Timothy Zahn - Cascade Point

Pines went white. "No!" he hissed. "You wouldn't!"

"That's entirely up to you. You get me my job back at Key Data Services and no one will ever hear about this from me. I'll walk out that door and you'll never see me again."

"At least until you start demanding money," Pines said bitterly.

"With a twenty-year jail sentence hanging over my head? Don't be absurd. Besides, what would I blackmail you with—the use of your legitimate authority to correct an error?" Charley shook his head.

"But the rules—"

"—aren't in charge here: you are. And you're here because the rules don't adapt to these unexpected changes, to things that shouldn't have happened but did anyway. If they could—if computers could balance justice and mercy—you wouldn't be needed. As it is, a system like the National Employment Office couldn't exist without you—it would have been torn apart years ago."

For a moment Pines gazed into space. Then, with just a glance at the tapes, he stepped over to his desk terminal. "What was the name of that company again?"

And Charley knew he'd won.

—

"Frankly, Charley, I never expected to see you at this desk again—but I'm damn glad I was wrong," Will Whitney said, smiling like his face was going to split.

"Me, neither," Charley agreed, savoring the feel of his old chair as he gazed at the piles of work on his desk. "I'm glad to see you can still use me. I was half afraid Sanders would've completely taken over by now."

"You kidding? He's happier to have you back than I am." Whitney shook his head. "I'd never realized before how indispensable you are to KDS. I'm glad you found someone in Washington who agreed." Charley grinned. "That's the whole secret of success, Will. You can accomplish a lot when someone thinks you're irreplaceable." And even more, he thought wryly, when he thinks that of himself.

Afterword

This was my first real foray into the world of business and finance; and as far as I'm concerned, those already in the field can have it. I'll take wading through lunar maps and the physics of black holes any day.

The job lottery idea itself came out of a long discussion of such matters with a friend, after which I sat down and hammered at the logic, cash flow, and loopholes until I got to the system you've just read about.

Would it work? I don't know. Though I don't see any flaws, of course (or I would have corrected them before sending the story out in the first place), I've never had an expert in such arcana take it apart for me. Even if it would work, I suspect it would be impossible to actually get there from here.

For which—I'm sure—we can all bow our heads in silent thanks.

The hospital bed was uncomfortably hard, with a lump that poked into his lower back no matter how much he squirmed. Not that he could squirm far, of course; the straps across his chest and legs were quite adequate to their task. Staring at the ceiling, tracing imaginary patterns among the holes in the acoustic tile there, he tried to shut out the gurgling sounds from the next bed. The gurgling he hated even more than the crying and laughing.

"Mr. Charles Bissey?"

New voices weren't common here. Lowering his gaze, he focused on the two men at the foot of his bed. One was Dr. Housman, who often appeared in his nightmares these days. The other, standing rather stiffly, was a stranger in a military-type uniform. "Yes," he acknowledged. "Who are you?"

"My name is Colonel Lee, Charles," the stranger said. "We need your help."

Charles glanced at Dr. Housman and sighed. "Sure you do. What is this, Doctor, another of your tests?" "It's no test, Charles," Housman shook his head. "Please listen to the colonel. This is deadly serious."

"Charles," Lee said, "have you ever heard of the San Bernadino Dome?"

"I'm allowed to read newspapers," Charles told him mildly. "It showed up one night a week ago in a shopping center parking lot. The newspapers think it may be the start of a space invasion."

"Right, although the invasion angle is pure speculation at this point." Lee seemed to be relaxing a bit now. Doubtless he was relieved to find Charles wasn't a raving madman. "But we believe the dome to be a threat in other ways. We'd like you to help us destroy it."

"Suicide mission?" Charles asked. Not that it really mattered.

Lee shook his head. "We hope not. But it will be dangerous."

"Why should I help you? What do I get out of this?"

He was prepared for a lecture on patriotism, and Housman's words were therefore a surprise. "Perhaps," the doctor said quietly, "you'll have your dream."

Charles stared hard at him. So many times he'd hoped... so many times had watched it all crumble. But he had little else to live for. "I accept," he said.

—

The preliminary psychomedical work took two days. Charles was in hypnotic sleep a good portion of that time, but it was a strangely exhausting sleep, and he hoped he'd have a chance to rest after it was over. But Colonel Lee was apparently in a hurry, and within an hour he had called a mission orientation meeting.

"Good day to you all," Lee nodded as he strode into the room. "I know you're tired, so I'll make this brief." He touched a switch on the console next to his chair and a picture of a huge gray hemisphere appeared on the room's screen. Behind it could be seen a long building with several different business signs, as well as a section of a city street, all looking like it had been in a war. No people were in sight anywhere.

"The San Bernadino Dome," Lee said. "Thirty meters high at the center, ninety meters across at the base. Completely impervious to everything we've tried against it. Even the best antitank missiles don't do so much as scratch the surface."

"How about atomic weapons?" Arthur asked.

"We haven't tried anything that drastic yet, but all the extrapolations indicate that even that wouldn't do any good from the outside. From the inside, though... possibly." "Wait a minute," Frank growled. "You're not gonna send us into that thing, are ya?"

"We could get hurt!" Dennis piped up.

"Hold it, hold it," Lee said, raising a hand for order. "Getting into the dome shouldn't be physically dangerous. There are already nearly a hundred people inside, by our estimates."

"What do you mean, not physically dangerous?" Susan asked in her prim alto. "What kind of dangerous is it?"

Lee took a deep breath. "Well... it seems that the dome is surrounded by a sort of... effect, I guess you could call it. Everyone who's gone inside a certain distance drops whatever else he's doing and heads straight for this door." He indicated a black triangle on the dome. "We've tried sending people just over the edge of the effect and then hauling them back with ropes, and once they're back outside they're okay again. They report a tremendous compulsion to get into the dome, but no idea why they were wanted. Our experts say the effect resembles a strong hypnosis, but they have no idea how the order was implanted. What happens inside is anyone's guess; all we know is that the agents we sent in with bombs apparently never triggered them. Yes, Charles?"

Charles spoke up hesitantly, still shy in the presence of the others. He'd met them barely three hours earlier, and his natural bashfulness with strangers made his tongue feel awkward. "I take it, Colonel, that you think we can get past this conditioning?"

"Of course he thinks that, dummy," Arthur snapped. "Why else would we be here?"

"Actually, we don't expect all of you to get through untouched," Lee said quickly, perhaps seeing Charles's blush. "Frankly, we'll be happy if any one of you can get in with enough control left to carry out the mission. We really don't know what will happen to you since—well—"

"Since everyone else who's gone in has been perfectly sane?" Charles suggested.