"Not bad, John Donne. But I feel that judgment may already have been entered and that we may have lost four to nothing."
"Then you see the Hangman as an avenging angel?"
"Sometimes. Sort of. I see it as being returned to exact a penalty."
"Just for the record," I suggested, "if the Hangman had had full access to the necessary equipment and was able to construct another unit such as itself, would you consider it guilty of the same thing that is bothering you?"
He shook his head.
"Don't get all cute and Jesuitical with me, Donne. I'm not that far away from fundamentals. Besides, I'm willing to admit I might be wrong and that there may be other forces driving it to the same end."
"Such as?"
"I told you I'd let you know when we reached a certain point. That's it."
"Okay," I said. "But that sort of blank-walls me, you know. The people I am working for would like to protect you people. They want to stop the Hangman. I was hoping you would tell me a little more, if not for your own sake, then for the others'. They might not share your philosophical sentiments, and you have just admitted you may be wrong…Despair, by the way, is also considered a sin by a great number of theologians."
He sighed and stroked his nose, as I had often seen him do in times long past.
"What do you do, anyhow?" he asked me.
"Me, personally? I'm a science writer. I'm putting together a report on the device for (he agency that wants to do the protecting. The better my report, the better their chances."
He was silent for a time, then, "I read a lot in the area, but I don't recognize your name," he said.
"Most of my work has involved petrochemistry and marine biology," I said.
"Oh…You were a peculiar choice then, weren't you?"
"Not really. I was available, and the boss knows my work, knows I'm good."
He glanced across the room, to where a stack of cartons partly obscured what I then realized to be a remote-access terminal. Okay. If he decided to check out my credentials now, John Donne would fall apart. It seemed a hell of a time to get curious, though, after sharing his sense of sin with me. He must have thought so, too, because he did not look that way again.
"Let me put it this way…" he finally said, and something of the old David Fentris at his best took control of his voice. "For one reason or the other, I believe that it wants to destroy its former operators. If it is the judgment of the Almighty, that's all there is to it. It will succeed. If not, however, I don't want any outside protection. I've done my own repenting and it is up to me to handle the rest of the situation myself, too. I will stop the Hangman personally, right here, before anyone else is hurt."
"How?" I asked him.
He nodded toward the glittering helmet.
"With that," he said.
"How?" I repeated.
"The Hangman's telefactor circuits are still intact. They have to be: they are an integral part of it. It could not disconnect them without shutting itself down. If it comes within a quarter mile of here, that unit will be activated. It will emit a loud humming sound and a light will begin to blink behind that meshing beneath the forward ridge. I will then don the helmet and take control of the Hangman. I will bring it here and disconnect its brain."
"How would you do the disconnect?"
He reached for the schematics he had been looking at when I had come in.
"Here. The thoracic plate has to be unplugged. There are four subunits that have to be uncoupled. Here, here, here, and here."
He looked up.
"You would have to do them in sequence, though, or it could get mighty hot," I said. "First this one, then these two. Then the other."
When I looked up again, the gray eyes were fixed on my own.
"I thought you were in petrochemistry and marine biology."
"I am not really 'in' anything," I said. "I am a tech writer, with bits and pieces from all over, and I did have a look at these before, when I accepted the job."
"I see."
"Why don't you bring the space agency in on this?" I said, working to shift ground. "The original telefactoring equipment had all that power and range…"
"It was dismantled a long time ago…I thought you were with the government"
I shook my head.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to mislead you. I am on contract with a private investigation outfit."
"Uh-huh. Then that means Jesse…Not that it matters. You can tell him that one way or the other everything is being taken care of."
"What if you are wrong on the supernatural," I said, "but correct on the other? Supposing it is coming under the circumstances you feel it proper to resist? But supposing you are not next on its list? Supposing it gets to one of the others next, instead of you? If you are so sensitive about guilt and sin, don't you think that you would be responsible for that death, if you could prevent it by telling me just a little bit more? If it's confidentiality you're worried about…"
"No," he said. "You cannot trick me into applying my principles to a hypothetical situation which will only work out the way that you want it to. Not when I am certain that it will not arise. Whatever moves the Hangman, it will come to me next. If I cannot stop it, then it cannot be stopped until it has completed its job."
"How do you know that you are next?"
"Take a look at a map," he said. "It landed in the Gulf. Manny was right there in New Orleans. Naturally, he was first. The Hangman can move underwater like a controlled torpedo, which makes me Mississippi its logical route for inconspicuous travel. Proceeding up it then, here I am in Memphis. Then Leila,, up in St. Louis, is obviously next after me. It can worry about getting to Washington after that."
I thought about Senator Brockden in Wisconsin and decided it would not even have that problem. All of them were fairly accessible, when you thought of the situation in terms of river travel.
"But how is it to know where you all are?" I asked.
"Good question," he said. "Within a limited range, it was once sensitive to our brain waves, having an intimate knowledge of them and the ability to pick them up. I do not know what that range would be today. It might have been able to construct an amplifier to extend this area of perception. But to be more mundane about it, I believe that it simply consulted Central's national directory. There are booths all over, even on the waterfront. It could have hit one late at night and gimmicked it. It certainly had sufficient identifying information, and engineering skill."
"Then it seems to me that the best bet for all of you would be to move away from the river till this business is settled. That thing won't be able to stalk about the countryside very long without being noticed."
He shook his head.
"It would find a way. It is extremely resourceful. At night, in an overcoat, a hat, it could pass. It requires nothing that a man would need. It could dig a hole and bury itself, stay underground during daylight. It could run without resting all night long. There is no place it could not reach in a surprisingly short while…No, I must wait here for it."
"Let me put it as bluntly as I can," I said. "If you are right that it is a Divine Avenger, I would say that it smacks of blasphemy to try to tackle it. On the other hand, if it is not, then I think you are guilty of jeopardizing the others by withholding information that would allow us to provide them with a lot more protection than you are capable of giving them all by yourself."
He laughed.
"I'll just have to learn to live with that guilt, too, as they do with theirs," he said. "After I've done my best, they deserve anything they get."
"It was my understanding," I said, "that even God doesn't judge people until after they're dead, if you want another piece of presumption to add to your collection."
He stopped laughing and studied my face.
"There is something familiar about the way you talk, the way you think," he said. "Have we ever met before?"