. I hear you had some trouble about your bunk."
+
+Orsino shrugged uncomfortably.
+
+"Somebody should have told you," the commander said. "The boat's full of
+Guardsmen. They have a very high opinion of themselves--which is
+correct. They carried off the raid in good style. You don't mess with
+Guards."
+
+"What are they?" Orsino asked.
+
+Grinnel shrugged. "The usual elite," he said. "Loman's gang." He noted
+Orsino's blank look and smiled coldly. "Loman's President of North
+America," he said.
+
+"On shore," Orsino hazarded, "we used to hear about somebody named Ben
+Miller."
+
+"Obsolete information. Miller had the Marines behind him. Loman was
+Secretary of Defense. He beached the Marines and broke them up into
+guard detachments. Took away their heavy weapons. Meanwhile, he built up
+the Guard, very quietly--which, with the Secretary of Information behind
+him, he could do. About two years ago, he struck. The Marines who didn't
+join the Guard were massacred. Miller had the sense to kill himself. The
+Veep and the Secretary of State resigned, but it didn't save their
+necks. Loman assumed the Presidency automatically, of course, and had
+them shot. They were corrupt as hell anyway. They were owned body and
+soul by the southern bloc."
+
+Two seamen appeared with a folding cot, followed by the sub commander.
+He was red-eyed with lack of sleep. "Set it there," he told them, and
+sat heavily on the sagging canvas. "Morning, Grinnel," he said with an
+effort. "Believe I'm getting too old for the pigboats. I want sun and
+air. Think you can use your influence at court to get me a corvette?" He
+bared his teeth to show it was a joke.
+
+Grinnel said, with a minimum smile: "If I had any influence, would I
+catch the cloak-and-dagger crap they sling at me?"
+
+The sub commander rolled back onto the cot and was instantly asleep, a
+muscle twitching the left side of his face every few seconds.
+
+Grinnel drew Orsino to the lee of the conning tower. "We'll let him
+sleep," he said. "Go tell that gun crew Commander Grinnel says they
+should lay below."
+
+Orsino did. The petty officer said something exasperated about the
+gunnery training bill and Orsino repeated his piece. They secured the
+gun and went below.
+
+Grinnel said, with apparent irrelevance: "You're a rare bird, Wyman.
+You're capable--and you're uncommitted. Let's go below. Stick with me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He followed the fat little commander into the conning tower. Grinnel
+told an officer of some sort: "I'll take the con, mister. Wyman here
+will take the radar watch." He gave Orsino a look that choked off his
+protests. Presumably, Grinnel knew that he was ignorant of radar.
+
+The officer, looking baffled, said: "Yes, Commander." A seaman pulled
+his head out of a face-fitting box and told Wyman: "It's all yours,
+stranger." Wyman cautiously put his face into the box and was confronted
+by meaningless blobs of green, numerals in the dark, and a couple of
+arrows to make confusion complete.
+
+He heard Grinnel say to the helmsman: "Get me a mug of joe, sailor. I'll
+take the wheel."
+
+"I'll pass the word, sir."
+
+"Nuts you'll pass the word, sailor. Go get the coffee--and I want it now
+and not when some steward's mate decides he's ready to bring it."
+
+"Aye, aye, sir." Orsino heard him clatter down the ladder. Then his arm
+was gripped and Grinnel's voice muttered in his ear: "When you hear me
+bitch about the coffee, sing out: 'Aircraft 265, DX 3,000'. Good and
+loud. No, don't stop looking. Repeat it."
+
+Orsino said, his eyes crossing on double images of the meaningless,
+luminous blobs: "Aircraft 265, DX 3,000. Good and loud. When you bitch
+about the coffee."
+
+"Right. Don't forget it."
+
+He heard the feet on the ladder again. "Coffee, sir."
+
+"Thanks, sailor." A long sip and then another. "I always said the
+pigboats drink the lousiest joe in the Navy."
+
+"Aircraft 265, DX 3,000!" Orsino yelled.
+
+A thunderous alarm began to sound. "Take her down!" yelled Commander
+Grinnel.
+
+"Take her down, sir!" the helmsman echoed. "But sir, the skipper--"
+
+Orsino remembered him too then, dead asleep in his cot on the deck, the
+muscle twitching the left side of his face every few seconds.
+
+"God-damn it, those were aircraft! _Take her down!_"
+
+The luminous blobs and numbers and arrows swirled before Orsino's eyes
+as the trim of the ship changed, hatches clanged to and water thundered
+into the ballast tanks. He staggered and caught himself as the deck
+angled sharply underfoot.
+
+He knew what Grinnel had meant by saying he was uncommitted, and he knew
+now that it was no longer true.
+
+He thought for a moment that he might be sick into the face-fitting box,
+but it passed.
+
+Minutes later, Grinnel was on the mike, his voice sounding metallically
+through the ship: "To all hands. To all hands. This is Commander
+Grinnel. We lost the skipper in that emergency dive--but you and I know
+that that's the way he would have wanted it. As senior line officer
+aboard, I'm assuming command for the rest of the voyage. We will remain
+submerged until dark. Division officers report to the wardroom. That's
+all."
+
+He tapped Orsino on the shoulder. "Take off," he said. Orsino realized
+that the green blobs--clouds, were they?--no longer showed, and recalled
+that radar didn't work through water.
+
+He wasn't in on the wardroom meeting, and wandered rather forlornly
+through the ship, incredibly jammed as it was with sleeping men,
+coffee-drinking men and booty. Half a dozen times he had to turn away
+close questioning about his radar experience and the appearance of the
+aircraft on the radar scope. Each time he managed it, with the feeling
+that one more question would have cooked his goose.
+
+The men weren't sentimental about the skipper they had lost. Mostly they
+wondered how much of a cut Grinnel would allot them from the booty of
+Cape Cod.
+
+At last the word passed for "Wyman" to report to the captain's cabin. He
+did, sweating after a fifteen-minute chat with a radar technician.
+
+Grinnel closed the door of the minute cabin and smirked at him. "You
+have trouble, Wyman?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You'd have worse trouble if they found out for sure that you don't know
+radar. I'd be in the clear. I could tell them you claimed to be a
+qualified radar man. That would make me out to be pretty gullible, but
+it would make you out to be a murderer. Who's backing you, Wyman? Who
+told you to get rid of the skipper?"
+
+"Quite right, sir," Orsino said. "You've really got me there."
+
+"Glad you realize it, Wyman. I've got you and I can use you. It was a
+great bit of luck, the skipper corking off on deck. But I've always had
+a talent for improvisation. If you're determined to be a leader, Wyman,
+nothing is more valuable. Do you know, I can relax with you? It's a rare
+feeling. For once I can be certain that the man I'm talking to isn't one
+of Loman's stooges, or one of Clinch's N.A.B.I. ferrets or anything else
+but what he says he is--
+
+"But that's beside the point. I have something else to tell you. There
+are two sides to working for me, Wyman. One of them's punishment if you
+get off the track. That's been made clear to you. The other is reward if
+you stay on. I have plans, Wyman, that are large-scale. They simply
+eclipse the wildest hopes of Loman, Clinch, Baggot and the rest. And
+yet, they're not wild. How'd you like to be on the inside when the North
+American Government returns to the mainland?"
+
+Orsino uttered an authentic gasp and Commander Grinnel looked satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The submarine docked at an indescribably lovely bay in the south of
+Ireland. Orsino asked Grinnel whether the Irish didn't object to this,
+and was met with a blank stare. It developed that the Irish consisted of
+a few hundred wild men in the woods--maybe a few thousand. The stupid
+shore-bound personnel couldn't seem to clean them out. Grinnel didn't
+know anything about them, and he cared less.
+
+Ireland appeared to be the naval base. The government proper was located
+on Iceland, vernal again after a long, climatic swing. The Canaries and
+Ascencion were outposts.
+
+Orsino had learned enough on the voyage to recognize the Government for
+what it was. It had happened before in history; Uncle Frank had pointed
+it out. Big-time Caribbean piracy had grown from very respectable
+origins. Gentlemen-skippers had been granted letters of marque and
+reprisal by warring governments, which made them a sort of contract
+navy. Periods of peace had found these privateers unwilling to give up
+their hard earned complicated profession and their investments in it.
+When they could no longer hoist the flag of England or France or Spain,
+they simply hoisted the Jolly Roger and went it alone.
+
+Confusing? Hell, yes! The famous Captain Kidd thought he was a gallant
+privateer and sailed trustingly into New York. Somewhere he had failed
+to touch third base; they shipped him to London for trial and hanged him
+as a pirate. The famous Henry Morgan had never been anything but a
+pirate and a super-pirate; as admiral of a private fleet he executed a
+brilliant amphibious operation and sacked the city of Panama. He was
+knighted, made governor of a fair-sized English island in the West
+Indies and died loved and respected by all.
+
+Charles Orsino found himself a member of a pirate band that called
+itself the North American Government.
+
+More difficult to learn were the ins and outs of pirate politics, which
+were hampered with an archaic, structurally-inappropriate nomenclature
+and body of tradition. Commander Grinnel was a Sociocrat, which meant
+that he was in the same gang as President Loman. The late sub commander
+had been a Constitutionist, which meant that he was allied with the
+currently-out "southern bloc." The southern bloc did not consist of
+southerners at this stage of the North American Government's history but
+of a clique that tended to include the engineers and maintenance men of
+the Government. That had been the reason for the sub commander's
+erasure.
+
+The Constitutionists traditionally commanded pigboats and aircraft while
+surface vessels and the shore establishments were in the hands of the
+Sociocrats--the fruit of some long-forgotten compromise.
+
+Commander Grinnel cheerfully explained to Charles that there was a
+crypto-Sociocrat naval officer primed and waiting to be appointed to the
+command of the sub. The Constitutionist gang would back him to the hilt
+and the Sociocrats would growl and finally assent. If, thereafter, the
+Constitutionists ever counted on the sub in a coup, they would be
+quickly disillusioned.
+
+There wasn't much voting. Forty years before there had been a bad
+deadlock following the death by natural causes of President Powell after
+seventeen years in office. An ad hoc bipartisan conference called a
+session of the Senate and the Senate elected a new president.
+
+It was little information to be equipped with when you walked out into
+the brawling streets of New Portsmouth on shore leave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The town had an improvised look which was strange to Orsino. There was a
+sanitation reactor every hundred yards or so, but he mistrusted the look
+of the ground-level mains that led to it from, the houses. There were
+house flies from which he shied violently. Every other shack on the
+waterfront was a bar or a notch joint. He sampled the goods at one of
+the former and was shocked by the quality and price. He rolled out, his
+ears still ringing from the belt of raw booze; as half a dozen sweatered
+Guards rolled in, singing some esoteric song about their high morale and
+even higher venereal rate. A couple of them looked at him appraisingly,
+as though they wondered what kind of a noise he'd make if they jumped on
+his stomach real hard, and he hurried away from them.
+
+The other entertainment facilities of the waterfront were flatly ruled
+out by a quick inspection of the wares. He didn't know what to make of
+them. Joints back in Syndic Territory if you were a man, made sense. You
+went to learn the ropes, or because you were afraid of getting mixed up
+in something intense when you didn't want to, or because you wanted a
+change, or because you were too busy, lazy or shy to chase skirts on
+your own. If you were a woman and not too particular, a couple of years
+in a joint left you with a considerable amount of money and some
+interesting memories which you were under no obligation to discuss with
+your husbands or husband.
+
+But the sloppy beasts who called to him from the windows of the joints
+here on the waterfront, left him puzzled and disgusted. He reflected,
+strolling up Washington Street with eyes straight ahead, that women must
+be in short supply if they could make a living--or that the male
+citizens of the Government had no taste.
+
+A whiff from one of those questionable sewer mains sent him reeling. He
+ducked into another saloon in self-defense and leaned groggily against
+the bar. A pretty brunette demanded: "What'll you have?"
+
+"Gin, please." He peeled a ten off the roll Grinnel had given him. When
+the girl poured his gin he looked at her and found her fair. In all
+innocence, he asked her a question, as he might have asked a barmaid
+back home. She could have answered, "Yes," "No," "Maybe," or "What's in
+it for me?"
+
+Instead she called him a lousy bastard, picked up a beer mug and was
+about to shatter it on his head when a hand caught her and a voice
+warned: "Hold it, Mabel! This guy's off my ship.
+
+"He's just out of the States; he doesn't know any better. You know what
+it's like over there."
+
+Mabel snarled: "You better wise him up, then, friend. He can't go around
+talking like that to decent women." She slapped down another glass,
+poured gin and flounced down the bar.
+
+Charles gulped his gin and turned shakily to his deliverer, a little
+reactor specialist he had seen on the sub once or twice. "Thanks," he
+said feeling inadequate. "Maybe you better wise me up. All I said was,
+'Darling, do you--'"
+
+The reactor man held up his hand. "That's enough," he said. "You don't
+talk that way over here unless you want your scalp parted."
+
+Charles, buzzing a little with the gin, protested hotly: "But what's the
+harm? All she had to say was no; I wasn't going to throw her down on the
+floor!"
+
+It was all very confusing.
+
+A shrug. "I heard about things in the States--Wyman, isn't it? I guess I
+didn't really believe it. You mean I could go up to any woman and just
+ask her how's about it?"
+
+"Within reason, yes."
+
+"And _do_ they?"
+
+"Some do, some don't--like here."
+
+"Like hell, like here! Last liberty--" and the reactor man told him a
+long, confusing story about how he had picked up this pig, how she had
+dangled it in front of him for one solid week while he managed to spend
+three hundred and eighty-six dollars on her, and how finally she had
+bawled that she couldn't, she just hated herself but she couldn't do
+anything like _that_ and bang went the door in his face, leaving him to
+finish out the evening in a notch joint.
+
+"Good God!" Charles said, appalled. "Was she out of her mind?"
+
+"No," the reactor man said glumly, "but I must have been. I should of
+got her drunk and raped her the first night."
+
+Charles was fully conscious that values were different here. Choking
+down something like nausea, he asked carefully: "Is there much rape?"
+
+The little man signalled for another gin and downed it. "I guess so.
+Once when I was a kid a dame gave me this line about her cousin raped
+her when she was little so she was frigid. I had more ambition then, so
+I said: 'Then this won't be anything new to you, baby,' I popped her on
+the button--"
+
+"I've got to go now," Charles said, walking straight out of the saloon.
+He was beginning to understand the sloppy beasts in the windows of the
+notch joint and why men could bring themselves to settle for nothing
+better. He was also overwhelmed by a great wave of home sickness.
+
+The ugly pattern was beginning to emerge. Prudery, rape, frigidity,
+intrigue for power--and assassination? Beyond the one hint, Grinnel had
+said nothing that affected Syndic Territory.
+
+But nothing would be more logical than for this band of brigands to lust
+after the riches of the continent.
+
+Back of the waterfront were shipfitting shops and living quarters. Work
+was being done by a puzzling combination of mechanization and
+musclepower. In one open shed he saw a lathe-hand turning a gunbarrel
+out of a forging; the lathe was driven by one of those standard 18-inch
+ehrenhaft rotors Max Wyman knew so well. But a vertical drillpress next
+to it--Orsino blinked. Two men, sweating and panting, were turning a
+stubborn vertical drum as tall as they were, and a belt drive from the
+drum whirled the drill bit as it sank into a hunk of bronze. The men
+were in rags, dirty rags. And it came to Orsino with a stunning shock
+when he realized what the dull, clanking things were that swung from
+their wrists. They were chained to the handles of the wheel.
+
+He walked on, almost dazed, comprehending now some cryptic remarks that
+had been passed aboard the sub.
+
+"No Frog has staying power. Give a Limey his beef once a day and he'll
+outsweat a Frog."
+
+"Yeah, but you can't whip a Limey. They just go bad when you whip a
+Limey."
+
+"They just get sullen for awhile. But let me tell you, friend, don't
+ever whip a Spig. You whip a Spig, he'll wait twenty years if he has to
+but he'll _get_ you, right between the ribs."
+
+"If a Spig wants to be boiled, I should worry."
+
+It had been broken up in laughter.
+
+_Boiled!_ Could such things be?
+
+Sixteen ragged, filth-crusted sub-humans were creeping down the road,
+each straining at a rope. An inch at a time, they were dragging a skid
+loaded with one huge turbine gear whose tiny herringbone teeth caught
+the afternoon sun.
+
+The Government had reactors, the Government had vehicles--why this? He
+slowly realized that the Government's metal and machinery and atomic
+power went into its warships; that there was none left over for
+consumers, and the uses of peace. The Government had degenerated into a
+dawn-age monster, specialized all to teeth and claws and muscles to
+drive them with. The Government was now, whatever it had been, a
+graceless, humorless incarnate ferocity. Whatever lightness or joy
+survived was the meaningless vestigial twitching of an obsolete organ.
+
+Somewhere a child began to bawl and Charles was surprised to feel a
+profound pity welling up in him. Like a sedentary man who after a
+workout aches in muscles he never knew he owned, Charles was discovering
+that he had emotions which had never been poignantly evoked by the bland
+passage of the hours in Syndic Territory.
+
+Poor little bastard, he thought, growing up in this hellhole. I don't
+know what having slaves to kick around will do to you, but I don't see
+how you can grow up a human being. I don't know what fear of love will
+do to you--make you a cheat? Or a graceful rutting animal with a choice
+only between graceless rutting violence and a stinking scuffle with a
+flabby and abstracted stranger in a strange unloved room? We have our
+guns to play with and they're good toys, but I don't know what kind of
+monster you'll become when they give you a gun to live with and violence
+for a god.
+
+_Reiner was right_, he thought unhappily. _We've got to do something
+about this mess._
+
+A man and a woman were struggling in an alley as he passed. Old habit
+almost made him walk on, but this wasn't the playful business of ripping
+clothes as practiced during hilarious moments in Mob Territory. It was a
+grim and silent struggle--
+
+The man wore the sweater of the Guards. Nevertheless, Charles walked
+into the alley and tore him away from the woman; or rather, he yanked at
+the man's rock-like arm and the man, in surprise, let go of the woman
+and spun to face him.
+
+"Beat it," Charles said to the woman, not looking around. He saw from
+the corner of his eye that she was staying right there.
+
+The man's hand was on his sheath knife. He told Charles: "Get lost. Now.
+You don't mess with the Guards."
+
+Charles felt his knees quivering, which was good. He knew from many a
+chukker of polo that it meant that he was strung to the breaking point,
+ready to explode into action. "Pull that knife," he said, "and the next
+thing you know you'll be eating it."
+
+The man's face went dead calm and he pulled the knife and came in low,
+very fast. The knife was supposed to catch Charles in the middle. If
+Charles stepped inside it, the man would grab him in a bear hug and
+knife him in the back.
+
+There was only one answer.
+
+He caught the thick wrist from above with his left hand as the knife
+flashed toward his middle and shoved out. He felt the point catch and
+slice his cuff. The Guardsman tried a furious and ill-advised kick at
+his crotch; with his grip on the knife-hand, Charles toppled him into
+the filthy alley as he stood one-legged and off balance. He fell on his
+back, floundering, and for a black moment, Charles thought his weight
+was about to tear the wrist loose from his grip. The moment passed, and
+Charles put his right foot in the socket of the Guardsman's elbow,
+reinforced his tiring left hand with his right and leaned, doubling the
+man's forearm over the fulcrum of his boot. The man roared and dropped
+the knife. It had taken perhaps five seconds.
+
+Charles said, panting: "I don't want to break your arm or kick your head
+in or anything like that. I just want you to go away and leave the woman
+alone." He was conscious of her, vaguely hovering in the background. He
+thought angrily: _She might at least get his knife._
+
+The Guardsman said thickly: "You give me the boot and I swear to God
+I'll find you and cut you to ribbons if it takes me the rest of my
+life."
+
+_Good_, Charles thought. _Now he can tell himself he scared me. Good._
+He let go of the forearm, straightened and took his foot from the man's
+elbow, stepping back. The Guardsman got up stiffly, flexing his arm, and
+stooped to pick up and sheath his knife without taking his eyes off
+Charles. Then he spat in the dust at Charles' feet. "Yellow crud," he
+said. "If the goddam crow was worth it, I'd cut your heart out." He
+walked off down the alley and Charles followed him with his eyes until
+he turned the corner into the street.
+
+Then he turned, irritated that the woman had not spoken.
+
+She was Lee Falcaro.
+
+"Lee!" he said, thunderstruck. "What are you doing here?" It was the
+same face, feature for feature, and between her brows appeared the same
+double groove he had seen before. But she didn't know him.
+
+"You know me?" she asked blankly. "Is that why you pulled that ape off
+me? I ought to thank you. But I can't place you at all. I don't know
+many people here. I've been ill, you know."
+
+There was a difference apparent now. The voice was a little querulous.
+And Charles would have staked his life that never could Lee Falcaro
+have said in that slightly smug, slightly proprietary, slightly
+aren't-I-interesting tone: "I've been ill, you know."
+
+"But what are you _doing_ here? Damn it, don't you know me? I'm Charles
+Orsino!"
+
+He realized then that he had made a horrible mistake.
+
+"Orsino," she said. And then she spat: "_Orsino!_ Of the _Syndic_!"
+There was black hatred in her eyes.
+
+She turned and raced down the alley. He stood there stupidly, for almost
+a minute, and then ran after her, as far as the alley's mouth. She was
+gone. You could run almost anywhere in New Portsmouth in almost a
+minute.
+
+A weedy little seaman wearing crossed quills on his cap was lounging
+against a building. He snickered at Charles. "Don't chase that one,
+sailor," he said. "She is the property of O.N.I."
+
+"You know who she is?"
+
+The yeoman happily spilled his inside dope to the fleet gob: "Lee
+Bennet. Smuggled over here couple months ago by D.A.R. The hottest thing
+that ever hit Naval Intelligence. Very small potato in the Syndic--knows
+all the families, who does what, who's a figurehead and who's a worker.
+Terrific! Inside stuff! Hates the Syndic. A gang of big-timers did her
+dirt."
+
+"Thanks," Charles said, and wandered off down the street.
+
+It wasn't surprising. He should have _expected_ it.
+
+_Noblesse oblige._
+
+Pride of the Falcaro line. She wouldn't send anybody into deadly peril
+unless she were ready to go herself.
+
+Only somehow the trigger that would have snapped neurotic, synthetic Lee
+Bennet into Lee Falcaro hadn't worked.
+
+He wandered on aimlessly, wondering whether it would be minutes or hours
+before he'd be picked up and executed as a spy.
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+It took minutes only.
+
+He had headed back to the waterfront, afraid to run, with some vague
+notion of stealing a boat. Before he reached the row of saloons and
+joints, a smart-looking squad of eight tall men overtook him.
+
+"Hold it, mister," a sergeant said. "Are you Orsino?"
+
+"No," he said hopelessly. "That crazy woman began to yell at me that I
+was Orsino, but my name's Wyman. What's this about?"
+
+The other men fell in beside and behind him. "We're stepping over to
+O.N.I.," the sergeant said.
+
+"There's the son of a bitch!" somebody bawled. Suddenly there were a
+dozen sweatered Guardsmen around them. Their leader was the thug Orsino
+had beaten in a fair fight. He said silkily to the sergeant: "We want
+that boy, leatherneck. Blow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sergeant went pale. "He's wanted for questioning by the O.N.I.," he
+said stolidly.
+
+"Get the marine three-striper!" the Guardsman chortled. He stuck his jaw
+into the sergeant's face. "Tell your squad to blow. You marines ought to
+know by now that you don't mess with the Guard."
+
+A very junior officer appeared. "What's going on here, you men?" he
+shrilled. "Atten-_shun_!" He was ignored as Guardsman and marines
+measured one another with their eyes. "I said _attention_! Dammit,
+sergeant, _report_!" There was no reaction. The officer yelled: "You men
+may think you can get away with this but by God, you're wrong!" He
+strode away, his fists clenched and his face very red.
+
+Orsino saw him stride through a gate into a lot marked _Bupers Motor
+Pool_. And he felt a sudden wave of communal understanding that there
+were only seconds to go. The sergeant played for time: "I'll be glad to
+surrender the prisoner," he started, "if you have anything to show in
+the way of--"
+
+The Guardsman kicked for the pit of the sergeant's stomach. He was a
+sucker Orsino thought abstractedly as he saw the sergeant catch his
+foot, dump him and pivot to block another Guardsman. Then he was
+fighting for his life himself, against three bellowing Guardsmen.
+
+A ripping, hammering noise filled the air suddenly. Like cold magic, it
+froze the milling mob where it stood. Fifty-caliber noise.
+
+The jaygee was back, this time in a jeep with a twin fifty. And he was
+glaring down its barrels into the crowd. People were beginning to stream
+from the saloons, joints and shipfitting shops.
+
+The jaygee cocked his cap rakishly over one eye. "_Fall in!_" he rasped,
+and a haunting air of familiarity came over Orsino.
+
+The waiting jeep, almost bucking in its eagerness to be let
+loose--Orsino on the ground, knees trembling with tension--a perfect
+change of mount scene in a polo match. He reacted automatically.
+
+There was a surrealist flash of the jaygee's face before he clipped him
+into the back of the square little truck. There was another flash of
+spectators scrambling as he roared the jeep down the road.
+
+From then on it was just a question of hanging onto the wheel with one
+hand, trying to secure the free-traversing twin-fifty with the other,
+glancing back to see if the jaygee was still out, avoiding yapping dogs
+and pedestrians, staying on the rutted road, pushing all possible speed
+out of the jeep, noting landmarks, estimating the possibility of
+dangerous pursuit. For a two-goal polo player, a dull little practice
+session.
+
+The road, such as it was, wound five miles inland through scrubby
+woodland and terminated at a lumber camp where chained men in rags were
+dragging logs.
+
+Orsino back tracked a quarter-mile from the camp and jolted overland in
+a kidney-cracking hare and hounds course at fifty per.
+
+The jeep took it for an hour in the fading afternoon light and then
+bucked to a halt. Orsino turned for an overdue check on the jaygee and
+found him conscious, but greenly clinging to the sides of the vehicle.
+But he saw Orsino staring and gamely struggled to his feet, standing in
+the truck bed. "You're under arrest, sailor," he said. "Striking an
+officer, abuse of government property, driving a government vehicle
+without a trip-ticket--" His legs betrayed him and he sat down, hard.
+
+Orsino thought very briefly of letting him have a burst from the
+twin-fifty, and abandoned the idea.
+
+He seemed to have bitched up everything so far, but he was still on a
+mission. He had a commissioned officer of the Government approximately
+in his power. He snapped: "Nonsense. _You're_ under arrest."
+
+The jaygee seemed to be reviewing rapidly any transgressions he may have
+committed, and asked at last, cautiously: "By what authority?"
+
+"I represent the Syndic."
+
+It was a block-buster. The jaygee stammered: "But you can't--But there
+isn't any way--But how--"
+
+"Never mind how."
+
+"You're crazy. You must be, or you wouldn't stop here. I don't believe
+you're from the continent and I don't believe the jeep's broken down."
+He was beginning to sound just a little hysterical. "It can't break down
+here. We must be more than thirty miles inland."
+
+"What's special about thirty miles inland?"
+
+"The natives, you fool!"
+
+The natives again. "I'm not worried about natives. Not with a pair of
+fifties."
+
+"You don't understand," the jaygee said, forcing calm into his voice.
+"This is The Outback. They're in charge here. We can't do a thing with
+them. They jump people in the dark and skewer them. Now fix this damn
+jeep and let's get rolling!"
+
+"Into a firing squad? Don't be silly, lieutenant. I presume you won't
+slug me while I check the engine?"
+
+The jaygee was looking around him. "My God, no," he said. "You may be a
+gangster, but--" He trailed off.
+
+Orsino stiffened. Gangster was semi-dirty talk. "Listen, pirate," he
+said nastily, "I don't believe--"
+
+"_Pirate?_" the jaygee roared indignantly, and then shut his mouth with
+a click, looking apprehensively about. The gesture wasn't faked; it
+alarmed Orsino.
+
+"Tell me about your wildmen," he said.
+
+"Go to hell," the jaygee said sulkily.
+
+"Look, you called me a gangster first. What about these natives? You
+were trying to trick me, weren't you?"
+
+"Kiss my royal North American eyeball, gangster."
+
+"Don't be childish," Charles reproved him, feeling adult and superior.
+(The jaygee looked a couple of years younger than he.) He climbed out of
+his seat and lifted the hood. The damage was trivial; a shear pin in the
+transmission had given way. He reported mournfully: "Cracked block. The
+jeep's through forever. You can get on your way, lieutenant. I won't try
+to hold you."
+
+The jaygee fumed: "You couldn't hold me if you wanted to, gangster. If
+you think I'm going to try and hoof back to the base alone in the dark,
+you're crazy. We're sticking together. Two of us may be able to hold
+them off for the night. In the morning, we'll see."
+
+Well, maybe the officer did _believe_ there were wildmen in the woods.
+That didn't mean there _were_.
+
+The jaygee got out and looked under the hood uncertainly. It was obvious
+that in the first place he was no mechanic and in the second place he
+couldn't conceive of anybody voluntarily risking the woods rather than
+the naval base. "Uh-huh," he said. "Dismount that gun while I get a fire
+started."
+
+"Yes, sir," Charles said sardonically, saluting. The jaygee absently
+returned the salute and began to collect twigs.
+
+Orsino asked: "How do these aborigines of yours operate?"
+
+"Sneak up in the dark. They have spears and a few stolen guns. Usually
+they don't have cartridges for them but you can't count on that. But
+they have ... witches."
+
+Orsino snorted. He was getting very hungry indeed. "Do you know any of
+the local plants we might eat?"
+
+The jaygee said confidently: "I guess we can get by on roots until
+morning."
+
+Orsino dubiously pulled up a shrub, dabbed clods off its root and tasted
+it. It tasted exactly like a root. He sighed and changed the subject.
+"What do we do with the fifties when I get them both off the mount?"
+
+"The jeep mount breaks down some damn way or other into two low-mount
+tripods. See if you can figure it out while I get the fire going."
+
+The jaygee had a small, smoky fire barely going in twenty minutes.
+Orsino was still struggling with the jeep gun mount. It came apart, but
+it couldn't go together again. The jaygee strolled over at last
+contemptuously to lend a hand. He couldn't make it work either.
+
+Two lost tempers and four split fingernails later it developed the
+"elevating screw" really held the two front legs on and that you
+elevated by adjusting the rear tripod leg. "A hell of an officer you
+are," Orsino sulked.
+
+It began to rain, putting the fire out with a hiss. They wound up prone
+under the jeep, not on speaking terms, each tending a gun, each
+presumably responsible for 180 degrees of perimeter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charles was fairly dry, except for a trickle of icy water following a
+contour that meandered to his left knee. After an hour of
+eye-straining--nothing to be seen--and ear-straining--only the patter of
+rain--he heard a snore and kicked the jaygee.
+
+The jaygee cursed wearily and said: "I guess we'd better talk to keep
+awake."
+
+"_I'm_ not having any trouble, pirate."
+
+"Oh, knock it off--where do you get that pirate bit, gangster?"
+
+"You're outlaws, aren't you?"
+
+"Like hell we are. _You're_ the outlaws. You rebelled against the
+lawfully constituted North American Government. Just because you
+won--for the time being--doesn't mean you were right."
+
+"The fact that we won does mean that we were right. The fact that your
+so-called Government lives by raiding and scavenging off us means you
+were wrong. God, the things I've seen since I joined up with you thugs!"
+
+"I'll bet. Respect for the home, sanctity of marriage, sexual morality,
+law and order--you never saw anything like that back home, did you
+gangster?" He looked very smug.
+
+Orsino clenched his teeth. "Somebody's been telling you a pack of lies,"
+he said. "There's just as much home and family life and morality and
+order back in Syndic Territory as there is here. And probably a lot
+more."
+
+"Bull. I've seen intelligence reports; I know how you people live. Are
+you telling me you don't have sexual promiscuity? Polygamy? Polyandry?
+Open gambling? Uncontrolled liquor trade? Corruption and shakedowns?"
+
+Orsino squinted along the barrel of the gun into the rain. "Look," he
+said, "take me as an average young man from Syndic Territory. I know
+maybe a hundred people. I know just three women and two men who are what
+you'd call promiscuous. I know one family with two wives and one
+husband. I don't really know any people personally who go in for
+polyandry, but I've met three casually. And the rest are ordinary
+middle-aged couples."
+
+"Ah-_hah_! Middle-aged! Do you mean to tell me you're just leaving out
+anybody under middle age when you talk about morality?"
+
+"Naturally," Charles said, baffled. "Wouldn't you?"
+
+The only answer was a snort.
+
+"What are bupers?" Charles asked.
+
+"Bu-Pers," the jaygee said distinctly. "Bureau of Personnel, North
+American Navy."
+
+"What do you do there?"
+
+"What _would_ a personnel bureau do?" the jaygee said patiently. "We
+recruit, classify, assign, promote and train personnel."
+
+"Paperwork, huh? No wonder you don't know how to shoot or drive."
+
+"If I didn't need you to cover my back, I'd shove this MG down your
+silly throat. For your information, gangster, all officers do a tour of
+duty on paperwork before they're assigned to their permanent branch. I'm
+going into the pigboats."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Family. My father commands a sub. He's Captain Van Dellen."
+
+_Oh, God. Van Dellen._ The sub commander Grinnel--and he--had murdered.
+The kid hadn't heard yet that his father had been "lost" in an emergency
+dive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rain ceased to fall; the pattering drizzle gave way to irregular,
+splashing drops from leaves and branches.
+
+"Van Dellen," Charles said. "There's something you ought to know."
+
+"It'll keep," the jaygee answered in a grim whisper. The bolt of his gun
+clicked. "I hear them out there."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+She felt the power of the goddess working in her, but feebly. Dark ...
+so dark ... and so tired ... how old was she? More than eight hundred
+moons had waxed and waned above her head since birth. And she had run at
+the head of her spearmen to the motor sounds. A motor meant the
+smithymen from the sea, and you killed smithymen when you could.
+
+She let out a short shrill chuckle in the dark. There was a rustling of
+branches. One of the spearmen had turned to stare at the sound. She knew
+his face was worried. "Tend to business, you fool!" she wheezed. "Or by
+Bridget--" His breath went in with a hiss and she chuckled again. You
+had to let them know who was the cook and who was the potatoes every now
+and then. Kill the fool? Not now; not when there were smithymen with
+guns waiting to be taken.
+
+The power of the goddess worked stronger in her withered breast as her
+rage grew at their impudence. Coming into _her_ woods with their
+stinking metal!
+
+There were two of them. A grin slit her face. She had not taken two
+smithymen together for thirty moons. For all her wrinkles and creaks,
+what a fine vessel she was for the power, to be sure! Her worthless,
+slow-to-learn niece could run and jump and she had a certain air, but
+she'd never be such a vessel. Her sister--the crone spat--these were
+degenerate days. In the old days, the sister would have been spitted
+when she refused the ordeal in her youth. The little one now, whatever
+her name was, she would make a _fine_ vessel for the power when she was
+gathered to the goddess. If her sister or her niece didn't hold her head
+under water too long, or have a spear shoved too deep into her gut or
+hit her on the head with too heavy a rock.
+
+These were degenerate days. She had poisoned her own mother to become
+the vessel of power.
+
+The spearmen to her right and left shifted uneasily. She heard a faint
+mumble of the two smithymen talking. Let them talk! Doubtless they were
+cursing the goddess obscenely; doubtless that was what the smithymen all
+did when their mouths were not stuffed with food.
+
+She thought of the man called Kennedy who forged spearheads and
+arrowpoints for her people--he was a strange one, touched by the
+goddess, which proved her infinite power. She could touch and turn the
+head of even a smithyman. He was a strange one. Well now, to get on with
+it. She wished the power were working stronger in her; she was tired and
+could hardly see. But by the grace of the goddess there would be two new
+heads over her holy hut come dawn. She could hardly see, but the goddess
+wouldn't fail her....
+
+She quavered like a screech-owl, and the spearmen began to slip forward
+through the brush. She was not allowed to eat honey lest its sweetness
+clash with the power in her, but the taste of power was sweeter than the
+taste of honey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With frightful suddenness there was an ear-splitting shriek and a
+trampling rush of feet. By sheer reflex, Orsino clamped down on the
+trigger of his fifty, and his brain rocked at its thunder. Shadowy
+figures were blotted out by the orange muzzle-flash. You're supposed to
+fire neat, spaced bursts of eight he told himself. I wonder what old
+Gilby would say if he could see his star pupil burning out a barrel and
+swinging his gun like a fire hose?
+
+The gun stopped firing; end of the belt. Twenty, fifty or a hundred
+rounds? He didn't remember. He clawed for another belt and smoothly, in
+the dark, loaded again and listened.
+
+"You all right, gangster?" the jaygee said behind him, making him jump.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Will they come back?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You filthy swine," an agonized voice wheezed from the darkness. "Me
+back is broke, you stinking lice." The voice began to sob.
+
+They listened to it in silence for perhaps a minute. At last he said to
+the jaygee: "If the rest are gone maybe we can at least--make him
+comfortable."
+
+"Too risky," the jaygee said after a long pause.
+
+The sobbing went on. As the excitement of the attack drained from
+Orsino, he felt deathly tired, cramped and thirsty. The thirst he could
+do something about. He scooped water from the muddy runnel by his knee
+and sucked it from his palms twice. The third time, he thought of the
+thirst that the sobbing creature out in the dark must be feeling, and
+his hand wouldn't go to his mouth.
+
+"I'm going to get him," he whispered to the jaygee.
+
+"Stay where you are! That's an order!"
+
+He didn't answer, but began to work his cramped and aching body from
+under the jeep. The jaygee, a couple of years younger and lither than
+he, slid out first from his own side. Orsino sighed and relaxed as he
+heard his footsteps cautiously circle the jeep.
+
+"Finish me off!" the wounded man was sobbing. "For the love of the
+goddess, finish me off, you bitches' bastards! You've broke me
+back--_ah!_" That was a cry of savage delight.
+
+There was a strangled noise from the jaygee and then only a soft, deadly
+thrashing noise from the dark. Hell, Orsino thought bitterly. It was my
+idea. He snaked out from under the jeep and raced through wet brush.
+
+The two of them were a tangled knot of darkness rolling on the ground. A
+naked back came uppermost; Orsino fell on it and clawed at its head. He
+felt a huge beard, took two hand-fulls of it and pulled as hard as he
+could. There was a wild screech and a flailing of arms. The jaygee broke
+away and stood up, panting hoarsely. Charles heard a sharp crunch and a
+snap, and the flailing sweaty figure, beneath him lay still.
+
+"Back to the guns," the jaygee choked. He swayed, and Orsino took him by
+the arm.... On the way back to the jeep, they stumbled over something
+that was certainly a body.
+
+Orsino's flesh shrank from lying down again in the mud behind his gun,
+but he did, shivering. He heard the jaygee thud wearily into position.
+"What did you do to him?" he asked. "Is he dead?"
+
+"Kicked him," the jaygee choked. "His head snapped back and there was
+that crack. I guess he's dead. I never heard of that broken-wing trick
+before. I guess he wanted to take one more with him. They have a kind of
+religion."
+
+The jaygee sounded as though he was teetering on the edge of breakdown.
+Make him mad, intuition said to Orsino. He might go howling off among
+the trees unless he snaps out of it.
+
+"It's a hell of way to run an island," he said nastily. "You beggars
+were chased out of North America because you couldn't run it right and
+now you can't even control a lousy little island for more than five
+miles inland." He added with deliberate, superior amusement: "Of course,
+they've got witches."
+
+"Shut your mouth, gangster--_I'm warning you._" The note of hysteria was
+still there. And then the jaygee said dully: "I didn't mean that. I'm
+sorry. You did come out and help me after all."
+
+"Surprised?"
+
+"Yes. Twice. First time when you wanted to go out yourself. I suppose
+you can't help being born where you were. Maybe if you came over to us
+all the way, the Government would forgive and forget. But no--I suppose
+not." He paused, obviously casting about for a change of subject. He
+still seemed sublimely confident that they'd get back to the naval base
+with him in charge of the detail. "What ship did you cross in?"
+
+"Atom sub _Taft_," Orsino said. He could have bitten his tongue out.
+
+"_Taft?_ That's my father's pigboat! Captain Van Dellen. How is he? I
+was going down to the dock when--"
+
+"He's dead," Orsino said flatly. "He was caught on deck during an
+emergency dive."
+
+The jaygee said nothing for a while and then uttered an unconvincing
+laugh of disbelief. "You're lying," he said. "His crew'd never let that
+happen. They'd let the ship be blown to hell before they took her down
+without the skipper."
+
+"Grinnel had the con. He ordered the dive and roared down the crew when
+they wanted to get your father inboard. I'm sorry."
+
+"Grinnel," the jaygee whispered. "Grinnel. Yes, I know Commander
+Grinnel. He's--he's a good officer. He must have done it because he had
+to. Tell me about it, please."
+
+It was more than Orsino could bear. "Your father was murdered," he said
+harshly. "I know because Grinnel put me on radar watch--and I don't know
+a God-damned thing about reading a radarscope. He told me to sing out
+'enemy planes' and I did because I didn't know what the hell was going
+on. He used that as an excuse to crash-dive while your father was
+sleeping on deck. Your good officer murdered him."
+
+He heard the jaygee sobbing hoarsely. At last he asked Orsino in a dry,
+choked voice: "Politics?"
+
+"Politics," Orsino said.
+
+Orsino jumped wildly as the jaygee's machine gun began to roar a long
+burst of twenty, but he didn't fire himself. He knew that there was no
+enemy out there in the dark, and that the bullets were aimed only at an
+absent phantom.
+
+"We've got to get to Iceland," the jaygee said at last, soberly. "It's
+our only chance."
+
+"Iceland?"
+
+"This is one for the C.C. of the Constitutionists. The Central
+Committee. It's a breach of the Freiberg Compromise. It means we call
+the Sociocrats, and if they don't make full restitution--war."
+
+"What do you mean, _we_?"
+
+"You and I. You're the source of the story; you're the one who'd be
+lie-tested."
+
+You've got him, Orsino told himself, but don't be fool enough to count
+on it. He's been light-headed from hunger and no sleep and the shock of
+his father's death. You helped him in a death struggle and there's team
+spirit working on him. The guy covering my back, how can I fail to trust
+him, how could I dare not to trust him? But don't be fool enough to
+count on it after he's slept. Meanwhile, push it for all it's worth.
+
+"What are your plans?" he asked gravely.
+
+"We've got to slip out of Ireland by sub or plane," the jaygee brooded.
+"We can't go to the New Portsmouth or Com-Surf organizations; they're
+Sociocrat, and Grinnel will have passed the word to the Sociocrats that
+you're out of control."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"Death," the jaygee said.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Commander Grinnel, after reporting formally, had gone straight to a
+joint. It wasn't until midnight that he got The Word, from a friendly
+O.N.I. lieutenant who had dropped into the house.
+
+"What?" Grinnel roared. "Who is this woman? Where is she? Take me to her
+at once!"
+
+"Commander!" the lieutenant said aghast. "I just got here!"
+
+"You heard me, mister! At once!"
+
+While Grinnel dressed he demanded particulars. The lieutenant dutifully
+scoured his memory. "Brought in on some cloak-and-dagger deal,
+Commander. The kind you usually run. Lieutenant-Commander Jacobi was in
+Syndic Territory on a recruiting, sabotage and reconnaissance mission
+and one of the D.A.R. passed the girl on him. A real Syndic member.
+Priceless. And, as I said, she identified this fellow as Charles Orsino,
+another Syndic. Why are you so interested, if I may ask?"
+
+The Commander dearly wanted to give him a grim: "You may not," but
+didn't dare. Now was the time to be frank and open. One hint that he had
+anything to hide or cover up would put his throat to the knife. "The
+man's my baby, lieutenant," he said. "Either your girl's mistaken or Van
+Dellen and his polygraph tech and I were taken in by a brand-new
+technique." _That_ was nice work, he congratulated himself. Got in Van
+Dellen and the tech.... Maybe, come to think of it, the tech _was_
+crooked? No; there was the way Wyman had responded perfectly under scop.
+
+O.N.I.'s building was two stories and an attic, wood-framed, beginning
+to rot already in the eternal Irish damp.
+
+"We've got her on the third floor, Commander," the lieutenant said. "You
+get there by a ladder."
+
+"In God's name, why?" They walked past the Charge of Quarters, who
+snapped to a guilty and belated attention, and through the deserted
+offices of the first and second floors.
+
+"Frankly, we've had a little trouble hanging on to her."
+
+"She runs away?"
+
+"No, nothing like that--not yet, at least. Marine G-2 and Guard
+Intelligence School have both tried to snatch her from us. First with
+requisitions, then with muscle. We hope to keep her until the word gets
+to Iceland. Then, naturally, _we'll_ be out in the cold."
+
+The lieutenant laughed. Grinnel, puffing up the ladder, did not.
+
+The door and lock on Lee Bennet's quarters were impressive. The
+lieutenant rapped. "Are you awake, Lee? There's an officer here who
+wants to talk to you."
+
+"Come in," she said.
+
+The lieutenant's hands flew over the lock and the door sprang open. The
+girl was sitting in the dark.
+
+"I'm Commander Grinnel, my dear," he said. After eight hours in the
+joint, he could feel authentically fatherly to her. "If the time isn't
+quite convenient--"
+
+"It's all right," she said listlessly. "What do you want to know?"
+
+"The man you identify as Orsino--it was quite a shock to me. Commander
+Van Dellen, who died a hero's death only days ago accepted him as
+authentic and so, I must admit, did I. He passed both scop and
+polygraph."
+
+"I can't help that," she said. "He came right up to me and told me who
+he was. I recognized him, of course. He's a polo player. I've seen him
+play on Long Island often enough, the damned snob. He's not much in the
+Syndic, but he's close to F. W. Taylor. Orsino's an orphan. I don't know
+whether Taylor's actually adopted him or not. I think not."
+
+"No--possible--mistake?"
+
+"No possible mistake." She began to tremble. "My God, Commander
+Whoever-You-Are, do you think I could forget one of those damned
+sneering faces. Or what those people did to me? Get the lie detector
+again! Strap me into the lie detector! I insist on it! I won't be called
+a liar! Do you hear me? Get the lie detector!"
+
+"Please," the Commander soothed. "I do believe you, my dear. Nobody
+could doubt your sincerity. Thank you for helping us, and good night."
+He backed out of the room with the lieutenant. As the door closed he
+snapped at him: "Well, mister?"
+
+The lieutenant shrugged. "The lie detector always bears her out. We've
+stopped using it on her. We're convinced that she's on our side. Almost
+deserving of citizenship."
+
+"Come, now," the Commander said. "You know better than that."
+
+Behind the locked door, Lee Bennet had thrown herself on the bed,
+dry-eyed. She wished she could cry, but tears never came. Not since
+those three roistering drunkards had demonstrated their virility as
+males and their immunity as Syndics on her ... she couldn't cry any
+more.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Charles Orsino--another one of them. She hoped they caught him and
+killed him, slowly. She knew all this was true. Then why did she feel
+like a murderess? Why did she think incessantly of suicide? Why, why,
+why?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dawn came imperceptibly. First Charles could discern the outline of
+treetops against the sky and then a little of the terrain before him and
+at last two twisted shadows that slowly became sprawling half-naked
+bodies. One of them was a woman's, mangled by fifty-caliber slugs. The
+other was the body of a bearded giant--the one with whom they had
+struggled in the dark.
+
+Charles crawled out stiffly. The woman was--had been--a stringy, white
+haired crone. Some animal's skull was tied to her pate with sinews as a
+head-dress, and she was tattooed with blue crescents. The jaygee joined
+him standing over her and said: "One of their witches. Part of the
+religion, if you can call it that."
+
+"A brand-new religion?" Charles asked dubiously. "Made up out of whole
+cloth?"
+
+"No," the jaygee said. "I understand it's an _old_
+religion--pre-Christian. It kept going underground until the Troubles.
+Then it flared up again all over Europe. A filthy business. Animal
+sacrifices every new moon. Human sacrifices twice a year. What can you
+expect from people like that?"
+
+Charles reminded himself that the jaygee's fellow-citizens boiled
+recalcitrant slaves. "I'll see what I can do about the jeep," he said.
+
+The jaygee sat down on the wet grass. "What the hell's the use?" he
+mumbled wearily. "Even if you get it running again. Even if we get back
+to the base. They'll be gunning for you. Maybe they'll be gunning for me
+if they killed my father." He tried to smile. "You got any aces in the
+hole, gangster?"
+
+"Maybe," Orsino said slowly. "What do you know about a woman named
+Lee--Bennet? Works with O.N.I.?"
+
+"Smuggled over here by the D.A.R. A goldmine of information. She's a
+little nuts, too. What have you got on her?"
+
+"Does she swing any weight? _Is she a citizen?_"
+
+"No weight. They're just using her over at Intelligence to fill out the
+picture of the Syndic. And she couldn't be a citizen. A woman has to
+marry a citizen to be naturalized. What have you got to do with her, for
+God's sake? Did you know her on the other side? She's death to the
+Syndic; she can't do anything for you."
+
+Charles barely heard him. That had to be it. The trigger on Lee
+Falcaro's conditioning had to be the oath of citizenship as it was for
+his. And it hadn't been tripped because this pirate gang didn't
+particularly want or need women as first-class, all-privileges citizens.
+A small part of the Government's cultural complex--but one that could
+trap Lee Falcaro forever in the shell of her synthetic substitute for a
+personality. Lie-tests, yes. Scopolamine, yes. But for a woman, no
+subsequent oath.
+
+"I ran into her in New Portsmouth. She knew me from the other side. She
+turned me in...." He knelt at a puddle and drank thirstily; the water
+eased hunger cramps a little. "I'll see what I can do with the jeep."
+
+He lifted the hood and stole a look at the jaygee. Van Dellen was
+dropping off to sleep on the wet grass. Charles pried a shear pin from
+the jeep's winch, punched out the shear pin that had given way in the
+transmission and replaced it. It involved some hammering. Cracked block,
+he thought contemptuously. An officer and he couldn't tell whether the
+block was cracked or not. If I ever get out of this we'll sweep them
+from the face of the earth--or more likely just get rid of their
+tom-fool Sociocrats and Constitutionists. The rest are probably all
+right. Except maybe for those bastards of Guardsmen. A bad lot. Let's
+hope they get killed in the fighting.
+
+The small of his back tickled; he reached around to scratch it and felt
+cold metal.
+
+"Turn slowly or you'll be spitted like a pig," a bass voice growled.
+
+He turned slowly. The cold metal now at his chest, was the leaf-shaped
+blade of a spear. It was wielded by a red-haired, red-bearded,
+barrel-chested giant whose blue-green eyes were as cold as death.
+
+"Tie that one," somebody said. Another half-naked man jerked his wrists
+behind him and lashed them together with cords.
+
+"Hobble his feet." It was a woman's voice. A length of cord or sinew was
+knotted to his ankles with a foot or two of play. He could walk but not
+run. The giant lowered his spear and stepped aside.
+
+The first thing Charles saw was that Lieutenant (j.g.) Van Dellen of the
+North American Navy had escaped forever from his doubts and confusions.
+They had skewered him to the turf while he slept. Charles hoped he had
+not felt the blow.
+
+The second thing he saw was a supple and coltish girl of perhaps 20
+tenderly removing the animal skull from the head of the slain witch and
+knotting it to her own red-tressed head. Even to Orsino's numbed
+understanding, it was clearly an act of the highest significance. It
+subtly changed the composition of the six-men group in the little glade.
+They had been a small mob until she put on the skull, but the moment she
+did they moved instinctively--one a step or two, the other merely
+turning a bit, perhaps--to orient on her. There was no doubt that she
+was in charge.
+
+A witch, Orsino thought. "It kept going underground until the Troubles."
+"A filthy business--human sacrifices twice a year."
+
+She approached him and, like the shifting of a kaleidoscope, the group
+fell into a new pattern of which she was still the focus. Charles
+thought he had never seen a face so humorlessly conscious of power. The
+petty ruler of a few barbarians, she carried herself as though she were
+empress of the universe. Nor did a large gray louse that crawled from
+her hairline across her forehead and back again affect her in the
+slightest. She wore a greasy animal hide as though it were royal purple.
+It added up to either insanity or a limitless pretension to religious
+authority. And her eyes were not mad.
+
+"You," she said coldly. "What about the jeep and the guns? Do they go?"
+
+He laughed suddenly and idiotically at these words from the mouth of a
+stone-age goddess. A raised spear sobered him instantly. "Yes," he said.
+
+"Show my men how," she said, and squatted regally on the turf.
+
+"Please," he said, "could I have something to eat first?"
+
+She nodded indifferently and one of the men loped off into the brush.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His hands untied and his face greasy with venison fat, Charles spent the
+daylight hours instructing six savages in the nomenclature, maintenance
+and operation of the jeep and the twin-fifty machine gun.
+
+They absorbed it with utter lack of curiosity. They more or less learned
+to start and steer and stop the jeep. They more or less learned to load,
+point and fire the gun.
+
+Through the lessons the girl sat absolutely motionless, first in shadow,
+then in noon and afternoon sun and then in shadow again. But she had
+been listening. She said at last: "You are telling them nothing new now.
+Is there no more?"
+
+Charles noted that a spear was poised at his ribs. "A great deal more,"
+he said hastily. "It takes months."
+
+"They can work them now. What more is there to learn?"
+
+"Well, what to do if something goes wrong."
+
+She said, as though speaking from vast experience: "When something goes
+wrong, you start over again. That is all you can do. When I make
+death-wine for the spear blades and the death-wine does not kill, it is
+because something went wrong--a word or a sign or picking a plant at the
+wrong time. The only thing to do is make the poison again. As you grow
+in experience you make fewer mistakes. That is how it will be with my
+men when they work the jeep and the guns."
+
+She nodded ever so slightly at one of the men and he took a firmer grip
+on his spear.
+
+Death swooped low.
+
+"No!" Charles exploded. "You don't understand! This isn't like anything
+you do at all!" He was sweating, even in the late afternoon chill.
+"You've got to have somebody who knows how to repair the jeep and the
+gun. If they're busted they're busted and no amount of starting over
+again will make them work!"
+
+She nodded and said: "Tie his hands. We'll take him with us." Charles
+was torn between relief and wonder at the way she spoke. He realized
+that he had never, literally _never_, seen any person concede a point in
+quite that fashion. There had been no hesitation, there had been no
+reluctance in the voice, not a flicker of displeasure in the face.
+Simply, without forcing, she had said: "We'll take him with us." It was
+as though--as though she had re-made the immediate past, un-making her
+opposition to the idea, nullifying it. She was a person who was not at
+war with herself in any respect whatever, a person who knew exactly who
+she was and what she was--
+
+The girl rose in a single flowing motion, startling after her day spent
+in immobility. She led the way, flanked by two of the spearmen. The
+other four followed in the jeep, at a crawl. Last of all came Charles,
+and nobody had to urge him. In his portable trap his hours would be
+numbered if he got separated from his captors.
+
+Stick with them, he told himself, stumbling through the brush. Just stay
+alive and you can outsmart these savages. He fell, cursed, picked
+himself up, stumbled on after the growl of the jeep.
+
+Dawn brought them to a collection of mud-and-wattle huts, a corral
+enclosing a few dozen head of wretched diseased cattle, a few adults and
+a few children. The girl was still clear-eyed and supple in her
+movements. Her spearmen yawned and stretched stiffly. Charles was a
+walking dead man, battered by countless trees and stumbles on the long
+trek. With red and swollen eyes he watched while half-naked brats
+swarmed over the jeep and grownups made obeisances to the girl--all but
+one.
+
+This was an evil-faced harridan who said to her with cool insolence: "I
+see you claim the power of the goddess now, my dear. Has something
+happened to my sister?"
+
+"The guns killed a certain person. I put on the skull. You know what I
+am; do not say 'claim to be.' I warn you once."
+
+"Liar!" shrieked the harridan. "You killed her and stole the skull! St.
+Patrick and St. Bridget shrivel your guts! Abaddon and Lucifer pierce
+your eyes!"
+
+An arena formed about them as the girl said coldly: "I warn you the
+second time."
+
+The harridan made signs with her fingers, glaring at her; there was a
+moan from the watchers; some turned aside and a half-grown girl fainted
+dead away.
+
+The girl with the skull on her pate said, as though speaking from a
+million years and a million miles away: "This is the third warning;
+there are no more. Now the worm is in your backbone gnawing. Now the
+maggots are at your eyes, devouring them. Your bowels turn to water;
+your heart pounds like the heart of a bird; soon it will not beat at
+all." As the eerie, space-filling whisper drilled on the watchers broke
+and ran, holding their hands over their ears, white-faced, but the
+harridan stood as if rooted to the earth. Charles listened dully as the
+curse was droned, nor was he surprised when the harridan fell, blasted
+by it. Another sorceress, aided it is true by pentothal, had months ago
+done the same to him.
+
+The people trickled back, muttering and abject.
+
+Just stay alive and you can outsmart these savages, he repeated
+ironically to himself. It had dawned on him that these savages lived by
+an obscure and complicated code harder to master than the intricacies of
+the Syndic or the Government.
+
+A kick roused him to his feet. One of the spearmen grunted: "I'm putting
+you with Kennedy."
+
+"All right," Charles groaned. "You take these cords off me?"
+
+"Later." He prodded Charles to a minute, ugly block house of logs from
+which came smoke and an irregular metallic clanging. He cut the cords,
+rolled great boulders away from a crawl-hole and shoved him through.
+
+The place was about six by nine feet, hemmed in by ten-inch logs. The
+light was very bad and the smell was too. A few loopholes let in some
+air. There was a latrine pit and an open stone hearth and a naked brown
+man with wild hair and a beard.
+
+Rubbing his wrists, Charles asked uncertainly: "Are you Kennedy?"
+
+The man looked up and croaked: "Are you from the Government?"
+
+"Yes," Charles said, hope rekindling. "Thank God they put us together.
+There's a jeep. Also a twin-fifty. If we play this right the two of us
+can bust out--"
+
+He stopped, disconcerted. Kennedy had turned to the hearth and the
+small, fierce fire glowing on it and began to pound a red-hot lump of
+metal. There were spear heads and arrow heads about in various stages
+of completion, as well as files and a hone.
+
+"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Aren't you interested?"
+
+"Of course I'm interested," Kennedy said. "But we've got to begin at the
+beginning. You're too _general_." His voice was mild, but reproving.
+
+"You're right," Charles said. "I guess you've made a try or two
+yourself. But now that there are two of us, what do you suggest? Can you
+drive a jeep? Can you fire a twin-fifty?"
+
+The man poked the lump of metal into the heart of the fire again, picked
+up a black-scaled spear head and began to file an edge into it. "Let's
+get down to essentials," he suggested apologetically. "What is escape?
+Getting from an undesirable place to a desirable place, opposing and
+neutralizing things or persons adverse to the change of state in the
+process. But I'm not being specific, am I? Let's say, then, escape is
+getting _us_ from a relatively undesirable place to a relatively
+desirable place, opposing and neutralizing the aborigines." He put aside
+the file and reached for the hone, sleeking it along the bright metal
+ribbon of the new edge. He looked up with a pleased smile and asked:
+"How's that for a plan?"
+
+"Fine," Charles muttered. Kennedy beamed proudly as he repeated: "Fine,
+fine," and sank to the ground, born down by the almost physical weight
+of his depression. His hoped-for ally was stark mad.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Kennedy turned out to have been an armorer-artificer of the North
+American Navy, captured two years ago while deer-hunting too far from
+the logging-camp road to New Portsmouth. Fed on scraps of gristle,
+isolated from his kind, beaten when he failed to make his daily task of
+spear heads and arrow points, he had shyly retreated into beautifully
+interminable labyrinths of abstraction. Now and then, Charles Orsino got
+a word or two of sense from him before the rosy clouds closed in. When
+attempted conversation with the lunatic palled, Charles could watch the
+aborigines through chinks in the palisade. There were about fifty of
+them. There would have been more if they hadn't been given to
+infanticide--for what reason, Charles could not guess.
+
+He had been there a week when the boulders were rolled away one morning
+and he was roughly called out. He said to Kennedy before stooping to
+crawl through the hole: "Take it easy, friend. I'll be back, I hope."
+
+Kennedy looked up with a puzzled smile: "That's such a _general_
+statement, Charles. Exactly what are you implying--"
+
+The witch girl was there, flanked by spearmen. She said abruptly: "I
+have been listening to you. Why are you untrue to your brothers?"
+
+He gawked. The only thing that seemed to fit was: "That's such a
+_general_ statement," but he didn't say it.
+
+"Answer," one of the spearmen growled.
+
+"I--I don't understand. I have no brothers."
+
+"Your brothers in Portsmouth, on the sea. Whatever you call them, they
+are your brothers, all children of the mother called Government. Why are
+you untrue to them?"
+
+He began to understand. "They aren't my brothers. I'm not a child of the
+government. I'm a child of another mother far away, called Syndic."
+
+She looked puzzled--and almost human--for an instant. Then the visor
+dropped over her face again as she said: "That is true. Now you must
+teach a certain person the jeep and the guns. Teach her well. See that
+she gets her hands on the metal and into the grease." To a spearman she
+said: "Bring Martha."
+
+The spearman brought Martha, who was trying not to cry. She was a
+half-naked child of ten!
+
+The witch girl abruptly left them. Her guards took Martha and bewildered
+Charles to the edge of the village where the jeep and its mounted guns
+stood behind a silly little museum exhibit rope of vine. Feathers and
+bones were knotted into the vine. The spearmen treated it as though it
+were a high-tension transmission line.
+
+"_You_ break it," one of them said to Charles. He did, and the spearmen
+sighed with relief. Martha stopped scowling and stared.
+
+The spearman said to Charles: "Go ahead and teach her. The firing pins
+are out of the guns, and if you try to start the jeep you get a spear
+through you. Now teach her." He and the rest squatted on the turf around
+the jeep. The little girl shied violently as he took her hand, and tried
+to run away. One of the spearmen slung her back into the circle. She
+brushed against the jeep and froze, white-faced.
+
+"Martha," Charles said patiently, "there's nothing to be afraid of. The
+guns won't go off and the jeep won't move. I'll teach you how to work
+them so you can kill everybody you don't like with the guns and go
+faster than a deer in the jeep--"
+
+He was talking into empty air as far as the child was concerned. She was
+muttering, staring at the arm that had brushed the jeep: "That did it, I
+guess. There goes the power. May the goddess blast her--no. The power's
+out of me now. I felt it go." She looked up at Charles, quite calmly,
+and said: "Go on. Show me all about it. Do a good job."
+
+"Martha, what are you talking about?"
+
+"She was afraid of me, my sister, so she's robbing me of the power.
+Don't you know? I guess not. The goddess hates iron and machines. I had
+the power of the goddess in me, but it's gone now; I felt it go. Now
+nobody'll be afraid of me any more." Her face contorted and she said:
+"Show me how you work the guns."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He taught her what he could while the circle of spearmen looked on and
+grinned, cracking raw jokes about the child as anybody anywhere, would
+about a tyrant deposed. She pretended to ignore them, grimly repeating
+names after him and imitating his practiced movements in loading drill.
+She was very bright, Charles realized. When he got a chance he muttered,
+"I'm sorry about this, Martha. It isn't my idea."
+
+She whispered bleakly: "I know. I liked you. I was sorry when the other
+outsider took your dinner." She began to sob uncontrollably. "I'll never
+see anything again! Nobody'll ever be afraid of me again!" She buried
+her face against Charles' shoulder.
+
+He smoothed her tangled hair mechanically and said to the watching,
+grinning circle: "Look, hasn't this gone far enough? Haven't you got
+what you wanted?"
+
+The headman stretched and spat. "Guess so," he said. "Come on, girl." He
+yanked Martha from the seat and booted her toward the huts.
+
+Charles scrambled down just ahead of a spear. He let himself be led back
+to the smithy block house and shoved through the crawl hole.
+
+"I was thinking about what you said the other day," Kennedy beamed,
+rasping a file over an arrowhead. "When I said that to change one
+molecule in the past you'd have to change _every_ molecule in the past,
+and you said, 'Maybe so.' I've figured that what you were driving at
+was--"
+
+"Kennedy," Charles said, "please shut up just this once. I've got to
+think."
+
+"In what sense do you mean that, Charles? Do you mean that you're a
+rational animal and therefore that your _being_ rather than _essense_
+is--"
+
+"_Shut up or I'll pick up a rock and bust your head in with it!_"
+Charles roared. He more than half meant it. Kennedy hunched down before
+his hearth looking offended and scared. Charles squatted with his head
+in his hands.
+
+_I have been listening to you._
+
+Repeated drives of the Government to wipe out the aborigines. Drives
+that never succeeded.
+
+_I'll never see anything again._
+
+The way the witch girl had blasted her rival--but that was suggestion.
+But--
+
+_I have been listening to you. Why are you untrue to your brothers?_
+
+He'd said nothing like that to anybody, not to her or poor Kennedy.
+
+He thought vaguely of _psi_ force, a fragment in his memory. An old
+superstition, like the id-ego-superego triad of the sick-minded
+psychologists. Like vectors of the mind, exploded nonsense. But--
+
+_I have been listening to you. Why are you untrue to your brothers?_
+
+Charles smacked one fist against the sand floor in impotent rage. He was
+going as crazy as Kennedy. Did the witch girl--and Martha--have
+hereditary _psi_ power? He mocked himself savagely: that's such a
+_general_ question!
+
+Neurotic adolescent girls in kerosene-lit farmhouses, he thought
+vaguely. Things that go bump--and crash and blooie and _whoo-oo-oo!_ in
+the night. Not in electric lit city apartments. Not around fleshed-up
+middle-aged men and women. You take a hyperthyroid virgin, isolate her
+from power machinery and electric fields, put on the pressures that make
+her feel alone and tense to the bursting point--and naturally enough,
+something bursts. A chamberpot sails from under the bed and shatters on
+the skull of stepfather-tyrant. The wide-gilt-framed portrait of
+thundergod-grandfather falls with a crash. Sure, the nail crystallized
+and broke--_who crystallized it?_
+
+Neurotic adolescent girls speaking in tongues, reading face-down cards
+and closed books, screaming aloud when sister or mother dies in a
+railroad wreck fifty miles away, of cancer a hundred miles away, in a
+bombing overseas.
+
+Sometimes they made saints of them. Sometimes they burned them. Burned
+them and _then_ made saints of them.
+
+A blood-raw hunk of venison came sailing through one of the loopholes
+and flopped on the sand.
+
+_I was sorry when the other outsider took your dinner._
+
+Three days ago he'd dozed off while Kennedy broiled the meat over the
+hearth. When he woke, Kennedy had gobbled it all and was whimpering with
+apprehension. But he'd done nothing and said nothing; the man wasn't
+responsible. He'd said nothing, and yet somehow the child knew about it.
+
+His days were numbered; soon enough the jeep would be out of gas and the
+guns would be out of ammo or an unreplaceable part lost or broken. Then,
+according to the serene logic that ruled the witch girl, he'd be
+surplus.
+
+But there was a key to it somehow.
+
+He got up and slapped Kennedy's hand away from the venison. "Naughty,"
+he said, and divided it equally with a broad spearblade.
+
+"Naughty," Kennedy said morosely. "The naught-class, the null-class. I'm
+the null-class. I plus the universe equal one, the universe-class. If
+you could transpose--but you can't transpose." Silently they toasted
+their venison over the fire.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a moonless night with one great planet, Jupiter he supposed,
+reigning over the star-powdered sky. Kennedy slept muttering feebly in a
+corner. The hearthfire was out. It had to be out by dark. The spearmen
+took no chance of their trying to burn down the place. The village had
+long since gone to sleep, campfires doused, skin flaps pulled to across
+the door holes. From the corral one of the spavined, tick-ridden cows
+mooed uneasily and then fell silent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charles then began the hardest job of his life. He tried to think,
+straight and uninterrupted, of Martha, the little girl. Some of the
+things that interrupted him were:
+
+The remembered smell of fried onions; they didn't have onions here;
+
+Salt;
+
+I wonder how the old 101st Precinct's getting along;
+
+That fellow who wanted to get married on a hundred dollars;
+
+Lee Falcaro, damn her!
+
+This, is damn foolishness; it can't possibly work;
+
+Poor old Kennedy;
+
+I'll starve before I eat another mouthful of that greasy deer-meat;
+
+The Van Dellen kid, I wonder if I could have saved him;
+
+Reiner's right; we've got to clean up the Government and then try to
+civilize these people;
+
+There must be something wrong with my head, I can't seem to
+concentrate;
+
+That terrific third-chukker play in the Finals, my picture all over
+town;
+
+Would Uncle Frank laugh at this?
+
+It was hopeless. He sat bolt upright, his eyes squeezed tensely
+together, trying to visualize the child and call her and it couldn't be
+done. Skittering images of her zipped through his mind, only to be
+shoved aside. It was damn foolishness, anyway....
+
+He unkinked himself, stretched and lay down on the sand floor thinking
+bitterly: why try? You'll be dead in a few days or a few weeks; kiss the
+world good-bye. Back in Syndic Territory, fat, sloppy, happy Syndic
+Territory, did they know how good they had it? He wished he could tell
+them to cling to their good life. But Uncle Frank said it didn't do any
+good to cling; it was a matter of tension and relaxation. When you
+stiffen up a way of life and try to fossilize it so it'll stay that way
+forever, then you find you've lost it.
+
+Little Martha wouldn't understand it. Magic, ritual, the power of the
+goddess, fear of iron, fear of the jeep's vine enclosure--cursed, no
+doubt--what went on in such a mind? Could she throw things like a
+poltergeist-girl? They didn't have 'em any more; maybe it had something
+to do with electric fields or even iron. Or were they all phonies? An
+upset adolescent girl is a hell of a lot likelier to fake phenomena that
+produce them. Little Martha hadn't been faking her despair, though. The
+witch-girl--her sister, wasn't she?--didn't fake her icy calm and power.
+Martha'd be better off without such stuff--
+
+"_Charles_," a whisper said.
+
+He muttered stupidly: "My God. She heard me," and crept to the palisade.
+Through a chink between the logs she was just visible in the starlight.
+
+She whispered: "I thought I wasn't going to see anything or hear
+anything ever again but I sat up and I heard you calling and you said
+you wanted to help me if I'd help you so I came as fast as I could
+without waking anybody up--you _did_ call me, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, I did. Martha, do you want to get out of here? Go far away with
+me?"
+
+"You bet I do. _She's_ going to take the power of the goddess out of me
+and marry me to Dinny, he stinks like a goat and he has a cockeye, and
+then she'll kill all our babies. Just tell me what to do and I'll do
+it." She sounded very grim and decided.
+
+"Can you roll the boulders away from the hole there?" He was thinking
+vaguely of teleportation; each boulder was a two-man job.
+
+She said no.
+
+He snarled: "Then why did you bother to come here?"
+
+"Don't talk like that to me," the child said sharply--and he remembered
+what she thought she was.
+
+"Sorry," he said.
+
+"What I came about," she said calmly, "was the ex-plosion. Can you make
+an ex-plosion like you said? Back there at the jeep?"
+
+What in God's name was she talking about?
+
+"Back there," she said with exaggerated patience, "you was thinking
+about putting all the cartridges together and blowing up the whole damn
+shebang. Remember?"
+
+He did, vaguely. One of a hundred schemes that had drifted through his
+head.
+
+"I'd sure like to see that ex-plosion," she said. "The way _she_ got
+things figured, I'd almost just as soon get exploded myself as not."
+
+"I might blow up the logs here and get out," he said slowly. "I think
+you'd be a mighty handy person to have along, too. Can you get me about
+a hundred of the machine gun cartridges?"
+
+"They'll miss 'em."
+
+"Sneak me a few at a time. I'll empty them, put them together again and
+you sneak them back."
+
+She said, slow and troubled: "_She_ set the power of the goddess to
+guard them."
+
+"Listen to me, Martha," he said. "I mean _listen_. You'll be doing it
+for me and they told me the power of the goddess doesn't work on
+outsiders. Isn't that right?"
+
+There was a long pause, and she said at last with a sigh: "I sure wish I
+could see your eyes, Charles. I'll try it, but I'm damned if I would if
+Dinny didn't stink so bad." She slipped away and Charles tried to follow
+her with his mind through the darkness, to the silly little rope of vine
+with the feathers and bones knotted in it--but he couldn't. Too tense
+again.
+
+Kennedy stirred and muttered complainingly as an icy small breeze cut
+through the chinks of the palisade, whispering.
+
+His eyes, tuned to the starlight, picked up Martha bent almost double,
+creeping toward the smithy-prison. She wore a belt of fifty-caliber
+cartridges around her neck like a stole. Looked like about a dozen of
+them. He hastily scooped out a bowl of clean sand and whispered: "Any
+trouble?"
+
+He couldn't see the grin on her face, but knew it was there. "It was
+easy," she bragged. "One bad minute and then I checked with you and it
+was okay."
+
+"Good kid. Pull the cartridges out of the links the way I showed you and
+pass them through."
+
+She did. It was a tight squeeze.
+
+He fingered one of the cartridges. The bullet fitted nicely into the
+socket of an arrowhead. He jammed the bullet in and wrenched at the
+arrowhead with thumb and forefinger--all he could get onto it. The brass
+neck began to spread. He dumped the powder into his little basin in the
+sand and reseated the bullet.
+
+Charles shifted hands on the second cartridge. On the third he realized
+that he could put the point of the bullet on a hearth-stone and press on
+the neck with both thumbs. It went faster then; in perhaps an hour he
+was passing the re-assembled cartridges back through the palisade.
+
+"Time for another load?" he asked.
+
+"Nope," the girl said. "Tomorrow night."
+
+"Good kid."
+
+She giggled. "It's going to be a hell of a big bang, ain't it, Charles?"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+"Leave the fire alone," Charles said sharply to Kennedy. The little man
+was going to douse it for the night.
+
+There was a flash of terrified sense: "They beat you. If the fire's on
+after dark they beat you. Fire and dark are equal and opposite." He
+began to smile. "Fire is the negative of dark. You just change the sign,
+in effect rotate it through 180 degrees. But to rotate it through 180
+degrees you have to first rotate it through one degree. And to rotate it
+through one degree you first have to rotate it through half a degree."
+He was beaming now, having forgotten all about the fire. Charles banked
+it with utmost care, heaping a couple of flat stones for a chimney that
+would preserve the life of one glowing coal invisibly.
+
+He stretched out on the sand, one hand on the little heap beneath which
+five pounds of smokeless powder was buried. Kennedy continued to drone
+out his power-series happily.
+
+Through the chinks in the palisade a man's profile showed against the
+twilight. "Shut up," he said.
+
+Kennedy shivering, rolled over and muttered to himself. The spearman
+laughed and went on.
+
+Charles hardly saw him. His whole mind was concentrated on the spark
+beneath the improvised chimney. He had left such a spark seven nights
+running. Only twice had it lived more than an hour. Tonight--tonight,
+it _had_ to last. Tonight was the last night of the witch-girl's monthly
+courses, and during them she lost--or thought she lost, which was the
+same thing--the power of the goddess.
+
+Primitive aborigines, he jeered silently at himself. A life time wasn't
+long enough to learn the intricacies of their culture--as occasional
+executions among them for violating magical law proved to the hilt. His
+first crude notion--blowing the palisade apart and running like
+hell--was replaced by a complex escape plan hammered out in detail
+between him and Martha.
+
+Martha assured him that the witch girl could track him through the dark
+by the power of the goddess except for four days a month--and he
+believed it. Martha herself laid a matter-of-fact claim to keener second
+sight than her sister because of her virginity. With Martha to guide him
+through the night and the witch-girl's power disabled, they'd get a
+day's head start. His hand strayed to a pebble under which jerked
+venison was hidden and ready.
+
+"But Martha. Are you sure you're not--not kidding yourself? Are you
+_sure_?"
+
+He felt her grin on the other side of the palisade. "You're sure wishing
+Uncle Frank was here so you could ask him about it, don't you, Charles?"
+
+He sure was. He wiped his brow, suddenly clammy.
+
+Kennedy couldn't come along. One, he wasn't responsible. Two, he might
+have to be Charles' cover-story. They weren't too dissimilar in build,
+age, or coloring. Charles had a beard by now that sufficiently obscured
+his features, and two years absence should have softened recollections
+of Kennedy. Interrogated, Charles could take refuge in an imitation of
+Kennedy's lunacy.
+
+"Charles, the one thing I don't get is this Lee dame. She got a spell on
+her? You don't want to mess with that."
+
+"Listen, Martha, we've _got_ to mess with her. It isn't a
+spell--exactly. Anyway I know how to take it off and then she'll be on
+our side."
+
+"Can I set off the explosion? If you let me set off the explosion, I'll
+quit my bitching."
+
+"We'll see," he said.
+
+She chuckled very faintly in the dark. "Okay," she told him. "If I
+can't, I can't."
+
+He thought of being married to a woman who could spot your smallest lie
+or reservation, and shuddered.
+
+Kennedy was snoring by now and twilight was deepening into blackness.
+There was a quarter-moon, obscured by over-cast. He hitched along the
+sand and peered through a chink at a tiny noise. It was the small
+scuffling feet of a woods-rat racing through the grass from one morsel
+of food to the next. It never reached it. There was a soft rush of wings
+as a great dark owl plummeted to earth and struck talons into the brown
+fur. The rat squealed its life away while the owl lofted silently to a
+tree branch where it stood on one leg, swaying drunkenly and staring
+with huge yellow eyes.
+
+As sudden as that, it'll be, Charles thought abruptly weighted with
+despair. A half-crazy kid and yours truly trying to outsmart and
+out-Tarzan these wild men. If only the little dope would let me take the
+jeep! But the jeep was out. She rationalized her retention of the power
+even after handling iron by persuading herself that she was only acting
+for Charles; there was some obscure precedent in a long, memorized poem
+which served her as a text-book of magic. But riding in the jeep was
+_out_.
+
+By now she should be stringing magic vines across some of the huts and
+trails. "They'll see 'em when they get torches and it'll scare 'em. Of
+course I don't know how to do it right, but they don't know that. It'll
+slow 'em down. If _she_ comes out of her house--and maybe she
+won't--she'll know they don't matter and send the men after us. But
+we'll be on our way. Charles, you _sure_ I can't set off the explosion?
+Yeah, I guess you are. Maybe I can set off one when we get to New
+Portsmouth?"
+
+"If I can possibly arrange it."
+
+She sighed: "I guess that'll have to do."
+
+It was too silent; he couldn't bear it. With feverish haste he uncovered
+the caches of powder and meat. Under the sand was a fat clayey soil. He
+dug up hands-full of it, wet it with the only liquid available and
+worked it into paste. He felt his way to the logs decided on for
+blasting, dug out a hole at their bases in the clay. After five careful
+trips from the powder cache to the hole, the mine was filled. He covered
+it with clay and laid on a roof of flat stones from the hearth. The
+spark of fire still glowed, and he nursed it with twigs.
+
+She was there, whispering: "Charles?"
+
+"Right here. Everything set?"
+
+"All set. Let's have that explosion."
+
+He took the remaining powder and with minute care, laid a train across
+the stockade to the mine. He crouched into a ball and flipped a burning
+twig onto the black line that crossed the white sand floor.
+
+The blast seemed to wake up the world. Kennedy charged out of sleep,
+screaming, and a million birds woke with a squawk. Charles was conscious
+more of the choking reek than the noise as he scooped up the jerked
+venison and rushed through the ragged gap in the wall. A hand caught
+his--a small hand.
+
+"You're groggy," Martha's voice said, sounding far away. "Come on--fast.
+_Man_, that was a great ex-plosion!"
+
+She towed him through the woods and underbrush--fast. As long as he hung
+on to her he didn't stumble or run into a tree once. Irrationally
+embarrassed by his dependence on a child, he tried letting go for a
+short time--very short--and was quickly battered into changing his mind.
+He thought dizzily of the spearmen trying to follow through the dark and
+could almost laugh again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their trek to the coast was marked by desperate speed. For twenty-four
+hours, they stopped only to gnaw at their rations or snatch a drink at a
+stream. Charles kept moving because it was unendurable to let a
+ten-year-old girl exceed him in stamina. Both of them paid terribly for
+the murderous pace they kept. The child's face became skull-like and her
+eyes red; her lips dried and cracked. He gasped at her as they pulled
+their way up a bramble-covered 45-degree slope: "How do you do it? Isn't
+this ever going to end?"
+
+"Ends soon," she croaked at him. "You know we dodged 'em three times?"
+
+He could only shake his head.
+
+She stared at him with burning red eyes. "This ain't hard," she croaked.
+"You do this with a gut-full of poison, _that's_ hard."
+
+"_Did_ you?"
+
+She grinned crookedly and chanted something he did not understand:
+
+    "_Nine moons times thirteen is the daughter's age
+      When she drinks the death-cup.
+    Three leagues times three she must race and rage
+      Down hills and up_--"
+
+She added matter-of-factly: "Last year. Prove I have the power of the
+goddess. Run, climb, with your guts falling out. This year, starve for a
+week and run down a deer of seven points."
+
+He had lost track of days and nights when they stood on the brow of a
+hill at dawn and looked over the sea. The girl gasped: "'Sall right now.
+_She_ wouldn't let them go on. She's a bitch, but she's no fool." The
+child fell in her tracks. Charles, too tired for panic, slept too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charles woke with a wonderful smell in his nostrils. He followed it
+hungrily down the reverse slope of the hill to a grotto.
+
+Martha was crouched over a fire on which rocks were heating. Beside it
+was a bark pot smeared with clay. As he watched, she lifted a red-hot
+rock with two green sticks and rolled it into the pot. It boiled up and
+continued to boil for an astonishing number of minutes. That was the
+source of the smell.
+
+"Breakfast?" he asked unbelievingly.
+
+"Rabbit stew," she said. "Plenty of runways, plenty of bark, plenty of
+green branches. I made snares. Two tough old bucks cooking in there for
+an hour."
+
+They chewed the meat from the bones in silence. She said at last: "We
+can't settle down here. Too near to the coast. And if we move further
+inland, there's _her_. And others. I been thinking." She spat a string
+of tough meat out. "There's England. Work our way around the coast. Make
+a raft or steal a canoe and cross the water. _Then_ we could settle
+down. You can't have me for three times thirteen moons yet or I'd lose
+the power. But I guess we can wait. I heard about England and the
+English. They have no hearts left. We can take as many slaves as we
+want. They cry a lot but they don't fight. And none of their women has
+the power." She looked up anxiously. "You wouldn't want one of their
+women, would you? Not if you could have somebody with the power just by
+waiting for her?"
+
+He looked down the hill and said slowly: "You know that's not what I had
+in mind, Martha. I have my own place with people far away. I want to get
+back there. I thought--I thought you'd like it too." Her face twisted.
+He couldn't bear to go on, not in words. "Look into my mind, Martha," he
+said. "Maybe you'll see what it means to me."
+
+She stared long and deep. At last she rose, her face inscrutable, and
+spat into the fire. "Think I saved you for that?" she asked. "And for
+_her_? Not me. Save yourself from now on, mister. I'm going to beat my
+way south around the coast. England for me, and I don't want any part of
+you."
+
+She strode off down the hill, gaunt and ragged, but with arrogance in
+her swinging, space-eating gait. Charles sat looking after her,
+stupefied, until she had melted into the underbrush. "Think I saved you
+for that? And for _her_?" She'd made some kind of mistake. He got up
+stiffly and ran after her, but he could not pick up an inch of her
+woods-wise trail. Charles slowly climbed to the grotto again and sat in
+its shelter.
+
+He spent the morning trying to concoct simple springs out of bark strips
+and whippy branches. He got nowhere. The branches broke or wouldn't bend
+far enough. The bark shredded, or wouldn't hold a knot. Without metal,
+he couldn't shape the trigger to fit the bow so that it would be both
+sensitive and reliable.
+
+At noon he drank enormously from a spring and looked morosely for plants
+that might be edible. He decided on something with a bulbous, onion-like
+root. For a couple of hours after that he propped rocks on sticks here
+and there. When he stepped back and surveyed them, he decided that any
+rabbit he caught with them would be, even for a rabbit, feeble-minded.
+He could think of nothing else to do.
+
+First he felt a slight intestinal qualm and then a far from slight
+nausea. Then the root he had eaten took over with drastic thoroughness.
+He collapsed, retching, and only after the first spasms had passed was
+he able to crawl to the grotto. The shelter it offered was mostly
+psychological, but he had need of that. Under the ancient, mossy stones,
+he raved with delirium until dark.
+
+Sometimes he was back in Syndic Territory, Charles Orsino of the
+two-goal handicap and the flashing smile. Sometimes he was back in the
+stinking blockhouse with Kennedy spinning interminable, excruciatingly
+boring strands of iridescent logic. Sometimes he was back in the
+psychology laboratory with the pendulum beating, the light blinking, the
+bell ringing and sense-impressions flooding him and drowning him with
+lies. Sometimes he raced in panic down the streets of New Portsmouth
+with sweatered Guardsmen pounding after him, their knives flashing fire.
+
+But at last he was in the grotto again, with Martha sponging his head
+and cursing him in a low, fluent undertone for being seven times seven
+kinds of fool.
+
+She said tartly as recognition came into his eyes: "Yes, for the fifth
+time, I'm back. I should be making my way to England and a band of my
+own, but I'm back and I don't know why. I heard you in pain and I
+thought it served you right for not knowing deathroot when you see it,
+but I turned around and came back."
+
+"Don't go," he said hoarsely.
+
+She held a bark cup to his lips and made him choke down some nauseating
+brew. "Don't worry," she told him bitterly. "I won't go. I'll do
+everything you want, which shows that I'm as big a fool as you are, or
+bigger because I know better. I'll help you find her and take the spell
+off her. And may the goddess help me because I can't help myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"... things like sawed tree-trunks, shells you call them ... a pile of
+them ... he looks at them and he thinks they're going bad and they ought
+to be used soon ... under a wooden roof they are ... a thin man with
+death on his face and hate in his heart ... he wears blue and gold ...
+he sticks the gold, you call a coat's wrist the cuff, he sticks the cuff
+under the nose of a fellow and yells his hate out and the fellow feels
+ready to strangle on blood ... it's about a boat that sank ... this
+fellow, he's a fat little man and he kills and kills, he'd kill the man
+if he could...."
+
+A picket boat steamed by the coast twice a day, north after dawn and
+south before sunset. They had to watch out for it; it swept the coast
+with powerful glasses.
+
+"... it's the man with the bellyache again but now he's sleepy ... he's
+cursing the skipper ... sure there's nothing on the coast to trouble
+us ... eight good men aboard and that one bastard of a skipper...."
+
+Sometimes it jumped erratically, like an optical lever disturbed by the
+weight of a hair.
+
+"... board over the door painted with a circle, a zig-zag on its side,
+an up-and-down line ... they call it office of intelligent navels ...
+the lumber camp ... machine goes chug-rip, chug-rip ... and the place
+where they cut metal like wood on machines that spin around ... a
+deathly-sick little fellow loaded down and chained ... fell on his
+face, he can't get up, his bowels are water, his muscles are stiff, like
+dry branches and he's afraid ... they curse him, they beat him, they
+take him to a machine that spins ... _they_ ... _they_--_they_--"
+
+She sat bolt upright, screaming. Her eyes didn't see Charles. He drew
+back one hand and slammed it across her cheek in a slap that
+reverberated like a pistol shot. Her head rocked to the blow and her
+eyes snapped back from infinity-focus.
+
+She never told Charles what they had done to the sick slave in the
+machine shop, and he never asked her.
+
+Without writing equipment, for crutches, Charles doubted profoundly that
+he'd be able to hang onto any of the material she supplied. He
+surprised himself; his memory developed with exercise.
+
+The shadowy ranks of the New Portsmouth personnel became solider daily
+in his mind; the chronically-fatigued ordnance-man whose mainspring was
+to get by with the smallest possible effort; the sex-obsessed little man
+in Intelligence who lived only for the brothels where he selected older
+women--women who looked like his mother; the human weasel in BuShips who
+was impotent in bed and a lacerating tyrant in the office; the admiral
+who knew he was dying and hated his juniors proportionately to their
+youth and health.
+
+And--
+
+"... this woman of yours ... she ain't at home there ... she ain't
+at ... at home ... _anywhere_. ... the fat man, the one that kills,
+he's talking to her but she isn't ... yes she is ... no she isn't--she's
+answering him, talking about over-the-sea...."
+
+"Lee Falcaro," Charles whispered. "Lee Bennet."
+
+The trance-frozen face didn't change; the eerie whisper went on without
+interruption: "... Lee Bennet on her lips, Lee Falcaro down deep in her
+guts ... and the face of Charles Orsino down there too...."
+
+An unexpected pang went through him.
+
+He sorted and classified endlessly what he had learned. He formed and
+rejected a dozen plans. At last there was one he could not reject.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Commander Grinnel was officer of the day, and sore as a boil about it.
+O.N.I. wasn't supposed to catch the duty. You risked your life on
+cloak-and-dagger missions; let the shore-bound fancy dans do the
+drudgery. But there he was, nevertheless, in the guard house office with
+a .45 on his hip, the interminable night stretching before him, and the
+ten-man main guard snoring away outside.
+
+He eased his bad military conscience by reflecting that there wasn't
+anything to guard, that patrolling the shore establishment was just worn
+out tradition. The ships and boats had their own watch. At the very
+furthest stretch of the imagination, a tarzan might sneak into town and
+try to steal some ammo. Well, if he got caught he got caught. And if he
+didn't, who'd know the difference with the accounting as sloppy as it
+was here? They did things differently in Iceland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They crept through the midnight dark of New Portsmouth's outskirts. As
+before, she led with her small hand. Lights flared on a wharf where,
+perhaps, a boat was being serviced. A slave screamed somewhere under the
+lash or worse.
+
+"Here's the doss house," Martha whispered. It was smack between
+paydays--part of the plan--and the house was dark except for the
+hopefully-lit parlor. They ducked down the alley that skirted it and
+around the back of Bachelor Officer Quarters. The sentry, if he were
+going his rounds at all, would be at the other end of his post when they
+passed--part of the plan.
+
+Lee Falcaro was quartered alone in a locked room of the O.N.I. building.
+Martha had, from seventy miles away, frequently watched the lock being
+opened and closed.
+
+They dove under the building's crumbling porch two minutes before a late
+crowd of drinkers roared down the street and emerged when they were
+safely gone. There was a charge of quarters, a little yeoman, snoozing
+under a dim light in the O.N.I. building's lobby.
+
+"Anybody else?" Charles whispered edgily.
+
+"No. Just her. She's asleep. Dreaming about--never mind. Come on
+Charles. He's out."
+
+The little yeoman didn't stir as they passed him and crept up the
+stairs. Lee Falcaro's room was part of the third-floor attic, finished
+off specially. You reached it by a ladder from a second-floor one-man
+office.
+
+The lock was an eight-button piccolo--very rare in New Portsmouth and
+presumably loot from the mainland. Charles' fingers flew over it:
+1-7-5-4-, 2-2-7-3-, 8-2-6-6- and it flipped open silently.
+
+But the door squeaked.
+
+"She's waking up!" Martha hissed in the dark. "She'll yell!"
+
+Charles reached the bed in two strides and clamped his hand over Lee
+Falcaro-Bennet's mouth. Only a feeble "mmm!" came out, but the girl
+thrashed violently in his grip.
+
+"Shut up, lady!" Martha whispered. "Nobody's going to rape you."
+
+There was an astonished "mmm?" and she subsided, trembling.
+
+"Go ahead," Martha told him. "She won't yell."
+
+He took his hand away nervously. "We've come to administer the oath of
+citizenship," he said.
+
+The girl answered in the querulous voice that was hardly hers: "You
+picked a strange time for it. Who are you? What's all the whispering
+for?"
+
+He improvised. "I'm Commander Lister. Just in from Iceland aboard atom
+sub _Taft_. They didn't tell you in case it got turned down, but I was
+sent for authorization to give you citizenship. You know how unusual it
+is for a woman."
+
+"Who's this child? And why did you get me up in the dead of night?"
+
+He dipped deeply into Martha's probings of the past week.
+"Citizenship'll make the Guard Intelligence gang think twice before they
+try to grab you again. Naturally they'd try to block us if we
+administered the oath in public. Ready?"
+
+"Dramatic," she sneered. "Oh, I suppose so. Get it over with."
+
+"Do you, Lee Bennet, solemnly renounce all allegiances previously held
+by you and pledge your allegiance to the North American Government?"
+
+"I do," she said.
+
+There was a choked little cry from Martha. "Hell's fire," she said.
+"Like breaking a leg!"
+
+"What are you talking about, little girl?" Lee asked, coldly alert.
+
+"It's all right," Charles said wearily. "Don't you know my voice? I'm
+Orsino. You turned me in back there because they don't give, citizenship
+to women and so your de-conditioning didn't get triggered off. I managed
+to break for the woods. A bunch of natives got me. I busted loose with
+the help of Martha here. Among her other talents, the kid's a mind
+reader. I remember the triggering shocked me out of a year's growth; how
+do you feel?"
+
+Lee was silent, but Martha answered in a voice half puzzled and half
+contemptuous: "She feels fine, but she's crying."
+
+"Am not," Lee Falcaro gulped.
+
+Charles turned from her, embarrassed. In a voice that strove to be
+normal, he whispered to Martha: "What about the boat?"
+
+"Still there," she said.
+
+Lee Falcaro said tremulously: "Wh-wh-what boat?"
+
+"Martha's staked out a reactor-driven patrol speedboat at a wharf. One
+guard aboard. She--watched it in operation and I have some small-boat
+time. I really think we can grab it. If we get a good head-start, they
+don't have anything based here that'll catch up with it. If we get a
+break on the weather, their planes won't be able to pick us up."
+
+Lee Falcaro stood up, dashing tears from her eyes. "Then let's go," she
+said evenly.
+
+"How's the C.Q.--that man downstairs, Martha?"
+
+"Still sleepin'. The way's as clear now as it'll ever be."
+
+They closed the door behind them and Charles worked the lock. The Charge
+of Quarters looked as though he couldn't be roused by anything less
+than an earthquake as they passed--but Martha stumbled on one of the
+rotting steps after they were outside the building.
+
+"Patrick and Bridget rot my clumsy feet off!" she whispered. "He's
+awake."
+
+"Under the porch," Charles said. They crawled into the dank space
+between porch floor and ground. Martha kept up a scarcely-audible
+volleyfire of maledictions aimed at herself.
+
+When they stopped abruptly Charles knew it was bad.
+
+Martha held up her hand for silence, and Charles imagined in the dark
+that he could see the strained and eerie look of her face. After a pause
+she whispered: "He's using the--what do you call it? You talk and
+somebody hears you far away? A prowler he says to them. A wild man from
+the woods. The bitches bastard must have seen you in your handsome suit
+of skin and dirt, Charles. Oh, we're _for_ it! May my toe that stumbled
+grow the size of a boulder! May my cursed eyes that didn't see the step
+fall out!"
+
+They huddled down in the darkness and Charles took Lee Falcaro's hand
+reassuringly. It was cold. A moment later his other hand was taken, with
+grim possessiveness, by the child.
+
+Martha whispered: "The fat little man. The man who kills, Charles."
+
+He nodded. He thought he had recognized Grinnel from her picture.
+
+"And ten men waking up. Charles, do you remember the way to the wharf?"
+
+"Sure," he said. "But we're net going to get separated."
+
+"They're mean, mad men," she said. "Bloody-minded. And the little man is
+the worst."
+
+They heard the stomping feet and a babble of voices, and Commander
+Grinnel's clear, fat-man's tenor: "Keep it quiet, men. He may still be
+in the area." The feet thundered over their heads on the porch.
+
+In the barest of whispers Martha said: "The man that slept tells them
+there was only one, and he didn't see what he was like except for the
+bare skin and the long hair. And the fat man says they'll find him
+and--and--and says they'll find him." Her hand clutched Charles'
+desperately and then dropped it as the feet thudded overhead again.
+
+Grinnel was saying: "Half of you head up the street and half down. Check
+the alleys, check open window--hell, I don't have to tell you. If we
+don't find the bastard on the first run we'll have to wake up the whole
+Guard Battalion and patrol the whole base with them all the goddam
+night, so keep your eyes open. Take off."
+
+"Remember the way to the wharf, Charles," Martha said. "Good-bye lady.
+Take care of him. Take good care of him." She wrenched her hand away and
+darted out from under the porch.
+
+Lee muttered some agonized monosyllable. Charles started out after the
+child instinctively and then collapsed weakly back onto the dirt. They
+heard the rest.
+
+"Hey, you--it's him, by God! Get him! Get him!"
+
+"Here he is, down here! Head him off!"
+
+"Over there!" Grinnel yelled. "Head him off! Head him--good work!"
+
+"For God's sake. It's a girl."
+
+"Those goddam yeomen and their goddam prowlers."
+
+Grinnel: "Where are you from, kid?"
+
+"That's no kid from the base, commander. Look at her!"
+
+"I just was, sarge. Looks good to me, don't it to you?"
+
+Grinnel, tolerant, fatherly, amused: "Now, men, have your fun but keep
+it quiet."
+
+"Don't be afraid, kid--" There was an animal howl from Martha's throat
+that made Lee Falcaro shake hysterically and Charles grind his
+fingernails into his palms.
+
+Grinnel: "Sergeant, you'd better tie your shirt around her head and take
+her into the O.N.I. building."
+
+"Why, commander! And let that lousy little yeoman in on it?"
+
+Grinnel, amused, a good Joe, a man's man: "That's up to you, men. Just
+keep it quiet."
+
+"Why, commander, sometimes I like to make a little noise--"
+
+"Ow!" a man yelled. There was a scuffle of feet and babbling voices.
+"Get her, you damn fool!" "She bit my hand--" "There she goes--" and a
+single emphatic shot.
+
+Grinnel's voice said into the silence that followed: "That's that, men."
+
+"Did you _have_ to shoot, Commander?" an aggrieved Guardsman said.
+
+"Don't blame me, fellow. Blame the guy that let her go."
+
+"God-dammit, she bit me--"
+
+Somebody said as though he didn't mean it: "We ought to take her
+someplace."
+
+"The hell with that. Let 'em get her in the morning."
+
+"Them as wants her." A cackle of harsh laughter.
+
+Grinnel, tolerantly: "Back to the guardhouse, men. And keep it quiet."
+
+They scuffled off and there was silence again for long minutes. Charles
+said at last: "We'll go down to the wharf." They crawled out and looked
+for a moment from the shelter of the building at the bundle lying in the
+road.
+
+Lee muttered: "Grinnel."
+
+"Shut up," Charles said. He led her down deserted alleys and around
+empty corners, strictly according to plan.
+
+The speedboat was a twenty-foot craft at Wharf Eighteen, bobbing on the
+water safely removed from other moored boats and ships. Lee Falcaro let
+out a small, smothered shriek when she saw a uniformed sailor sitting in
+the cockpit, apparently staring directly at them.
+
+"It's all right," Charles said. "He's a drunk. He's always out cold by
+this time of night." Smoothly Charles found the rope locker, cut lengths
+with the sailor's own knife and bound and gagged him. The man's eyes
+opened, weary, glazed and red while this was going on and closed again.
+"Help me lug him ashore," Charles said. Lee Falcaro took the sailor's
+legs and they eased him onto the wharf.
+
+They went back into the cockpit. "This is deep water," Charles said, "so
+you'll have no trouble with pilotage. You can read a compass and charts.
+There's an automatic dead reckoner. My advice is just to pull the
+moderator rods out quarter-speed, point the thing west, pull the rods
+out as far as they'll go--and relax. Either they'll overtake you or they
+won't."
+
+She was beginning to get the drift. She said nervously: "You're talking
+as though you're not coming along."
+
+"I'm not," he said, playing the lock of the arms rack. The bar fell
+aside and he pulled a .45 pistol from its clamp. He thought back and
+remembered where the boat's diminutive magazine was located, broke the
+feeble lock and found a box of short, fat, heavy little cartridges. He
+began to snap them into the pistol's magazine.
+
+"What do you think you're up to?" Lee Falcaro demanded.
+
+"Appointment with Commander Grinnel," he said. He slid the heavy
+magazine into the pistol's grip and worked the slide to jack a cartridge
+into the chamber.
+
+"Shall I cast off for you?" he asked.
+
+"Don't be a fool," she said. "You sound like a revival of a Mickey
+Spillane comedy. You can't bring her back to life and you've got a job
+to do for the Syndic."
+
+"You do it," he said, and snapped another of the blunt, fat, little
+cartridges into the magazine.
+
+She cast off, reached for the moderator-rod control and pulled it hard.
+
+"Gee," he gasped, "you'll sink us!" and dashed for the controls. You had
+seconds before the worm-gears turned, the cadmium rods withdrew from
+their slots, the reactor seethed and sent boiling metal cycling through
+the turbine--
+
+He slammed down manual levers that threw off the fore and aft mooring
+lines, spun the wheel, bracing himself, and saw Lee Falcaro go down to
+the deck in a tangle, the .45 flying from her hand and skidding across
+the knurled plastic planking. But by then the turbine was screaming an
+alarm to the whole base and they were cutting white water through the
+buoy-marked gap in the harbor net.
+
+Lee Falcaro got to her feet. "I'm not proud of myself," she said to him.
+"But she told me to take care of you."
+
+He said grimly: "We could have gone straight to the wharf without that
+little layover to pick you up. Take the wheel."
+
+"Charles, I--"
+
+He snarled at her.
+
+"_Take the wheel._"
+
+She did, and he went aft to stare through the darkness. The harbor
+lights were twinkling pin-points; then his eyes misted so he could not
+see them at all. He didn't give a damn if a dozen corvettes were already
+slicing the bay in pursuit. He had failed.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+It was a dank fog-shrouded morning. Sometime during the night the quill
+of the dead reckoner had traced its fine red line over the 30th
+meridian. Roughly half-way, Charles Orsino thought, rubbing the sleep
+from his eyes. But the line was straight as a string for the last four
+hours of their run. The damn girl must have fallen asleep on watch. He
+glared at her in the bow and broke open a ration. Blandly oblivious to
+the glare, she said: "Good morning."
+
+Charles swallowed a mouthful of chocolate, half-chewed, and choked on
+it. He reached hastily for water and found the tall plastic column of
+the ion-exchange apparatus empty. "Damn it," he snarled, "why didn't you
+refill this thing when you emptied it? And why didn't you zig-zag
+overnight? You're utterly irresponsible." He hurled the bucket overside,
+hauled it up and slopped seawater into the apparatus. Now there'd be a
+good twenty minutes before a man-sized drink accumulated.
+
+"Just a minute," she told him steadily. "Let's straighten this out. I
+haven't had any water on the night watch so I didn't have any occasion
+to refill the tube. You must have taken the last of the water with your
+dinner. And as for the zig-zag, you said we should run a straightaway
+now and then to mix it up. I decided that last night was as good a time
+as any."
+
+He took a minute drink from the reservoir, stalling. There was
+something--yes; he had _meant_ to refill the apparatus after his dinner
+ration. And he _had_ told her to give it a few hours of straightaway
+some night....
+
+He said formally: "You're quite right on both counts. I apologize." He
+bit into a ration.
+
+"That's not good enough," she said. "I'm not going to have you tell me
+you're sorry and then go scowling and sulking about the boat. In fact I
+don't like your behavior at all."
+
+He said, enormously angry: "_Oh, you don't do you?_" and hated her, the
+world and himself for the stupid inadequacy of the comeback.
+
+"No. I don't. I'm seriously worried. I'm afraid the conditioning you got
+didn't fall away completely when they swore you in. You've been acting
+irrationally and inconsistently."
+
+"What about you?" he snapped. "You got conditioned too."
+
+"That's right," she said. "That's another reason why you're worrying me.
+I find impulses in myself that have no business there. I simply seem to
+do a better job of controlling them than you're doing. For instance:
+we've been quarreling and at cross-purposes ever since you and Martha
+picked me up. That couldn't be unless I were contributing to the
+friction."
+
+The wheel was fixed; she took a step or two aft and said professorially:
+"I've never had trouble getting along with people. I've had differences,
+of course, and at times I've allowed myself displays of temper when it
+was necessary to assert myself. But I find that you upset me; that for
+some reason or other your opinion on a matter is important to me, that
+if it differs with mine there should be a reconciliation."
+
+He put down the ration and said wonderingly: "Do you know, that's the
+way I feel about you? And you think it's the conditioning or--or
+something?" He took a couple of steps forward, hesitantly.
+
+"Yes," she said in a rather tremulous voice. "The conditioning or
+something. For instance, you're inhibited. You haven't made an indecent
+proposition to me, not even as a matter of courtesy. Not that I care, of
+course, but--" In stepping aft, she tripped over the water bucket and
+went down to the deck with a faint scream.
+
+He said: "Here, let me help you." He picked her up and didn't let go.
+
+"Thanks," she said faintly. "The conditioning technique can't be called
+faulty, but it has inherent limitations...." She trailed off and he
+kissed her. She kissed back and said more faintly still: "Or it might be
+the drugs we used.... Oh, Charles, what _took_ you so long?"
+
+He said, brooding: "You're way out of my class, you know. I'm just a
+bagman for the New York police. I wouldn't even be that if it weren't
+for Uncle Frank, and you're a Falcaro. It's just barely thinkable that I
+could make a pass at you. I guess that held me off and I didn't want to
+admit it so I got mad at you instead. Hell, I could have swum back to
+the base and made a damned fool of myself trying to find Grinnel, but
+down inside I knew better. The kid's _gone_."
+
+"We'll make a psychologist of you yet," she said.
+
+"Psychologist? Why? You're joking."
+
+"No. It's not a joke. You'll _like_ psychology, darling. You can't go on
+playing polo forever, you know."
+
+Darling! What was he getting into? Old man Gilby was four-goal at sixty,
+wasn't he? Good God, was he hooked into marriage at twenty-three? Was
+she married already? Did she know or care whether he was? Had she been
+promiscuous? Would she continue to be? He'd never know; that was the one
+thing you never asked; your only comfort, if you needed comfort, was
+that she could never dream of asking you. What went on here? Let me out!
+
+It went through his mind in a single panicky flash and then he said:
+"The hell with it," and kissed her again.
+
+She wanted to know: "The hell with what, darling?"
+
+"Everything. Tell me about psychology. I can't go on playing polo
+forever."
+
+It was an hour before she got around to telling him about psychology:
+"The neglect has been criminal--and inexplicable. For about a century
+it's been _assumed_ that psychology is a dead fallacy. Why?"
+
+"All right," he said amiably, playing with a lock of her hair. "Why?"
+
+"Lieberman," she said. "Lieberman of Johns-Hopkins. He was one of the
+old-line topological psychology men--don't let the lingo throw you,
+Charles; it's just the name of a system. He wrote an attack on
+the _mengenlehre_ psychology school--point-sets of emotions,
+class-inclusions of reactions and so on. He blasted them to bits by
+proving that their constructs didn't correspond to the emotions and
+reactions of random-sampled populations. And then came the pay-off: he
+tried the same acid test on his _own_ school's constructs and found out
+that they didn't correspond either. It didn't frighten him; he was a
+scientist. He published, and then the jig was up. Everybody, from full
+professors to undergraduate students went down the roster of the schools
+of psychology and wrecked them so comprehensively that the field was as
+dead as palmistry in twenty years. The miracle is that it hadn't
+happened before. The flaws were so glaring! Textbooks of the older kind
+solemnly described syndromes, psychoses, neuroses that simply couldn't
+be found in the real world! And that's the way it was all the way down
+the line."
+
+"So where does that leave us?" Charles demanded. "Is it or isn't it a
+science?"
+
+"It is," she said simply. "Lieberman and his followers went too far. It
+became a kind of hysteria. The experimenters must have been too eager.
+They misread results, they misinterpreted statistics, they misunderstood
+the claims of a school and knocked down not its true claims but
+straw-man claims they had set up themselves."
+
+"But--_psychology_!" Charles protested, obscurely embarrassed at the
+thought that man's mind was subject to scientific study--not because he
+knew the first thing about it, but because _everybody_ knew psychology
+was phony.
+
+She shrugged. "I can't help it. We were doing physiology of the sensory
+organs, trying to settle the oldie about focusing the eye, and I got to
+grubbing around the pre-Lieberman texts looking for light in the
+darkness. Some of it sounded so--not sensible, but _positive_ that I ran
+off one of Lieberman's population checks. And the old boy had been dead
+wrong. _Mengenlehre_ constructs correspond quite nicely to the actual
+way people's minds work. I kept checking and the schools that were
+destroyed as hopelessly fallacious a century ago checked out, some
+closely and some not so closely, as good descriptions of the way the
+mind works. Some have predictive value. I used _mengenlehre_ psychology
+algorithms to compute the conditioning on you and me, including the
+trigger release. It worked. You see, Charles? We're on the rim of
+something tremendous!"
+
+"When did this Lieberman flourish?"
+
+"I don't have the exact dates in my head. The breakup of the schools
+corresponded roughly with the lifetime of John G. Falcaro."
+
+That pin-pointed it rather well. John G. succeeded Rafael, who succeeded
+Amadeo Falcaro, first leader of the Syndic in revolt. Under John G., the
+hard-won freedom was enjoyed, the bulging store-houses were joyously
+emptied, craft union rules went joyously out the window and builders
+_worked_, the dollar went to an all-time high and there was an all-time
+number of dollars in circulation. It had been an exhuberant time still
+fondly remembered; just the time for over-enthusiastic rebels against a
+fusty scholasticism to joyously smash old ways of thought without too
+much exercise of the conscience. It all checked out.
+
+She started and he got to his feet. A hardly-noticed discomfort was
+becoming acute; the speedboat was pitching and rolling quite seriously,
+for the first time since their escape. "Dirty weather coming up," he
+said. "We've been too damned lucky so far." He thought, but didn't
+remark, that there was much to worry about in the fact that there seemed
+to have been no pursuit. The meager resources of the North American Navy
+wouldn't be spent on chasing a single minor craft--not if the weather
+could be counted on to finish her off.
+
+"I thought we were unsinkable?"
+
+"In a way. Seal the boat and she's unsinkable the way a corked bottle
+is. But the boat's made up of a lot of bits and pieces that go together
+just so. Pound her for a few hours with waves and the bits and pieces
+give way. She doesn't sink, but she doesn't steam or steer either. I
+wish the Syndic had a fleet on the Atlantic."
+
+"Sorry," she said. "The nearest fleet I know of is Mob ore boats on the
+great lakes and they aren't likely to pick us up."
+
+The sea-search radar pinged and they flew to the screen. "_Something_ at
+273 degrees, about eight miles," he said. "It can't be pursuit. They
+couldn't have any reason at all to circle around us and come at us from
+ahead." He strained his eyes into the west and thought he could see a
+black speck on the gray.
+
+Lee Falcaro tried a pair of binoculars and complained: "These things
+won't work."
+
+"Not on a rolling, pitching platform they won't--not with an optical
+lever eight miles long. I don't suppose this boat would have a
+gyro-stabilized signal glass." He spun the wheel to 180; they staggered
+and clung as the bow whipped about, searched and steadied on the new
+course. The mounting waves slammed them broadside-to and the rolling
+increased. They hardly noticed; their eyes were on the radarscope.
+Fogged as it was with sea return, they nevertheless could be sure after
+several minutes that the object had changed course to 135. Charles made
+a flying guess at her speed, read their own speed off and scribbled for
+a moment.
+
+He said nothing, but spun the wheel to 225 and went back to the
+radarscope. The object changed course to 145. Charles scribbled again
+and said at last, flatly: "They're running collision courses on us.
+Automatically computed, I suppose, from a radar. We're through."
+
+He spun the wheel to 180 again, and studied the crawling green spark on
+the radarscope. "This way we give 'em the longest run for their money
+and can pray for a miracle. The only way we can use our speed to outrun
+them is to turn around and head back into Government Territory--which
+isn't what we want. Relax, Lee. Maybe if the weather thickens they'll
+lose us--no; not with radar."
+
+They sat together on a bunk, wordlessly, for hours while the spray
+dashed higher and the boat shivered to hammering waves. Briefly they saw
+the pursuer, three miles off, low, black and ugly, before fog closed in
+again.
+
+At nightfall there was the close, triumphant roar of a big reaction
+turbine and a light stabbed through the fog, flooding the boat with
+blue-white radiance. A cliff-like black hull loomed alongside as a
+bull-horn roared at them: "Cut your engines and come about into the
+wind."
+
+Lee Falcaro read white-painted letters on the black hull: "_Hon. James
+J. Regan, Chicago_." She turned to Charles and said wonderingly: "It's
+an ore boat. From the Mob great lakes fleet."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+"Here?" Charles demanded. "_Here?_"
+
+"No possible mistake," she said, stunned. "When you're a Falcaro you
+travel. I've seen 'em in Duluth, I've seen 'em in Quebec, I've seen 'em
+in Buffalo."
+
+The bull-horn voice roared again, dead in the shroud of fog; "Come into
+the wind and cut your engines or we'll put a shell into you."
+
+Charles turned the wheel and wound in the moderator rod; the boat
+pitched like a splinter on the waves. There was a muffled double
+explosion and two grapnels crunched into the plastic hull, bow and
+stern. As the boat steadied, sharing the inertia of the ore ship, a dark
+figure leaped from the blue-white eye of the searchlight to their deck.
+And another. And another.
+
+"Hello, Jim," Lee Falcaro said almost inaudibly. "Haven't met since Las
+Vegas, have we?"
+
+The first boarder studied her cooly. He was built for football or any
+other form of mayhem. He ignored Charles completely. "Lee Falcaro as
+advised. Do you still think twenty reds means a black is bound to come
+up? You always were a fool, Lee. And now you're in real trouble."
+
+"What's going on, mister?" Charles snapped. "We're Syndics and I presume
+you're Mobsters. Don't you recognize the treaty?"
+
+The boarder turned to Charles inquiringly. "Some confusion," he said.
+"Max Wyman? Charles Orsino? Or just some wild man from outback?"
+
+"Orsino," Charles said formally. "Second cousin of Edward Falcaro, under
+the guardianship of Francis W. Taylor."
+
+The boarder bowed slightly. "James Regan IV," he said. "No need to list
+my connections. It would take too long and I feel no need to justify
+myself to a small-time dago chisler. Watch him gentlemen!"
+
+Charles found his arms pinned by Regan's two companions. There was a gun
+muzzle in his ribs.
+
+Regan shouted to the ship and a ladder was let down. Lee Falcaro and
+Charles climbed it with guns at their backs. He said to her: "Who is
+that lunatic?" It did not even occur to him that the young man was who
+he claimed to be--the son of the Mob Territory opposite number of Edward
+Falcaro.
+
+"He's Regan," she said. "And I don't know who's the lunatic, him or me.
+Charles, I'm sorry, terribly sorry, I got you into this."
+
+He managed to smile. "I volunteered," he said.
+
+"Enough talk," Regan said, following them onto the deck. Dull-eyed
+sailors watched them incuriously, and there were a couple of anvil-jawed
+men with a stance and swagger Charles had come to know. Guardsmen--he
+would have staked his life on it. Guardsmen of the North American
+Government Navy--aboard a Mob Territory ship and acting as if they were
+passengers or high-rated crewmen.
+
+Regan smirked: "I'm on the horns of a dilemma. There are no
+accomodations that are quite right for you. There are storage
+compartments which are worse than you deserve and there are passenger
+quarters which are too good for you. I'm afraid it will have to be one
+of the compartments. Your consolation will be that it's only a short run
+to Chicago."
+
+Chicago--headquarters for Mob Territory. The ore ship had been on a
+return trip to Chicago when alerted somehow by the Navy to intercept the
+fugitives. _Why?_
+
+"Down there," one of the men gestured briskly with a gun. They climbed
+down a ladder into a dark, oily cavern fitfully lit by a flash in
+Regan's hand.
+
+"Make yourselves comfortable," Regan told them. "If you get a headache,
+don't worry. We were carrying some avgas on the outward run." The flash
+winked out and a door clanged on them.
+
+"I can't believe it," Charles said. "That's a top Mob man? Couldn't you
+be mistaken?" He groped in the dark and found her. The place did reek of
+gasoline.
+
+She clung to him and said: "Hold me, Charles.... Yes that's Jimmy Regan.
+
+"That's what will become top man in the Mob. Jimmy's a charmer at a Las
+Vegas Hotel. Jimmy's a gourmet when he orders at the Pump Room and he's
+trying to overawe you. Jimmy plays polo too, but he's crippled three of
+his own team-mates because he's not very good at it. I kept telling
+myself whenever I ran into him that he was just an accident, the Mob
+could survive him. But his father acts--funny. There's something with
+them, there's some--
+
+"They roll out the carpet when you show up but the people around them
+are afraid of them. There's a story I never believed--but I believe it
+now. What would happen if my uncle pulled out a pistol and began
+screaming and shot a waiter: Jimmy's father did it, they tell me. And
+nothing happened except that the waiter was dragged away and everybody
+said it was a good thing Mr. Regan saw him reach for his gun and shot
+him first. Only the waiter didn't have any gun.
+
+"I saw Jimmy last three years ago. I haven't been in Mob Territory
+since. I didn't like it there. Now I know why. Give Mob Territory enough
+time and it'll be like New Portsmouth. Something went wrong with them.
+We have the Treaty of Las Vegas and a hundred years of peace and there
+aren't many people going back and forth between Syndic and Mob except
+for a few high-ups like me who have to circulate. Manners. So you pay
+duty calls and shut your eyes to what they're really like.
+
+"_This_ is what they're like. This dark, damp stinking compartment. And
+my uncle--and all the Falcaros--and you--and I--we aren't like them. Are
+we? _Are we?_" Her fingers bit into his arms. She was shaking.
+
+"Easy," he soothed her. "Easy, easy. We're all right. We'll be all
+right. I think I've got it figured out. This must be some private
+gun-running Jimmy's gone in for. Loaded an ore boat with avgas and ammo
+and ran it up the Seaway. If anybody in Syndic Territory gave a damn
+they thought it was a load of ore for New Orleans via the Atlantic and
+the Gulf. But Jimmy ran his load to Ireland or Iceland, H.Q. A little
+private flier of his. He wouldn't dare harm us. There's the Treaty and
+you're a Falcaro."
+
+"Treaty," she said. "I tell you they're all in it. Now that I've seen
+the Government in action I understand what I saw in Mob Territory.
+They've gone rotten, that's all. They've gone rotten. The way he treated
+you, because he thought you didn't have his rank! Sometimes my uncle's
+high-handed, sometimes he tells a person off, sometimes he lets him know
+he's top man in the Syndic and doesn't propose to let anybody teach him
+how to suck eggs. But the spirit's different. In the Syndic it's parent
+to child. In the Mob it's master to slave. Not based on age, not based
+on achievement, but based on the accident of birth. You tell me 'You're
+a Falcaro' and that packs weight. Why? Not because I was born a Falcaro
+but because they let me stay a Falcaro. If I hadn't been brainy and
+quick, they'd have adopted me out before I was ten. They don't do that
+in Mob Territory. Whatever chance sends a Regan is a Regan then and
+forever. Even if it's a paranoid constitutional inferior like Jimmy's
+father. Even if it's a giggling pervert like Jimmy.
+
+"God, Charles, I'm scared.
+
+"At last I know these people and I'm scared. You'd have to see Chicago
+to know why. The lakefront palaces, finer than anything in New York.
+Regan Memorial Plaza, finer than Scratch Sheet Square--great gilded
+marble figures, a hundred running yards of heroic frieze. But the hovels
+you see only by chance! Gray brick towers dating from the Third Fire!
+The children with faces like weasels, the men with faces like hogs, the
+women with figures like beer barrels and all of them glaring at you when
+you drive past as if they could cut your throat with joy. I never
+understood the look in their eyes until now, and you'll never begin to
+understand what I'm talking about until you see their eyes...."
+
+Charles revolted against the idea. It was too gross to go down. It
+didn't square with his acquired picture of life in North America and
+therefore Lee Falcaro must be somehow mistaken or hysterical. "There,"
+he murmured, stroking her hair. "We'll be all right. We'll be all
+right." He tried to soothe her.
+
+She twisted out of his arms and raged: "I _won't_ be humored. They're
+mad, I tell you. Dick Reiner was right. We've got to wipe out the
+Government. But Frank Taylor was right too. We've got to blast the Mob
+before they blast us. They've died and decayed into something too
+horrible to bear. If we let them stay on the continent, with us their
+stink will infect us and poison us to death. We've got to do something.
+We've got to do something."
+
+"What?"
+
+It stopped her cold. After a minute she uttered a shaky laugh. "The fat,
+sloppy, happy Syndic," she said, "sitting around while the wolves
+overseas and the maniacs across the Mississippi are waiting to jump.
+Yes--do what?"
+
+Charles Orsino was not good at arguments or indeed at any abstract
+thinking. He knew it. He knew the virtues that had commended him to F.
+W. Taylor were his energy and an off-hand talent for getting along with
+people. But something rang terribly false in Lee's words.
+
+"That kind of thinking doesn't get you anywhere, Lee," he said slowly.
+"I didn't absorb much from Uncle Frank, but I did absorb this: you run
+into trouble if you make up stories about the world and then act as if
+they're true. The Syndic isn't somebody sitting around. The Government
+isn't wolves. The Mobsters aren't maniacs. And they aren't waiting to
+jump on the Syndic. The Syndic isn't anything that's jumpable. It's some
+people and their morale and credit."
+
+"Faith is a beautiful thing," Lee Falcaro said bitterly. "Where'd you
+get yours?"
+
+"From the people I knew and worked with. Numbers-runners, bookies,
+sluts. Decent citizens."
+
+"And what about the scared and unhappy ones in Riveredge? That sow of a
+woman in the D.A.R. who smuggled me aboard a coast raider? The neurotics
+and psychotics I found more and more of when I invalidated the Lieberman
+findings? Charles, the North American Government didn't scare me
+especially. But the thought that they're lined up with a continental
+power does. It scares me damnably because it'll be three against one.
+Against the Syndic, the Mob, the Government--and our own unbalanced
+citizens."
+
+Uncle Frank never let that word "citizens" pass without a tirade. "We
+are not a government!" he always yelled. "We are not a government! We
+must not think like a government! We must not think in terms of duties
+and receipts and disbursements. We must think in terms of the old
+loyalties that bound the Syndic together!" Uncle Frank was sedentary,
+but he had roused himself once to the point of wrecking a bright young
+man's newly installed bookkeeping system for the Medical Center. He had
+used a cane, most enthusiastically, and then bellowed: "The next wise
+guy who tries to sneak punch-cards into this joint will get them down
+his throat! What the hell do we need punch-cards for? Either there's
+room enough and doctors enough for the patients or there isn't. If there
+is, we take care of them. If there isn't, we put 'em in an ambulance and
+take them someplace else. And if I hear one goddammed word about
+'efficiency'--" he glared the rest and strode out, puffing and leaning
+on Charles' arm. "Efficiency," he growled in the corridor. "Every so
+often a wise guy comes to me whimpering that people are getting away
+with murder, collections are ten per cent below what they ought to be,
+the Falcaro Fund's being milked because fifteen per cent of the dough
+goes to people who aren't in need at all, eight per cent of the people
+getting old-age pensions aren't really past sixty. Get efficient, these
+people tell me. Save money by triple-checking collections. Save money by
+tightening up the Fund rules. Save money by a nice big vital-statistics
+system so we can check on pensioners. Yeah! Have people who might be
+_working_ check on collections instead, and make enemies to boot
+whenever we catch somebody short. Make the Fund a grudging Scrooge
+instead of an open-handed sugar-daddy--and let people _worry_ about
+their chances of making the Fund instead of _knowing_ it'll take care of
+them if they're caught short. Set up a vital statistics system from
+birth to death, with numbers and finger-prints and house registration
+and maybe the gas-chamber if you forget to report a change of address.
+You know what's wrong with the wise guys, Charles? Constipation. And
+they want to constipate the universe." Charles remembered his uncle
+restored to chuckling good humor by the time he had finished
+embroidering his spur-of-the-moment theory with elaborate scatological
+details.
+
+"The Syndic will stand," he said to Lee Falcaro, thinking of his uncle
+who knew what he was doing, thinking of Edward Falcaro who did the right
+thing without knowing why, thinking of his good friends in the 101st
+Precinct, the roaring happy crowds in Scratch Sheet Square, the
+good-hearted men of Riveredge Breakdown Station 26 who had borne with
+his sullenness and intolerance simply because that was the way things
+were and that was the way you acted. "I don't know what the Mob's up to,
+and I got a shock from the Government, and I don't deny that we have a
+few miserable people who can't seem to be helped. But you've seen too
+much of the Mob and Government and our abnormals. Maybe you don't know
+as much as you should about our ordinary people. Anyway, all we can do
+is wait."
+
+"Yes," she said. "All we can do is wait. Until Chicago we have each
+other."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+They were too sick with gasoline fumes to count the passing hours or
+days. Food was brought to them from time to time, but it tasted like
+avgas. They could not think for the sick headaches that pounded
+incessantly behind their eyes. When Lee developed vomiting spasms that
+would not stop, Charles Orsino pounded on the bulkhead with his fists
+and yelled, his voice thunderous in the metal compartment, for an hour.
+
+Somebody came at last--Regan. The light stabbed Charles' eyes when he
+opened the door. "Trouble?" Regan asked, smirking.
+
+"Miss Falcaro may be dying," Charles said. His own throat felt as though
+it had been gone over with a cobbler's rasp. "I don't have to tell you
+your life won't be worth a dime if she dies and it gets back to Syndic
+Territory. She's got to be moved and she's got to have medical
+attention."
+
+"Death threat from the dago?" Regan was amused. "I have it on your own
+testimony that the Syndic is merely morale and people and credit--not a
+formidable organization. Yes, there was a mike in here. One reason for
+your discomfort. You'll be gratified to learn that I thought most of
+your conversation decidedly dull. However, the lady will be of no use to
+us dead and we're now in the Seaway entering Lake Michigan. I suppose it
+can't do any harm to move you two. Pick her up, will you? I'll let you
+lead the way--and I'll remind you that I may not, as the lady said, be a
+four-goal polo player but I am a high expert with the handgun. Get
+moving."
+
+Charles did not think he could pick his own feet up, but the thought of
+pleading weakness to Regan was unbearable. He could try. Staggering, he
+got Lee Falcaro over his shoulder and through the door. Regan
+courteously stood aside and murmured: "Straight ahead and up the ramp.
+I'm giving you my own cabin. We'll be docking soon enough; I'll make
+out."
+
+Charles dropped her onto a sybaritic bed in a small but
+lavishly-appointed cabin. Regan whistled up a deckhand and a ship's
+officer of some sort, who arrived with a medicine chest. "Do what you
+can for her, mister," he told the officer. And to the deckhand: "Just
+watch them. They aren't to touch anything. If they give you trouble,
+you're free to punch them around a bit." He left, whistling.
+
+The officer fussed unhappily over the medicine chest and stalled by
+sponging off Lee Falcaro's face and throat. The deckhand watched
+impassively. He was a six-footer, and he hadn't spent days inhaling
+casing-head fumes. The trip-hammer pounding behind Charles's eyes seemed
+to be worsening with the fresher air. He collapsed into a seat and
+croaked, with shut eyes: "While you're trying to figure out the
+vomiting, can I have a handful of aspirins?"
+
+"Eh? Nothing was said about you. You were in Number Three with her? I
+suppose it'll be all right. Here." He poured a dozen tablets into
+Charles' hand. "Get him some water, you." The deckhand brought a glass
+of water from the adjoining lavatory and Charles washed down some of the
+tablets. The officer was reading a booklet, worry written on his face.
+"Do you know any medicine?" he finally asked.
+
+The hard-outlined, kidney-shaped ache was beginning to diffuse through
+Charles' head, more general now and less excruciating. He felt
+deliciously sleepy, but roused himself to answer: "Some athletic trainer
+stuff. I don't know--morphine? Curare?"
+
+The officer ruffled through the booklet. "Nothing about vomiting," he
+said. "But it says curare for muscular cramp and I guess that's what's
+going on. A lipoid suspension to release it slowly into the bloodstream
+and give the irritation time to subside. Anyway, I can't kill her if I
+watch the dose...."
+
+Charles, through half-opened eyes, saw Lee Falcaro's arm reach behind
+the officer's back to his medicine chest. The deckhand's eyes were
+turning to the bed--Charles heaved himself to his feet, skyrockets going
+off again through his head, and started for the lavatory. The deckhand
+grabbed his arm. "Rest, mister! Where do you think you're going?"
+
+"Another glass of water--"
+
+"_I'll_ get it. You heard my orders."
+
+Charles subsided. When he dared to look again, Lee's arm lay alongside
+her body and the officer was triple-checking dosages in his booklet
+against a pressurized hypodermic spray. The officer sighed and addressed
+Lee: "You won't even feel this. Relax." He read his setting on the spray
+again, checked it again against the booklet. He touched the syringe to
+the skin of Lee's arm and thumbed open the valve. It hissed for a moment
+and Charles knew submicroscopic particles of the medication had been
+blasted under Lee's skin too fast for nerves to register the shock.
+
+His glass of water came and he gulped it greedily. The officer packed
+the pressurized syringe away, folded the chest and said to both of them,
+rather vaguely: "That should do it. If, uh, if anything happens--or if
+it doesn't work--call me and I'll try something else. Morphine, maybe."
+
+He left and Charles slumped in the chair, the pain ebbing and sleep
+beginning to flow over him. Not yet, he told himself. She hooked
+something from the chest. He said to the deckhand: "Can I clean the lady
+and myself up?"
+
+"Go ahead, mister. You can use it. Just don't try anything."
+
+The man lounged in the door-frame of the lavatory alternately studying
+Charles at the wash-basin and Lee on the bed. Charles took off a heavy
+layer of oily grease from himself and then took washing tissues to the
+bed. Lee Falcaro's spasms were tapering off. As he washed her, she
+managed a smile and an unmistakable wink.
+
+"You folks married?" the deckhand asked.
+
+"No," Charles said. Weakly she held up her right arm for the washing
+tissue. As he scrubbed the hand, he felt a small cylinder smoothly
+transferred from her palm to his. He slid it into a pocket and finished
+the job.
+
+The officer popped in again with a carton of milk. "Any better, miss?"
+he asked.
+
+"Yes," she whispered.
+
+"Good. Try to drink this." Immensely set up by his success in treatment,
+he hovered over her for a quarter of an hour getting the milk down a sip
+at a time. It stayed down. He left trailing a favorable prognosis.
+Meanwhile, Charles had covertly examined Lee's booty: a pressurized
+syringe labeled _morphine sulfate sol_. It was full and ready. He
+cracked off the protective cap and waited his chance.
+
+It came when Lee grimaced at him and called the deckhand in a feeble
+murmur. She continued to murmur so indistinctly that he bent over trying
+to catch the words. Charles leaned forward and emptied the syringe at
+one inch range into the taut seat of the deckhand's pants. He scratched
+absently and said to Lee: "You'll have to talk up, lady." Then he
+giggled, looked bewildered and collapsed on the floor, staring, coked to
+the eyebrows.
+
+Lee painfully sat up on the bed. "Porthole," she said.
+
+Charles went to it and struggled with the locking lugs. It opened--and
+an alarm bell began to clang through the ship. _Now_ he saw the
+hair-fine, broken wire. An alarm trip-wire.
+
+Feet thundered outside and the glutinous voice of Jimmy Regan was heard:
+"Wait, you damn fools! You in there--is everything all right? Did they
+try to pull something?"
+
+Charles kept silent and shook his head at the girl. He picked up a chair
+and stood by the door. The glutinous voice again, in a mumble that
+didn't carry through--and the door sprang open. Charles brought the
+chair down in a murderous chop, conscious only that it seemed curiously
+light. There was an impact and the head fell.
+
+It was Regan, with a drawn gun. It had been Regan. His skull was smashed
+before he knew it. Charles felt as though he had all the time in the
+world. He picked up the gun to a confused roar like a slowed-down sound
+track and emptied it into the corridor. It had been a full automatic,
+but the fifteen shots seemed as well-spaced as a ceremonial salute.
+Regan, in his vanity, wore two guns. Charles scooped up the other and
+said to Lee: "Come on."
+
+He knew she was following as he raced down the cleared corridor and down
+the ramp, back to the compartment in which they had been locked. Red
+danger lights burned on the walls. Charles flipped the pistol to
+semi-automatic as they passed a red-painted bulkhead with valves and
+gages sprouting from it. He turned and fired three deliberate shots into
+it. The last was drowned out by a dull roar as gasoline fumes exploded.
+Pipe fittings and fragments of plate whizzed about them like bullets as
+they raced on.
+
+Somebody ahead loomed, yelling querulously: "What the hell was that,
+Mac? What blew?"
+
+"Where's the reactor room?" Charles demanded, jamming the pistol into
+his chest. The man gulped and pointed.
+
+"Take me there. Fast."
+
+"Now _look_, Mac--"
+
+Charles told him in a few incisive details where and how he was going to
+be shot. The man went white and led them down the corridor and into the
+reactor room. Three white-coated men with the aloof look of reactor
+specialists stared at them as they bulled into the spotless chamber.
+
+The oldest sniffed: "And what, may I ask, are you crewmen doing in--"
+
+Lee slammed the door behind them and said: "Sound the radiation alarm."
+
+"Certainly not! You must be the couple we--"
+
+"_Sound the radiation alarm._" She picked up a pair of dividers from the
+plot board and approached the technician with murder on her face. He
+gaped until she poised the needle points before his eyes and repeated:
+"_Sound the radiation alarm._" Nobody in the room, including Charles,
+had the slightest doubt that the points would sink into the technician's
+eyeballs if he refused.
+
+"Do what she says, Will," he mumbled, his eyes crossing on the dividers.
+"For God's sake, do what she says. She's crazy."
+
+One of the men moved, very cautiously, watching Charles and the gun, to
+a red handle and pulled it down. A ferro-concrete barrier rose to wall
+off the chamber and the sine-curve wail of a standard radioactivity
+warning began to howl mournfully through the ship.
+
+"Dump the reactor metal," Charles said. His eyes searched for the exit,
+and found it--a red-painted breakaway panel, standard for a hot lab.
+
+A technician wailed: "We _can't_ do that! We can't _do_ that! A million
+bucks of thorium with a hundred years of life in it--have a heart,
+mister! They'll crucify us!"
+
+"They can dredge for it," Charles said. "Dump the metal."
+
+"Dump the metal," Lee said. She hadn't moved.
+
+The senior technician's eyes were still on the bright needle points. He
+was crying silently. "Dump it," he said.
+
+"Okay, chief. Your responsibility, remember."
+
+"Dump it!" wailed the senior.
+
+The technician did something technical at the control board. After a
+moment the steady rumbling of the turbines ceased and the ship's deck
+began to wallow underfoot.
+
+"Hit the panel, Lee," Charles said. She did, running. He followed her
+through the oval port. It was like an open-bottomed diving bell welded
+to the hull. There were large, luminous cleats for pulling yourself
+down through the water, under the rim of the bell. He dropped the pistol
+into the water, breathed deeply a couple of times and began to climb
+down. There was no sign of Lee.
+
+He kicked up through the dark water on a long slant away from the ship.
+It might be worse. With a fire and a hot-lab alarm and a dead chief
+aboard, the crew would have things on their mind besides looking for
+bobbing heads.
+
+He broke the surface and treaded water to make a minimum target. He did
+not turn to the ship. His dark hair would be less visible than his white
+face. And if he was going to get a burst of machine-gun bullets through
+either, he didn't want to know about it. Ahead he saw Lee's blonde hair
+spread on the water for a moment and then it vanished. He breathed
+hugely, ducked and swam under water toward it.
+
+When he rose next a sheet of flame was lightening the sky and the oily
+reek of burning hydrocarbons tainted the air. He dove again, and this
+time caught up with Lee. Her face was bone-white and her eyes blank.
+Where she was drawing her strength from he could not guess. Behind them
+the ship sent up an oily plume and the sine-curve wail of the
+radioactivity warning could be faintly heard. Before them a dim shore
+stretched.
+
+He gripped her naked arm, roughened by the March waters of Lake
+Michigan, bent it around his neck and struck off for the shore. His
+lungs were bursting in his chest and the world was turning gray-black
+before his burning eyes. He heaved his tired arm through the water as
+though each stroke would be his last, but the last stroke, by some
+miracle, never was the last.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+It hadn't been easy to get time off from the oil-painting factory. Ken
+Oliver was a little late when he slid into the aseptic-smelling waiting
+room of the Michigan City Medical Center. A parabolic mike in the
+ceiling trained itself on the heat he radiated and followed him across
+the floor to a chair. A canned voice said: "State your business,
+please."
+
+He started a little and said in the general direction of the mike: "I'm
+Ken Oliver. A figure man in the Blue Department, Picasso Oils and
+Etching Corporation. Dr. Latham sent me here for--what do you call
+it?--a biopsy."
+
+"Thank you, please be seated."
+
+He smiled because he was seated already and picked up a magazine, the
+current copy of the _Illinois Sporting News_, familiarly known as the
+Green Sheet. Everybody in Mob Territory read it. The fingers of the
+blind spelled out its optimism and its selections at Hawthorne in
+Braille. If you were not only blind but fingerless, there was a talking
+edition that read itself aloud to you from tape.
+
+He riffled through the past performances and selections to the articles.
+This month's lead was--_Thank God I am Dying of Throat Cancer_.
+
+He leaned back in the chair dizzily, the waiting room becoming gray mist
+around him. _No_, he thought. _No._ It couldn't be that. All it could be
+was a little sore on the back of his throat--no more than that. Just a
+little sore on the back of his throat. He'd been a fool to go to Latham.
+The fees were outrageous and he was behind, always a little behind, on
+his bills. But cancer--so much of it around--and the drugs didn't seem
+to _help_ any more.... But Latham had almost promised him it was
+non-malignant.
+
+"Mr. Oliver," the loudspeaker said, "please go to Dr. Riordan's office,
+Number Ten."
+
+Riordan was younger than he. That was supposed to be bad in a
+general practitioner, good in a specialist. And Riordan was a
+specialist--pathology. A sour-faced young specialist.
+
+"Good morning. Sit here. Open your mouth. Wider than that, and relax.
+_Relax_; your glottis is locked."
+
+Oliver couldn't protest around the plastic-and-alcohol taste of the
+tongue depressor. There was a sudden coldness and a metallic _snick_
+that startled him greatly; then Riordan took the splint out of his mouth
+and ignored him as he summoned somebody over his desk set. A young man,
+even younger than Riordan, came in. "Freeze, section and stain this
+right away," the pathologist said, handing him a forceps from which a
+small blob dangled. "Have them send up the Rotino charts, three hundred
+to nine hundred inclusive."
+
+He began to fill out charts, still ignoring Oliver, who sat and sweated
+bullets for ten minutes. Then he left and was back in five minutes more.
+
+"You've got it," he said shortly. "It's operable and you won't lose much
+tissue." He scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed it to Oliver. The
+painter numbly read: "... anterior ... epithelioma ... metastases ...
+giant cells...."
+
+Riordan was talking again: "Give this to Latham. It's my report. Have
+him line up a surgeon. As to the operation, I say the sooner the better
+unless you care to lose your larynx. That will be fifty dollars."
+
+"Fifty dollars," the painter said blankly. "But Dr. Latham told me--" He
+trailed off and got out his check book. Only thirty-two in the account,
+but he would deposit his paycheck today which would bring it up. It was
+after three so his check wouldn't go in today--he wrote out the slip
+slowly and carefully.
+
+Riordan took it, read it suspiciously, put it away and said: "Good day,
+Mr. Oliver."
+
+Oliver wandered from the Medical Center into the business heart of the
+art colony. The Van Gogh Works on the left must have snagged the big
+order from Mexico--their chimneys were going full blast and the reek of
+linseed oil and turps was strong in the air. But the poor beggars on the
+line at Rembrandts Ltd. across the square were out of luck. They'd been
+laid off for a month now, with no sign of a work call yet. Somebody
+jostled him off the sidewalk, somebody in a great hurry. Oliver sighed.
+The place was getting more like Chicago every day. He sometimes thought
+he had made art his line not because he had any special talent but
+because artists were relatively easy-going people, not so quick to pop
+you in the nose, not such aggressive drunks when they _were_ drunks.
+
+Quit the stalling, a thin, cold voice inside him said. Get over to
+Latham. The man said "The sooner the better."
+
+He went over to Latham whose waiting room was crowded with irascible
+women. After an hour, he got to see the old man and hand him the slip.
+
+Latham said: "Don't worry about a thing. Riordan's a good man. If he
+says it's operable, it's operable. Now we want Finsen to do the
+whittling. With Finsen operating, you won't have to worry about a thing.
+He's a good man. His fee's fifteen hundred."
+
+"Oh, my God!" Oliver gulped.
+
+"What's the matter--haven't you got it?"
+
+To his surprise and terror, Oliver found himself giving Dr. Latham a
+hysterical stump speech about how he didn't have it and who did have it
+and how could anybody get ahead with the way prices were shooting up and
+everybody gouged you every time you turned around and yes, that went for
+doctors too and if you did get a couple of bucks in your pocket the
+salesmen heard about it and battered at you until you put down an
+installment on some piece of junk you didn't want to get them out of
+your hair and what the hell kind of world was this anyway.
+
+Latham listened, smiling and nodding, with, as Oliver finally realized,
+his hearing aid turned off. His voice ran down and Latham said briskly:
+"All right, then. You just come around when you've arranged the
+financial details and I'll contact Finsen. He's a good man; you won't
+have to worry about a thing. And remember: the sooner, the better."
+
+Oliver slumped out of the office and went straight to the Mob Building,
+office of the Regan Benevolent Fund. An acid-voiced woman there turned
+him down indignantly: "You should be ashamed of yourself trying to draw
+on the Fund when there are people in actual want who can't be
+accommodated! No, I don't want to hear any more about it if you please.
+There are others waiting."
+
+Waiting for what? The same treatment?
+
+Oliver realized with a shock that he hadn't phoned his foreman as
+promised, and it was four minutes to five. He did a dance of agonized
+impatience outside a telephone booth occupied by a fat woman. She
+noticed him, pursed her lips, hung up--and stayed in the booth. She
+began a slow search of her hand-bag, found coins and slowly dialed a new
+number. She gave him a malevolent grin as he walked away, crushed. He
+had a good job record, but that was no way to keep it good. One black
+mark, another black mark, and one day--bingo.
+
+General Advances was open, of course. Through its window you could see
+handsome young men and sleek young women just waiting to help you,
+whatever the fiscal jam. He went in and was whisked to a booth where a
+big-bosomed honey-voiced blonde oozed sympathy over him. He walked out
+with a check for fifteen hundred dollars after signing countless papers,
+with the creamy hand of the girl on his to help guide the pen. What was
+printed on the papers, God and General Advances alone knew. There were
+men on the line who told him with resignation that they had been paying
+off to G.A. for the better part of their lives. There were men who said
+bitterly that G.A. was owned by the Regan Benevolent Fund, which must be
+a lie.
+
+The street was full of people--strangers who didn't look like your
+run-of-the-mill artist. Muscle men, with the Chicago style and if
+anybody got one in the gut, too goddamned bad about it. They were
+peering into faces as they passed.
+
+He was frightened. He stepped onto the slidewalk and hurried home,
+hoping for temporary peace there. But there was no peace for his frayed
+nerves. The apartment house door opened obediently when he told it:
+"Regan," but the elevator stood stupidly still when he said: "Seventh
+Floor." He spat bitterly and precisely: "_Sev-enth Floor._" The doors
+closed on him with a faintly derisive, pneumatic moan and he was whisked
+up to the eighth floor. He walked down wearily and said: "Cobalt blue"
+to his own door after a furtive look up and down the hall. It worked and
+he went to his phone to flash Latham, but didn't. Oliver sank instead
+into a dun-colored pneumatic chair, his 250-dollar Hawthorne Electric
+Stepsaver door mike following him with its mindless snout. He punched a
+button on the chair and the 600-dollar hi-fi selected a random tape. A
+long, pure melodic trumpet line filled the room. It died for two beats
+and than the strings and woodwinds picked it up and tossed it--
+
+Oliver snapped off the music, sweat starting from his brow. It was the
+Gershwin _Lost Symphony_, and he remembered how Gershwin had died. There
+had been a little nodule in his brain as there was a little nodule in
+Oliver's throat.
+
+Time, the Great Kidder. The years drifted by. Suddenly you were
+middle-aged, running to the medics for this and that. Suddenly they told
+you to have your throat whittled out or die disgustingly. And what did
+you have to show for it? A number, a travel pass, a payment book from
+General Advance, a bunch of junk you never wanted, a job that was a
+heavier ball and chain than any convict ever wore in the barbarous days
+of Government. Was this what Regan and Falcaro had bled for?
+
+He defrosted some hamburger, fried it and ate it and then went
+mechanically down to the tavern. He didn't like to drink every night,
+but you had to be one of the boys, or word would get back to the plant
+and you might be on your way to another black mark. They were racing
+under the lights at Hawthorne too, and he'd be expected to put a couple
+of bucks down. He never seemed to win. Nobody he knew ever seemed to
+win. Not at the horses, not at the craps table, not at the numbers.
+
+He stood outside the neon-bright saloon for a long moment, and then
+turned and walked into the darkness away from town, possessed by
+impulses he did not understand or want to understand. He had only a
+vague hope that standing on the Dunes and looking out across the dark
+lake might somehow soothe him.
+
+In half an hour he had reached the deciduous forest, then the pine,
+then the scrubby brushes, then the grasses, then the bare white sand.
+And lying in it he found two people: a man so hard and dark he seemed to
+be carved from oak and a woman so white and gaunt she seemed to be
+carved from ivory.
+
+He turned shyly from the woman.
+
+"Are you all right?" he asked the man. "Is there anything I can do?"
+
+The man opened red-rimmed eyes. "Better leave us alone," he said. "We'd
+only get you into trouble."
+
+Oliver laughed hysterically. "Trouble?" he said. "Don't think of it."
+
+The man seemed to be measuring him with his eyes, and said at last:
+"You'd better go and not talk about us. We're enemies of the Mob."
+
+Oliver said after a pause: "So am I. Don't go away. I'll be back with
+some clothes and food for you and the lady. Then I can help you to my
+place. I'm an enemy of the Mob too. I just never knew it until now."
+
+He started off and then turned. "You won't go away? I mean it. I want to
+help you. I can't seem to help myself, but perhaps there's something--"
+
+The man said tiredly: "We won't go away."
+
+Oliver hurried off. There was something mingled with the scent of the
+pine forest tonight. He was half-way home before he identified it: oil
+smoke.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Lee swore and said: "I can get up if I want to."
+
+"You'll stay in bed whether you want to or not," Charles told her.
+"You're a sick woman."
+
+"I'm a very bad-tempered woman and that means I'm convalescent. Ask
+anybody."
+
+"I'll go right out into the street and do that, darling."
+
+She got out of bed and wrapped Oliver's dressing gown around her. "I'm
+hungry again," she said.
+
+"He'll be back soon. You've left nothing but some frozen--worms, looks
+like. Shall I defrost them?"
+
+"Please don't trouble. I can wait."
+
+"Window!" he snapped.
+
+She ducked back and swore again, this time at herself. "Sorry," she
+said. "Which will do us a whole hell of a lot of good if somebody saw me
+and started wondering."
+
+Oliver came in with packages. Lee kissed him and he grinned shyly.
+"Trout," he whispered. She grabbed the packages and flew to the
+kitchenette.
+
+"The way to Lee Falcaro's heart," Charles mused. "How's your throat,
+Ken?"
+
+"No pain, today," Oliver whispered. "Latham says I can talk as much as I
+like. And I've got things to talk about." He opened his coat and hauled
+out a flat package that had been stuffed under his belt. "Stolen from
+the factory. Brushes, pens, tubes of ink, drawing instruments. My
+friends, you are going to return to Syndic Territory in style, with
+passes and permits galore."
+
+Lee returned. "Trout's frying," she said. "I heard that about the
+passes. Are you _sure_ you can fake them?"
+
+His face fell. "Eight years at the Chicago Art Institute," he whispered.
+"Three years at Original Reproductions, Inc. Eleven years at Picasso
+Oils and Etchings, where I am now third figure man in the Blue
+Department. I really think I deserve your confidence."
+
+"Ken, we trust and love you. If it weren't for the difference in your
+ages I'd marry you _and_ Charles. Now what about the Chicagoans? Hold
+it--the fish!"
+
+Dinner was served and cleared away before they could get more out of
+Oliver. His throat wasn't ready for more than one job at a time. He told
+them at last: "Things are quieting down. There are still some strangers
+in town and the road patrols are still acting very hard-boiled. But
+nobody's been pulled in today. Somebody told me on the line that the
+whole business is a lot of foolishness. He said the ship must have been
+damaged by somebody's stupidity and Regan must have been killed in a
+brawl--everybody knows he was half crazy, like his father. So my friend
+figures they made up the story about two wild Europeans to cover up a
+mess. I said I thought there was a lot in what he said." Oliver laughed
+silently.
+
+"Good man!" Charles tried not to act over-eager. "When do you think you
+can start on the passes, Ken?"
+
+Oliver's face dropped a little. "Tonight," he whispered. "I don't
+suppose the first couple of tries will be any good so--let's go."
+
+Lee put her hand on his shoulder. "We'll miss you too," she said. "But
+don't ever forget this: we're coming back. Hell won't stop us. We're
+coming back."
+
+Oliver was arranging stolen instruments on the table. "You have a big
+order," he whispered sadly. "I guess you aren't afraid of it because
+you've always been rich and strong. Anything you want to do you think
+you can do. But those Government people? And after them the Mob? Maybe
+it would be better if you just let things take their course, Lee. I've
+found out a person can be happy even here."
+
+"We're coming back," Lee said.
+
+Oliver took out his own Michigan City-Chicago travel permit. As always,
+the sight of it made Charles wince. Americans under such a yoke! Oliver
+whispered: "I got a good long look today at a Michigan City Buffalo
+permit. The foreman's. He buys turps from Carolina at Buffalo. I
+sketched it from memory as soon as I got by myself. I don't swear to it,
+not yet, but I have the sketch to practice from and I can get a few more
+looks later."
+
+He pinned down the drawing paper, licked a ruling pen and filled it, and
+began to copy the border of his own pass. "I don't suppose there's
+anything I can do?" Lee asked.
+
+"You can turn on the audio," Oliver whispered. "They have it going all
+the time at the shop. I don't feel right working unless there's some
+music driving me out of my mind."
+
+Lee turned on the big Hawthorne Electric set with a wave of her hand;
+imbecillic music filled the air and Oliver grunted and settled down.
+
+Lee and Charles listened, fingers entwined, to half an hour of slushy
+ballads while Oliver worked. The news period announcer came on with some
+anesthetic trial verdicts, sports results and society notes about which
+Regan had gone where. Then--
+
+"The local Mobsters of Michigan City, Indiana, today welcomed Maurice
+Regan to their town. Mr. Regan will assume direction of efforts to
+apprehend the two European savages who murdered James Regan IV last
+month aboard the ore boat _Hon. John Regan_ in waters off Michigan City.
+You probably remember that the Europeans did some damage to the vessel's
+reactor room before they fled from the ship. How they boarded the ship
+and their present whereabouts are mysteries--but they probably won't be
+mysteries long. Maurice Regan is little-known to the public, but he has
+built an enviable record in the administration of the Chicago Police
+Department. Mr. Regan on taking charge of the case, said this: 'We know
+by traces found on the Dunes that they got away. We know from the logs
+of highway patrols that they didn't get out of the Michigan City area.
+The only way to close the books on this matter fast is to cover the city
+with a fine-tooth comb. Naturally and unfortunately this will mean
+inconvenience to many citizens. I hope they will bear with the
+inconveniences gladly for the sake of confining those two savages in a
+place where they can no longer be a menace. I have methods of my own and
+there may be complaints. Reasonable suggestions will be needed, but with
+crackpots I have no patience.'"
+
+The radio began to spew more sports results. Oliver turned and waved at
+it to be silent. "I don't like that," he whispered. "I never heard of
+this Regan in the Chicago Police."
+
+"They said he wasn't in the public eye."
+
+"I wasn't the public. I did some posters for the police and I knew who
+was who. And that bit at the end. I've heard things like it before. The
+Mob doesn't often admit it's in the wrong, you know. When they try to
+disarm criticism in advance ... this Regan must be a rough fellow."
+
+Charles and Lee Falcaro looked at each other in sudden fear. "We don't
+want to hurry you, Ken," she said. "But it looks as though you'd better
+do a rush job."
+
+Nodding, Oliver bent over the table. "Maybe a week," he said hopefully.
+With the finest pen he traced the curlicues an engraving lathe had
+evolved to make the passes foolproof. Odd, he thought--the lives of
+these two hanging by such a weak thing as the twisted thread of color
+that feeds from pen to paper. And, as an afterthought--I suppose mine
+does too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oliver came back the next day to work with concentrated fury, barely
+stopping to eat and not stopping to talk. Lee got it out of him, but not
+easily. After being trapped in a half dozen contradictions about feeling
+well and having a headache, about his throat being sore and the pain
+having gone, he put down his pen and whispered steadily: "I didn't want
+you to worry friends. But it looks bad. There is a new crowd in town.
+Twenty couples have been pulled in by them--_couples_ to prove who they
+were. Maybe fifty people have been pulled in for questioning--what do
+you know about this, what do you know about that. And they've begun
+house searches. Anybody you don't like, you tell the new Regan about
+him. Say he's sheltering Europeans. And his people pull them in. Why,
+everybody wants to know, are they pulling in couples who are obviously
+American if they're looking for Europeans? And, everybody says, they've
+never seen anything like it. Now--I think I'd better get back to work."
+
+"Yes," Lee said. "I think you had."
+
+Charles was at the window, peering around the drawn blind. "Look at
+that," he said to Lee. She came over. A big man on the street below was
+walking, very methodically down the street.
+
+"I will bet you," Charles said, "that he'll be back this way in ten
+minutes or so--and so on through the night."
+
+"I won't take the bet," she said. "He's a sentry, all right. The Mob's
+learning from their friends across the water. Learning too damned much.
+They must be all over town."
+
+They watched at the window and the sentry was back in ten minutes. On
+his fifth tour he stopped a young couple going down the street studied
+their faces, drew a gun on them and blew a whistle. A patrol came and
+took them away; the girl was hysterical. At two in the morning, the
+sentry was relieved by another, just as big and just as dangerous
+looking. At two in the morning they were still watching and Oliver was
+still hunched over the table tracing exquisite filigree of color.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In five days, virtually without sleep, Oliver finished two Michigan
+City-Buffalo travel permits. The apartment house next door was hit by
+raiders while the ink dried; Charles and Lee Falcaro stood waiting
+grotesquely armed with kitchen knives. But it must have been a tip
+rather than part of the search plan crawling nearer to their end of
+town. The raiders did not hit their building.
+
+Oliver had bought clothes according to Lee's instructions--including two
+men's suits, Oliver's size. One she let out for Charles; the other she
+took in for herself. She instructed Charles minutely in how he was to
+behave, on the outside. First he roared with incredulous laughter; Lee,
+wise, in psychology assured him that she was perfectly serious. Oliver,
+puzzled by his naivete, assured him that such things were not
+uncommon--not at least in Mob Territory. Charles then roared with
+indignation and Lee roared him down. His last broken protest was: "But
+what'll I do if somebody takes me up on it?"
+
+She shrugged, washing her hands of the matter, and went on trimming and
+dying her hair.
+
+It was morning when she kissed Oliver good-bye, said to Charles: "See
+you at the station. Don't say good-bye," and walked from the apartment,
+a dark-haired boy with a slight limp. Charles watched her down the
+street. A cop turned to look after her and then went on his way.
+
+Half an hour later Charles shook hands with Oliver and went out.
+
+Oliver didn't go to work that day. He sat all day at the table, drawing
+endless slow sketches of Lee Falcaro's head.
+
+Time the Great Kidder, he thought. He opens the door that shows you in
+the next room tables of goodies, colorful and tasty, men and women
+around the tables pleasantly surprised to see you, beckoning to you to
+join the feast. We have roast beef if you're serious, we have caviar if
+you're experimental, we have baked alaska if you're frivolous--join the
+feast; try a little bit of everything. So you start toward the door.
+
+Time, the Great Kidder, pulls the rug from under your feet and slams the
+door while the guests at the feast laugh their heads off at your painful
+but superficial injuries.
+
+Oliver slowly drew Lee's head for the fifteenth time and wished he dared
+to turn on the audio for the news. Perhaps he thought, the next voice
+you hear will be the cops at the door.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Charles walked down the street and ran immediately into a challenge from
+a police sergeant.
+
+"Where you from, mister?" the cop demanded, balanced and ready to draw.
+
+Charles gulped and let Lee Falcaro's drilling take over. "Oh, around,
+sergeant. I'm from around here."
+
+"What're you so nervous about?"
+
+"Why, sergeant, you're such an exciting type, really. Did anybody ever
+tell you you look well in uniform?"
+
+The cop glared at him and said: "If I wasn't in uniform, I'd hang one on
+you sister. And if the force wasn't all out hunting the lunatics, that
+killed Mr. Regan I'd pull you in for spitting on the sidewalk. Get to
+hell off my beat and stay off. I'm not forgetting your face."
+
+Charles scurried on. It had worked.
+
+It worked once more with a uniformed policeman. One of the Chicago
+plain-clothes imports was the third and last. He socked Charles in the
+jaw and sent him on his way with a kick in the rear. He had been
+thoroughly warned that it would probably happen: "Count on them to
+over-react. That's the key to it. You'll make them so eager to assert
+their own virility, that it'll temporarily bury their primary mission.
+It's quite likely that one or more pokes will be taken at you. All you
+can do is take them. If you get--_when_ you get through, they'll be
+cheap at the price."
+
+The sock in the jaw hadn't been very expert. The kick in the pants was
+negligible, considering the fact that it had propelled him through the
+gate of the Michigan City Transport Terminal.
+
+By the big terminal clock the Chicago-Buffalo Express was due in fifteen
+minutes. Its gleaming single rail, as tall as a man crossed the far end
+of the concourse. Most of the fifty-odd people in the station were
+probably Buffalo-bound ... safe geldings who could be trusted to visit
+Syndic Territory, off the leash and return obediently. Well-dressed, of
+course, and many past middle-age, with a stake in the Mob Territory
+stronger than hope of freedom. One youngster, though--oh. It was Lee,
+leaning, slack-jawed, against a pillar and reading the Green Sheet.
+
+Who were the cops in the crowd? The thickset man with restless eyes, of
+course. The saintly-looking guy who kept moving and glancing into faces.
+
+Charles went to the newsstand and put a coin in the slot for _The Mob--A
+Short History_, by the same Arrowsmith Hunde who had brightened and
+misinformed his youth.
+
+Nothing to it, he thought. Train comes in, put your money in the
+turnstile, show your permit to the turnstile's eye, get aboard and
+that-is-that. Unless the money is phony, or the pass is phony in which
+case the turnstile locks and all hell breaks loose. His money was just
+dandy, but the permit now--there hadn't been any way to test it against
+a turnstile's template, or time to do it if there had been a way. Was
+the probability of boarding two to one?
+
+The probability abruptly dropped to zero as a round little man flanked
+by two huge men entered the station.
+
+_Commander Grinnel._
+
+The picture puzzle fell into a whole as the two plainclothesmen
+circulating in the station eyed Grinnel and nodded to him. The big one
+absent-mindedly made a gesture that was the start of a police salute.
+
+Grinnel was Maurice Regan--the Maurice Regan mysteriously unknown to
+Oliver, who knew the Chicago police. Grinnel was a bit of a lend-lease
+from the North American Navy, called in because of his unique knowledge
+of Charles Orsino and Lee Falcaro, their faces, voices and behavior.
+Grinnel was the expert in combing the city without any nonsense about
+rights and mouthpieces. Grinnel was the expert who could set up a
+military interior guard of the city. Grinnel was the specialist
+temporarily invested with the rank of a Regan so he could do his job.
+
+The round little man with the halo of hair walked briskly to the
+turnstile and there stood at a military parade rest with a look of
+resignation on his face.
+
+How hard on me it is, he seemed to be saying, that I have such dull damn
+duty. How hard that an officer of my brilliance must do sentry-go for
+every train to Syndic Territory.
+
+The slack-jawed youth who was Lee Falcaro looked at him over her Green
+Sheet and nodded before dipping into the Tia Juana past performances
+again. She knew.
+
+Passengers were beginning to line up at the turnstile, smoothing out
+their money and fiddling with their permits. In a minute he and Lee
+Falcaro would have to join the line or stand conspicuously on the
+emptying floor. The thing was dead for twenty-four hours now, until the
+next train--and then Grinnel headed across the floor looking very
+impersonal. The look of a man going to the men's room. The station cops
+and Grinnel's two bruisers drifted together at the turnstile and began
+to chat.
+
+Charles followed Grinnel, wearing the same impersonal look, and entered
+the room almost on his heels.
+
+Grinnel saw him in a wash-bowl mirror; simultaneously he half turned,
+opened his mouth to yell and whipped his hand into his coat. A single
+round-house right from Charles crunched into the soft side of his neck.
+He fell with his head twisted at an odd angle. Blood began to run from
+the corner of his mouth onto his shirt.
+
+"Remember Martha?" Charles whispered down at the body. "That was for
+murder." He looked around the tiled room. There was a mop closet with
+the door ajar, and Grinnel's flabby body fitted in it.
+
+Charles walked from the washroom to the line of passengers across the
+floor. It seemed to go on for miles. Lee Falcaro was no longer lounging
+against the past. He spotted her in line, still slack-jawed, still
+gaping over the magazine. The monorail began to sing shrilly with the
+vibration of the train braking a mile away, and the turnstile "unlocked"
+light went on.
+
+There was the usual number of fumblers, the usual number of "please
+unfold your currency" flashes. Lee carried through to the end with her
+slovenly pose. For her the sign said: "incorrect denominations." Behind
+her a man snarled: "for Christ's sake, kid, we're all waiting on you!"
+The cops only half noticed; they were talking. When Charles got to the
+turnstile one of the cops was saying: "Maybe it's something he ate.
+How'd _you_ like somebody to barge in--"
+
+The rest was lost in the clicking of the turnstile that let him through.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He settled in a very pneumatic chair as the train accelerated evenly to
+a speed of three hundred and fifty miles per hour. A sign in the car
+said that the next stop was Buffalo. And there was Lee, lurching up the
+aisle against the acceleration. She spotted him, tossed the Green Sheet
+in the Air and fell into his lap.
+
+"Disgusting!" snarled a man across the aisle. "Simply disgusting!"
+
+"You haven't seen anything yet," Lee told him, and kissed Charles on the
+mouth.
+
+The man choked: "I shall certainly report this to the authorities when
+we arrive in Buffalo!"
+
+"Mmm," said Lee, preoccupied. "Do that, mister. Do that."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+"I didn't like his reaction," Charles told her in the anteroom of F. W.
+Taylor's office. "I didn't talk to him long on the phone, but I don't
+like his reaction at all. He seemed to think I was exaggerating. Or all
+wet. Or a punk kid."
+
+"I can assure him you're not that," Lee Falcaro said warmly. "Call on me
+any time."
+
+He gave her a worried smile. The door opened then and they went in.
+
+Uncle Frank looked up. "We'd just about written you two off," he said.
+"What's it like?"
+
+"Bad," Charles said. "Worse than anything you've imagined. There's an
+underground, all right, and they are practicing assassination."
+
+"Too bad," the old man said. "We'll have to shake up the bodyguard
+organization. Make 'em de rigeur at all hours, screen 'em and see that
+they really know how to shoot. I hate to meddle, but we can't have the
+Government knocking our people off."
+
+"It's worse than that," Lee said. "There's a tie-up between the
+Government and the Mob. We got away from Ireland aboard a speed boat and
+we were picked up by a Mob lakes ore ship. It had been running gasoline
+and ammunition to the Government. Jimmy Regan was in charge of the deal.
+We jumped into Lake Michigan and made our way back here. We were in Mob
+Territory--down among the small-timers--long enough to establish that
+the Mob and Government are hand in glove. One of these day's they're
+going to jump us."
+
+"Ah," Taylor said softly. "I've thought so for a long time."
+
+Charles burst out: "Then for God's sake, Uncle Frank, why haven't you
+_done_ anything? You don't know what it's like out there. The
+Government's a nightmare. They have slaves. And the Mob's not much
+better. Numbers! Restrictions! Permits! Passes! And they don't call it
+that, but they have taxes!"
+
+"They're mad," Lee said. "Quite mad. And I'm talking technically.
+Neurotics and psychotics swarm in the streets of Mob Territory. The
+Government, naturally--but the Mob was a shock. We've got to get ready,
+Mr. Taylor. Every psychotic or severe neurotic in Syndic Territory is a
+potential agent of theirs."
+
+"Don't just check off the Government, darling," Charles said tensely.
+"They've got to be smashed. They're no good to themselves or anybody
+else. Life's a burden there if only they knew it. And they're holding
+down the natives by horrible cruelty."
+
+Taylor leaned back and asked: "What do you recommend?"
+
+Charles said: "A fighting fleet and an army."
+
+Lee said: "Mass diagnosis of the unstable. Screening of severe cases and
+treatment where it's indicated. Riveredge must be a plague-spot of
+agents."
+
+Taylor shook his head and told them: "It won't do."
+
+Charles was aghast. "It won't _do_? Uncle Frank, what the hell do you
+mean, it won't do? Didn't we make it clear? They want to invade us and
+loot us and subject us!"
+
+"It won't do," Taylor said. "I choose the devil we know. A fighting
+fleet is out. We'll arm our merchant vessels and hope for the best. A
+full-time army is out. We'll get together some-kind of militia. And a
+roundup of the unstable is out."
+
+"Why?" Lee demanded. "My people have worked out perfectly effective
+techniques--"
+
+"Let me talk, please. I have a feeling that it won't be any good, but
+hear me out.
+
+"I'll take your black art first, Lee. As you know, I have played with
+history. To a historian, your work has been very interesting. The
+sequence was this: study of abnormal psychology collapsed under
+Lieberman's findings, study of abnormal psychology revived by you when
+you invalidated Lieberman's findings. I suggest that Lieberman and his
+followers were correct--and that you were correct. I suggest that what
+changed was the makeup of the population. That would mean that before
+Lieberman there were plenty of neurotics and psychotics to study, that
+in Lieberman's time there were so few that earlier generalizations were
+invalidated, and that now--in our time, Lee--neurotics and psychotics
+are among us again in increasingly ample numbers."
+
+The girl opened her mouth, shut it again and thoughtfully studied her
+nails.
+
+"I will not tolerate," Taylor went on, "a roundup or a registration, or
+mass treatment or any such violation of the Syndic's spirit."
+
+Charles exploded: "Damn it, this is a matter of life or death to the
+Syndic!"
+
+"No, Charles. Nothing can be a matter of life or death to the Syndic.
+When anything becomes a matter of life or death to the Syndic, the
+Syndic is already dead, its morale, is already disintegrated, its credit
+already gone. What is left is not the Syndic but the Syndic's dead
+shell. I am not placed so that I can say objectively now whether the
+Syndic is dead or alive. I fear it is dying. The rising tide of
+neurotics is a symptom. The suggestion from you two, who should be
+imbued with the old happy-go-lucky, we-can't-miss esprit of the Syndic
+that we cower behind mercenaries instead of trusting the people who made
+us--that's another symptom. Dick Reiner's rise to influence on a policy
+of driving the Government from the seas is another symptom.
+
+"I mentioned the devil we know as my choice. That's the status quo, even
+though I have reason to fear it's crumbling beneath our feet. If it is,
+it may last out our time. We'll shore it up with armed merchantmen and a
+militia. If the people are with us now as they always have been, that'll
+do it. The devil we don't know is what we'll become if we radically
+dislocate Syndic life and attitudes.
+
+"I can't back a fighting fleet. I can't back a regular army. I can't
+back any restrictive measure on the freedom of anybody but an
+apprehended criminal. Read history. It has taught me not to meddle, it
+has taught me that no man should think himself clever enough or good
+enough to dare it. _That_ is the lesson history teaches us.
+
+"Who can know what he's doing when he doesn't even know why he does it?
+Bless the bright Cromagnon for inventing the bow and damn him for
+inventing missile warfare. Bless the stubby little Sumerians for
+miracles in gold and lapis lazuli and damn them for burying a dead
+queen's hand-maidens living in her tomb. Bless Shih Hwang-Ti for
+building the Great Wall between northern barbarism and southern culture,
+and damn him for burning every book in China. Bless King Minos for the
+ease of Cnossian flush toilets and damn him for his yearly tribute of
+Greek sacrificial victims. Bless Pharaoh for peace and damn him for
+slavery. Bless the Greeks for restricting population so the well-fed few
+could kindle a watch-tower in the west, and damn the prostitution and
+sodomy and wars of colonization by which they did it. Bless the Romans
+for their strength to smash down every wall that hemmed their building
+genius, and damn them for their weakness that never broke the bloody
+grip of Etruscan savagery on their minds. Bless the Jews who discovered
+the fatherhood of God and damn them who limited it to the survivors of a
+surgical operation. Bless the Christians who abolished the surgical
+preliminaries and damn them who substituted a thousand cerebral
+quibbles. Bless Justinian for the Code of Law and damn him for his
+countless treacheries that were the prototype of the wretched Byzantine
+millenium. Bless the churchmen for teaching and preaching, and damn,
+them for drawing a line beyond which they could only teach and preach in
+peril of the stake.
+
+"Bless the navigators who, opened the new world to famine-ridden Europe,
+and damn them for syphillis. Bless the red-skins who bred maize, the
+great preserver of life and damn them for breeding maize the great
+destroyer of topsoil. Bless the Virginia planters for the solace of
+tobacco and damn them for the red gullies they left where forests had
+stood. Bless the obstetricians with forceps who eased the agony of labor
+and damn them for bringing countless monsters into the world to
+reproduce their kind. Bless the Point Four boys who slew the malaria
+mosquitoes of Ceylon and damn them for letting more Sinhalese be born
+then five Ceylons could feed.
+
+"Who knows what he is doing, why he does it or what the consequences
+will be?
+
+"Let the social scientists play with their theories if they like; I'm
+fond of poetry myself. The fact is that they have not so far solved what
+I call the two-billion-body problem. With brilliant hindsight some of
+them tell us that more than a dozen civilizations have gone down into
+the darkness before us. I see no reason why ours should not go down into
+the darkness with them, nor do I see any reason why we should not
+meanwhile enjoy ourselves collecting sense-impressions to be remembered
+with pleasure in old age. No; I will not agitate for extermination of
+the Government and hegemony over the Mob. Such a policy would
+automatically, inevitably and immediately entail many, many violent
+deaths and painful wounds. The wrong kind of sense-impressions. I shall,
+with fear and trembling, recommend the raising of a militia--a purely
+defensive, extremely sloppy militia--and pray that it will not Involve
+us in a war of aggression."
+
+He looked at the two of them and shrugged. "Lee, so stern, Charles so
+grim," he said. "I suppose you're dedicated now." He looked at the desk.
+
+He thought: _I have a faint desire to take the pistol from my desk and
+shoot you both. I have a nervous feeling that you're about to embark on
+a crusade to awaken Syndic Territory to its perils. You think the fate
+of civilization hinges on you. You're right, of course. The fate of
+civilization hinges on every one of us at any given moment. We are all
+components in the two-billion-body problem. Somehow for a century we've
+achieved in Syndic Territory for almost everybody the civil liberties,
+peace of mind and living standards that were enjoyed by the middle
+classes before 1914--plus longer life, better health, a more generous
+morality, increased command over nature; minus the servant problem and
+certain superstitions. A handful of wonderfully pleasant decades. When
+you look back over history you wonder who in his right mind could ask
+for more. And you wonder who would dare to presume to tamper with it._
+
+He studied the earnest young faces. There was so much that he might
+say--but he shrugged again.
+
+"Bless you," he said. "Gather ye sense impression while ye may. Some
+like pointer readings, some like friction on the mucous membranes. Now
+go about your business; I have work to do."
+
+He didn't really. When he was alone he leaned back and laughed and
+laughed.
+
+Win, lose or draw, those two would go far and enjoy themselves mightily
+along the way. Which was what counted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Transcriber's Note: No Chapter II header in original. All pages
+present.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Syndic, by C.M. Kornbluth
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41714 ***