Philip Dick - Vulcan's Hammer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A drink, sir?" the robot attendant asked, coming up by him.

He ordered a good dark German beer and with it the cheese hor d'oeuvres for which the flight was famous.

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

DIRECTORS TAUBMANN AND HENDERSON

CHARGE AUTHORITY IN ILLINOIS HEALERS

VICTORY. DEMAND INVESTIGATION

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

One further item, very small, also chilled him.

NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTOR BARRIS UN­AVAILABLE. NOT IN NEW YORK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Maybe we will, fairly soon," Barris said.

"You made out satisfactorily in Geneva? You're coming back with definite word from it?"

"I'll discuss it with you later," Barris said, and broke the connection.

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

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

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

Human lives, Barris thought. Marks on forms.

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

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