Shaking himself like a wet dog, Gram sat up in bed and stared at him, his mouth turned down, his eyes bulging . . . as if, Nick thought, he’s going to have a stroke.
“Release them?” Gram asked. “All of them? Like the ones we picked up today: hard core, even wearing uniforms of some kind of paramilitary type?”
“Yes,” Barnes said. “It’s a gamble but, on the basis of what citizen 3XX24J has said and thought, it’s obvious to me that he is not thinking, ‘Will Thors Provoni save Earth?’ He is thinking, ‘I’d certainly like to see that tough little bitch again.’ ”
“Old Men,” Gram muttered. His face relaxed; now his flesh hung in wattles. “If we gave Appleton his choice between having Charlotte or seeing Provoni be successful, he’d actually choose the former . . .” But then, all at once, his expression changed; it became furtive, cat-like. “But he can’t have Charlotte, I’m involved with her.” To Nick he said, “You can’t have her, so go back to Kleo and Bobby.” He grinned. “There, I’ve made the decision for you.”
Clearly annoyed by the discussion, Barnes said to Nick, “What would your reaction as an Under Man be if all the relocation camps—let’s face it: the concentration camps—were abolished and everyone was sent home, presumably to his friends and family. How would you feel if this were done for you, you too?”
Nick said, “I think it’s the most sensible, humane, rational decision a government could make. There would be a wave of relief and happiness that would cover the globe.” He felt, somehow, that he had expressed himself badly, in clichés, but it was the best he could do. “Would you really do that?” he asked Barnes incredulously. “I can’t believe it. The number of people in those camps run into millions. It would be one of the most humane decisions by any government in history; it would never be forgotten.”
“You see?” Barnes said to Gram. “Okay, 3XX24J; if this were done, how would you greet Provoni?”
He saw the logic. “I—” He hesitated. “Provoni went in search of help in destroying a tyranny. But if you release everyone, and presumably you would abolish the category of ‘Under Men’; there would be no more arrests—”
“No more arrests,” Barnes said. “Cordonite literature will be allowed to circulate freely.”
Rousing himself, Gram rolled about in his bed, heaving and thrashing, managing at last a sitting position. “They’d take it as a sign of weakness.” He waggled his finger at first Nick, then more ominously at Barnes. “They would assume we did it as a result of knowing ourselves to be defeated. Provoni would get the credit!” He stared at Barnes in a mixture of emotions; his face flowed, mobile and agitated. “You know what they’d do? They’d then force us to”—he glanced at Nick a little nervously—“to make the Civil Service exams on the level. In other words, we’d give up our absolute control over who comes into the governmental apparatus and who goes out.”
“We need brain help,” Barnes said, chewing on the flat end of his ballpoint pen.
“You mean another double-dome superman like yourself?” Gram spat out the words. “To overrule me? Why don’t we have a plenipotentiary meeting of the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety? At least that way we’ll have your kind and my kind equally represented.”
Barnes said thoughtfully, “I would like to have Amos Ild brought in. To get his opinion. It would take twenty-four hours to assemble the Committee; we could have Ild here in half an hour—he’s in New Jersey working on the Big Ear, as you know.”
“That fucking enemy of the Unusuals! Up yours, Barnes. Up yours all the way! I’ll never submit to the opinions of a head shaped like a pear with God knows what loose nuts and bolts floating around inside.”
Barnes said, “Ild is the foremost intellectual on the planet today. We recognize him as that; obviously you do, too.”
Dithering, Gram said, “He’s trying to make me obsolete. He’s trying to destroy the two-entity system that has made this world a paradise for—”
“Then I’ll merely go ahead and have the camps opened,” Barnes said. “With no concurring—or dissenting—opinions from anyone.” He rose to his feet, put his pad of paper and pen away, picked up his briefcase.
“Isn’t it true?” Gram asked. “Isn’t he trying to undermine the Unusuals? Isn’t that the real purpose of the Big Ear?”
“Amos Ild,” Barnes said, “is one of the few New Men who has any concern for the Old. The Big Ear would give them parity powers, abilities equal to your own; it would draw them into the fabric of government. Citizen 3XX24J—his son could pass the ability test, the Special Achievement section, that got you into the government years ago. And look how high you’ve risen. Listen to me, Willis—the Old Men must be given back their franchise, but there’s no use doing it if they simply lack, goddam simply lack, the skills, knowledge, aptitudes, that we have. We’re not really falsifying the test results: all right, we do it now and then—we select, as Pikeman and Weiss did in Citizen 3XX24J”s case. That’s an evil, but not the evil. The evil lay in constructing a test which you and I could pass and he can’t. We’re not testing him by what he can do but by what we can do. So he gets questions involving Bernhad’s Theory of Acausality, which no Old Man can understand. We can’t give him a bigger cerebral cortex—we can’t give him a New Man brain . . . but we can provide him with extra talents that can compensate for it. As in your case. In all Unusual cases.”
“You’re looking down at me,” Gram said.
Barnes, still on his feet, sighed. And sagged. “Well, I’ve said all I can say right now. It’s been a difficult day. I will not contact Amos Ild; I will simply go ahead and order the camps let open. Making it my own decision; mine alone.”
“Find Amos Ild; bring in Amos Ild,” Gram grated, and heaved about on the bed so that the floor under their feet vibrated.
Looking at his watch, Barnes said, “Right. Within the next couple of days as a certainty. But it will take time to get him—”
“You said ‘half an hour’,” Gram said.
Barnes reached for one of the fones on Gram’s desk. “May I?”
“Sure,” Gram said resignedly.
While Barnes made his call, Nick stood deep in thought, gazing out the immense window of the combination bedroom-office at the city around him, the city which stretched for miles—hundreds of miles.
“You are thinking,” Gram said, “of ways of persuading me that you have a prior claim on that Charlotte girl.”
He nodded.
“You do,” Gram said. “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m who I am and you’re who you are. A tire regroover. I’m passing a law against it, by the way. You’ll be out of a job come next Monday.”
“Thanks,” Nick said.
“You always did feel guilty about it,” Gram pointed out. “I pick up deep guilt from your mind. You worried about the people driving those squibs with the fake tread. Landing, Especially landing. That first bump.”
“True,” Nick said.
Gram said, “Now you’re thinking about Charlotte again, and devising ways of hustling her off. And at the same time you’re asking yourself for the millionth time what you ethically should do . . . you can stop that and go back to Kleo and Bobby. And arrange for Bobby to take another—”