"What good has it done you?" Wakeman asked quietly; he indicated the girl's discolored temples.
"I wasn't born at the same time and place as Reese," Eleanor answered shortly.
"I don't hold with astro-cosmology," Wakeman said calmly. "I think luck can be won or lost. It comes in streaks." Speaking slowly and intently to Benteley, he continued, "Verrick may have it now, but that doesn't mean hell always have it. They—" He gestured vaguely upward toward the floor above, "They like to see some kind of balance." He added hastily, "I'm not a Christian or anything like that, you understand. I know it's all random chance." He breathed
a complicated smell of peppermint and onions into Benteley's face. "But everybody gets his chance, someday. And the high and mighty always fall."
Eleanor shot Wakeman a warning look. "Be careful."
Without taking his eyes from Benteley, Wakeman said slowly, "Remember what I'm telling you. You're out of fealty; take advantage of it. Don't swear yourself on to Verrick. You'll be stuck to him, as one of his permanent serfs. And you won't like it."
Benteley was chilled. "You mean I'm supposed to take an oath directly to Verrick? Not a positional oath to the Quizmaster?"
"That's right," Eleanor said.
"Why?"
"Things are a little uncertain right now. I can't give you any more information. Later on, there'll be an assignment for you in terms of your class requirements; that's guaranteed."
Benteley gripped his briefcase and moved aimlessly away. His strategy, his plan, had fallen apart. Nothing that he had run up against here corresponded to his expectations. "Then I'm in?" he demanded, half-angrily. "I'm acceptable?"
"Sure," Wakeman said listlessly. "Verrick wants all the 8-8's he can get. You can't miss."
Benteley retreated helplessly from the two of them. Something was wrong. "Wait," he said, confused and uncertain. "I have to think this out. Give me time to decide."
"Go right ahead," Eleanor said indifferently.
"Thanks." Benteley withdrew, to restudy the situation.
Eleanor wandered around the room, hands in her pockets. "Any more news on that fellow?" she asked Wakeman. "I'm waiting."
"Only the initial closed-circuit warning to me," Wakeman said. "His name is Leon Cartwright. He's a member of some kind of cult, a crackpot splinter organization. I'm curious to see what he's like."
"I'm not." Eleanor halted at the window and stood gazing moodily out at the streets and ramps below. "They'll be shrilling, soon. It won't be long now." She reached up jerkily and ran her thin fingers over her temples. "God, maybe I made a mistake. But it's over; there's nothing I can do."
"It was a mistake," Wakeman agreed. "When you're a little older, you'll realize how much of a mistake."
A flash of fear slithered over the girl's face. "I'll never leave Verrick. I have to stay with him!"
"Why?"
"I'll be safe. Hell take care of me; he always has."
"The Corps will protect you."
"I don't want to have anything to do with the Corps." Her red lips drew back against her even white teeth. "My _family_. My willing uncle Peter—up for sale, like his Hills." She indicated Benteley. "And he thinks he won't find it here."
"It's not a question of sale," Wakeman said. "It's a principle. The Corps is above man."
"The Corps is a fixture, like this desk." Eleanor scraped her long nails against the surface of the desk. "You buy all the furniture, the desk, the lights, the ipvics, the Corps." Disgust glowed in her eyes. "A Prestonite, is that it?"
"That's it."
"No wonder you're anxious to see him. In a morbid way I suppose I'm curious, too. Like I would be about some sort of bizarre animal from one of the colony planets."
At the desk, Benteley roused himself from his thoughts. "All right," he said aloud. "I'm ready."
"Fine." Eleanor slipped behind the desk, one hand raised, the other on the bust. "You know the oath? Do you need help?"
Benteley knew the fealty oath by heart, but gnawing doubt slowed him almost to a halt. Wakeman stood examining his nails and looking disapproving and bored, a small negative field of radiation. Eleanor Stevens watched avidly, her face intense with a complex series of emotions that altered each moment. With a growing conviction that things were not right, Benteley began reciting his fealty oath to the small plastic bust.
As he was halfway through, the doors of the office slid back and a group of men entered noisily. One towered over the rest; he was a huge man, lumbering and broad-shouldered, with a gray, weathered face and thick iron-streaked hair. Reese Verrick, surrounded by those of his staff in personal fealty to him, halted as he saw the procedure taking place at the desk.
Wakeman glanced up and caught Verrick's eye. He smiled faintly and said nothing; but his attitude clearly showed. Eleanor Stevens had turned rigid as stone. Cheeks flushed, body taut with feeling, she waited out Benteley's uneasy words. As soon as he had finished, she snapped into life. She carefully hurried the plastic bust out of the office and then returned, hand held out.
"I want your p-card, Mr. Benteley. We have to have it."
Benteley, numbed, turned over his card. There it went, once again.
"Who's this fellow?" Verrick rumbled, with a wave toward Benteley.
"He swore on just now. An 8-8." Eleanor nervously grabbed up her things from the desk; between her breasts her good luck charms dangled and vibrated excitedly. "I'll get my coat."
"8-8? Biochemist?" Verrick eyed Benteley with interest. "Is he any good?"
"He's all right," Wakeman said. "What I teeped seemed to be top-notch."
Eleanor hurriedly slammed the closet door, threw her coat around her bare shoulders, and stuffed her pockets full. "He just came in, from Oiseau-Lyre." She rushed breathlessly up to join the group clustered around Verrick. "He doesn't know, yet."
Verrick's heavy face was wrinkled with fatigue and worry, but a faint spark of amusement lit his deep-set eyes, the hard gray orbs far down in the ridge of thick brow-bone. "The last crumbs, for awhile. The rest goes to Cartwright, the Prestonite." He addressed Benteley, "What's your name?"
They shook hands, as Benteley mumbled his name. Verrick's massive hand crunched his bones in a death-grip as Benteley feebly asked, "Where are we going? I thought—"
"Farben Hill." Verrick and his group moved toward the exit ramp, all but Wakeman who remained behind to await the new Quizmaster. To Eleanor Stevens, Verrick explained briefly, "We'll operate from there. The lock I put on Farben last year was to me personally. I can still claim loyalty there, in spite of this."
"In spite of what?" Benteley demanded, suddenly horrified. The outside doors were open; bright sunlight flooded down on them, mixed with the roar of street noises. For the first time the cries of the newsmachines burst up loudly to his ears. As the party moved down the ramp toward the field and the waiting intercon transports, Benteley demanded hoarsely, _"What's happened?"_
"Come on," Verrick grunted. "You'll know all about it, before long. We've got too much work ahead to stand around here talking."
Benteley slowly followed the party, the copper taste of horror thick in his mouth. He knew, now. It was being shrilled on all sides of him, screamed out by the excited mechanical voices of the public newsmachines.
"Verrick quacked!" the machines cried, as they moved among the groups of people. "Prestonite bottled to One! A twitch of the bottle this morning at nine-thirty Batavia time! Verrrrrick totally quaaaaaackedl"
The random power-twitch had come, the event the harbingers had anticipated. Verrick had been twitched from the number One position; he was no longer Quizmaster. He had plunged to the bottom, out of the Directorate completely.