“What are you trying to prove?” Gram asked, annoyed.
“That once we destroy the axle of the Under Men, once we get men like Cordon—”
“We did,” Gram pointed out. To Nick, he said, “Did you know that? That Cordon died of a long-term liver condition which was irreversible, and no transplant was available? You heard it on the radio? TV?”
“I heard it,” Nick said. “That he had been shot to death by an assassin sent to his cell.”
“That’s not true,” Gram said. “He didn’t die in his cell, he died on the operating table of the prison hospital during an attempt to put an artificial organ in him. We did everything we could to save him.”
No. Nick thought. No, you didn’t.
“You don’t believe me?” Gram said, reading his mind. He turned toward Barnes. “There’s your statistic: the embodiment of natural man, of Old Men, and he doesn’t believe Cordon died naturally. Can we extrapolate from that that there will be a general planet-wide disbelief?”
“Sure can,” Barnes said.
“Well, damn it,” Gram said. “I don’t care what they believe; it’s all over for them. It’s just rats here and there in the gutter, waiting for us to zarlp them one by one. Wouldn’t you say that, Appleton? Joiners like you, you don’t anymore have a place to go and leaders to listen to.” To Barnes he said, “So when Provoni lands, there won’t be anybody to greet him. No throngs of the faithful, they’ll have melted away, as Appleton here would do. Only he got caught so it’s southeast Utah for him or Luna, if he prefers. You prefer Luna, Mr. Appleton? Mr. 3XX24J?”
Nick said, choosing his words carefully, “I’ve heard it said that whole families have gone intact to relocation camps. Is that true?”
“You want to be with your wife and son? But they’re not charged.” Barnes bared a notched fang, pursuing the idea to its conclusion. “We could charge them with—”
“You’ll find a tract of Cordon’s in our apartment,” Nick said. As soon as he said it he wished, God how he wished, he hadn’t said it. Why did I do that? he asked himself. But we should be together. And then he thought of little tough Charley, with her large black eyes and her pushed-in nose. Her hard, slim, breastless body . . . and always her cheery smile, like a character out of Dickens, he thought. A chimney sweep. A Soho thug. Conning her way out of trouble, talking someone into something. Anyhow talking. Always talking. And always with her special lit-up smile, as if the world were, a great furry dog which she longed to hug.
Could I go with her? he wondered. Instead of Kleo and Bobby. Should I go with her? If it’s legally possible?
“It’s not,” Gram said from his bed of enormous size.
“What’s not?” Barnes demanded.
Gram said leisurely, “He wants to go with that girl we found with him at the 16th Avenue printing plant. You remember her?”
“The one you’re interested in,” Barnes said.
Hot fear trickled its way down Nick’s spine; his heart gave a deep shudder and a mighty heave, and, in his arms and legs, the blood circulation speeded rapidly up. Then it’s true about Gram, he thought. What people say about his wenching around. His marriage—
“Is like yours,” Gram finished for him.
Presently, Nick said, “You’re right.”
“What’s she like?”
“Feral and wild.” But he didn’t have to say aloud, he realized. All he had to do was think of her, imagine her, relive in his mind the details of their short period together. And Gram would gather it up as fast as he thought it.
“She could be trouble,” Gram said. “And this Denny, her boyfriend, he sounds psychopathic or something. The whole interaction between them, if you’re remembering it right, it’s sick. She’s a sick girl.”
“In a sane environment,” Nick began, but Barnes cut him off.
“May I go on with my questions?”
“Sure,” Gram said, moodily withdrawing; Nick saw the heavyset old man turn his attention inward, to his own thoughts.
“If you were released,” Barnes asked, “what would your reaction be, what would you do, if—and I say if—Thors Provoni returned? And with monstrous help? Help designed to enslave Earth for as long as—”
“Oh, God,” Gram groaned.
“Yes, Council Chairman?” Barnes asked.
“Nothing,” Gram groaned. He rolled over on his side, his gray hair spilling onto the whiteness of the pillows. Discoloring as if something that shunned the light had made its way among them, showing only its stringy pelt.
“Would you react in one of the following ways?” Barnes continued. “One. Would you be hysterically joyful, without reservation? Two. Would you be wildly pleased? Three. Would you not care? Four. Would it make you uneasy? Five. Would it cause you to join a PSS or military organization prepared to fight the unnatural invaders? Which of these choices, if any, would you choose?”
Nick said, “Isn’t there something between ‘hysterically joyful without reservation’ and ‘mildly pleased’?”
“No,” Barnes said.
“Why not?”
“We want to know who our enemies are. If you were ‘hysterically joyful’ you would act. To help them. But if you were only ‘mildly pleased’ you’d probably do nothing. That’s what is being sorted out by the choices—would you act as an overt enemy of the establishment, and if so, in what direction and to what extent?”
Gram, his voice muffled by his covers, muttered, “He doesn’t know. My God, he just became an Under Man this morning! How the hell would he know how he’d act?”
“But,” Barnes pointed out, “he’s had years to think about Provoni’s return. Don’t forget that. His reaction, whatever it is, is deeply grounded.” To Nick he said, “Choose an answer.”
After a pause, Nick said, “It depends on what you do with Charley.”
“Try and extrapolate that,” Gram said to Barnes and chuckled. “I can tell you what is going to be done to Charley. She’ll be brought here, safe from the demented psychopath, that Denny or Benny or whatever his name is. So you shook off the Purple Sea Cow, very good. But she may have been lying when she said no one else ever had . . . you didn’t think of that. She wound you around her little pseudopodium, didn’t she? All of a sudden you were saying to your wife, ‘If she goes, I go.’ And your wife said, ‘Go.’ Which you did. And all that without any warning. You brought Charlotte to your apartment, made up a lie as to how you got involved with her, and then Kleo found the Cordonite tract, and blam, that was it. Because it gave her what a wife likes best: a situation in which her husband has to choose between two evils, between two choices neither of which is palatable to him. Wives love that. When you’re in court, divorcing one, you get presented with a choice between going back to her or losing all your possessions, your property, stuff you’ve hung onto since high school. Yeah, wives really like that.” He buried himself deeper into the pillows. “Interview’s over,” he mumbled sleepily.
“My conclusions,” Barnes said.
“Okay,” Gram said muffledly.
“This man, 3XX24J,” Barnes said, indicating Nick, “thinks in a manner parallel to your own. His primary concern is for his own personal life, not for a cause. If he is assured of possession of the woman he wants—if and when he finally decides—then he will stand by inert when Provoni arrives.”
“Which leads you to infer what?” Gram mumbled.
Barnes said briskly, “That we announce today, now, that all relocation camps, both in Utah and on Luna, are to be abolished, and the detainees will be returned to their homes and families, or whomever else they wish.” Barnes” voice was jagged with harshness. “We will, before Provoni arrives, give them what 3XX24J here wants—would settle for. Old Men live on a personal level; it is not the cause, the ideology, that motivates them. If they do enter a cause, it is to get back something in their personal lives, such as dignity or meaning. Like better housing, interracial marriage—you understand.”