Philip Dick - Vulcan's Hammer

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

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

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

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

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

"And you got her out of it?" Barris said.

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

"Maybe I'll see you again," Fields said to him.

"You're leaving?" Fields said. "Where are you going?"

"To see Jason Dill."

"What about her?" Fields said, indicating the woman in Barris' arms. "Are you taking her with you?"

"If you'll let me," Barris said.

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

Barris said, "I'll never go along with a group that mur­ders."

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

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

Outside on the sidewalk he hailed a robot cab.

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

"Don't let her out of my jurisdiction. Don't honor any request to have her transferred, especially to South America."

The stag member said acutely, "You don't want to let this person get anywhere near Atlanta."

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet, he realized, I can't even go back now, to my own region. Whether I like it or not I have met Father

Fields face-to-face; I've associated with him, and any enemies I might have, inside or outside the Unity struc­ture, will have exactly what they want-for the rest of my life. It's too late to give up, to drop the idea of confronting Jason Dill. With irony, he thought, Father Fields has forced me to go through with it, the thing he was trying to prevent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence.

The color left Jason Dill's face. "Your form wasn't properly filled out. According to Section Six, Article Ten of the Unity-"

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

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