Frank Herbert - High-Opp

Movius wondered how long Gerard had been wanting to say that to Glass. The words had been spoken with such relish. He felt a tired aching in his hands, looked down and saw he had been clenching and unclenching his fists.

Gerard breathed deeply, eyes glazed with excitement. “What do you need, Dan? You name it. Anything in the organization.”

“We’ve a tough few days ahead of us,” said Movius. “We’re keyed to go the night before the Fall poll. That’s four days away. The word is that Glass will put a few preliminary questions to the opp on the seven o’clock that night in preparation for the following day’s heavy polling. We’ve a surprise waiting for him.”

“What do I provide?”

“Treble the guard on the apartment until tomorrow. My wife and I are going into hiding. Set up a few scattered power failures for tonight, tomorrow and the next day, a few unexplained explosions. Give them something to investigate and worry about.” Movius became thoughtful. “Bu-Trans services the relay ship. Now…”

“Only the movable machinery,” said Gerard. “We service it, but we don’t staff it except with a few technicians.”

“Could something happen to just the power transmission?” asked Movius.

Gerard tapped his teeth with the tip of the stylus. “I believe so. When would you want this to happen?”

“At seven o’clock the night before the Fall poll, the moment The Coor puts his first preliminary on the beam.”

“They have emergency power,” said Gerard. “You want that put out, too?”

“No, just the relay. Every moving vehicle in the city that depends on the transmitter should come to a stop. Let me have a turbo-copter for my own transportation. How many have you?”

“This is Bu-Trans,” said Gerard. “We control most of the world’s supply. There are about two thousand in the city here, perhaps twenty-five thousand more at sub-depots around the world.”

Movius was stunned. He’d been blind! “How could we contact them?”

“Over the routing teletype,” said Gerard. He bent his bald head toward Movius. “What’s on your mind?”

Movius slapped a hand onto the desk. “I’m going to send five girls up here with some lists of code names. You send out the orders to people you can trust. Those copters are to be put at the disposal of the people with these code names. This revolt is going to be fought from the air.”

He was almost to the new Sep headquarters before a sudden thought struck him: What if Gerard does an about face? He’d hold the key to the whole revolt. They could pick up the district leaders one by one as the men checked in for their copters. Well, it was too late to turn back now.

“I shall kill him when he returns to his apartment tonight,” said Quilliam London. He paced to the windows where the pigeons were conducting their morning watch on the streets, strode back to the table, slammed a fist down on the wood. “He’s too dangerous! We’ll have to get along without him.”

“Don’t be hasty, Quilliam.” O’Brien rubbed at a greying temple. “I’ve been doing some re-evaluating of our records on Movius. The job he has done is little short of a miracle. In just two months he has eighteen million people so organized they’re ready to die for him.”

“Most of those district organizations already were in existence,” said London.

“But not unified. Not unified.” O’Brien lifted a sheaf of papers on the table, let them drop. “Reports, reports! You should see them. No wonder Glass was ready to make a deal with Gerard. No wonder Gerard is hypnotized by the man. Big thefts of arms. Whole warehouses. EMASI! scrawls all over. There were nine power failures in this city alone last night. They’ve never been this bold! Movius has inspired them and we have to control that unifying force!”

“High-Opp!” London’s voice took on a sour bitterness. “We lost control of Movius when he walked in here and started giving you orders.”

“But the diabolical cleverness of the man! Bypass the poll control, force The Coor into the open. Make him take off his mask.”

“What difference does it make with a revolution under our noses?” demanded London. “This man will blunder us into an open battle before we’re ready.”

“But…”

London cut him off. “You said yourself his idea would only work twice at the most and then Glass would move to smoke him out.”

“I see you miss the point,” said O’Brien. He tipped his head, worked a fingernail at the corner of his eye. “My work of re-evaluation includes a study of our position relative to Movius.” He found whatever it was in the corner of his eye, straightened his head. “We chose Movius for a number of reasons.” O’Brien ticked them off on his fingers. “Susceptibility to our methods of, shall we say, ignition? Brilliance of intellect, high achievement, ability to make correct decisions, ambition…”

“Don’t forget the loyalty index,” said London coldly. “You know damned well he’s out for number one now. And he’ll be cautious. He’s lost the essential boldness.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said O’Brien. He studied London.

“He has you enthralled, too,” said London. “Bah!”

“Perhaps we chose our figurehead with more skill than we supposed,” said O’Brien. “Let’s not forget that a crisis time requires strong measures and a strong hand to execute them.”

“Execute!” London stamped across the room to the master chart. “He’ll likely ruin everything. It’s damned strange, Nate. Only last week our positions were reversed. You were wanting him eliminated and I was saying we should wait.”

“You know, I was just thinking the same thing,” said O’Brien. He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s odd, Quilliam, but we’ve never discussed one vital element of our plans. I believe we’ve tacitly avoided it.”

London turned away from the chart. “And what would that be?”

“After the revolution, who did you plan should be Coordinator?”

The old man drew himself up. He had never looked more like an ancient hunter—knobby, austere. “Myself, of course. Who else is qualified to render dispassionate judgments?”

A look of tiredness washed over O’Brien’s face. “I guess I’d anticipated that.” He looked up at London. “I had thought, though, that our object was to give the government back to the people.”

“When they’re ready for it,” said London in a clipped tone.

O’Brien smiled vaguely. “Movius would say they’ve always been ready for it.”

London banged a fist against the master chart beside him. “Movius! Did Movius devise this? Did Movius anticipate the course of history?”

“Who did do these things?” O’Brien’s voice was low.

“We did,” said London.

“Allow me to correct you.” O’Brien raised his voice. “Because of the accident of time which placed us at this point in history, and for no other reason, we are in a position to reap the benefits of five hundred years of work by thousands of others. Without their work we’d have nothing. And as far as predicting the course of history, are we sure—certain sure—that we were the force that brought Movius on stage?”

London curled his lip. “Don’t turn metaphysical on me, Nate. I can forgive you anything but that. Your other argument has spoken for me. Because of all this work, we are in a position to save the best of one civilization for the next one. But our work and the work of those before us is being endangered by this egoistical upstart, Daniel Movius!”

O’Brien cocked his head to one side. “On what do you base this judgment?”

“On my ability to interpret the course of events and decide when the time is ripe. Movius is moving too rapidly.” He shook his head. “Much too rapidly.”